Rosh Hashanah, or the Jewish New Year, is celebrated in autumn after all the activities of the summer are done and farmers have completed their harvest. Generally, preparations for the new year begin on the previous day. After the evening prayers, all the members of the family sit down to have their meal together. The bread that is broken at the dinner is usually round in shape. Symbolically, it reminds everyone that life is like a wheel and that fortunes follow a cyclical pattern. The lesson to be taken is that pride over success or grief over failures are equally meaningless. Each one’s destiny is in the hands of the Almighty. Therefore, faith in God and hopefulness regarding the new year are important.
On the morning of Rosh Hashanah, the entire synagogue is decorated in white, the colour of purity, love and equality for the Jews. The curtains covering the Holy Ark that contains the sacred book Torah, the mantle of the Torah, and the drape over the pulpit are all white. The congregation also turns up in white.
After the usual prayers, there are special pleas for blessings throughout the new year so that there is no sickness or grief, evil or war. But simultaneously, there is an acknowledgement that God will decide who will live a full life and whose race will be stopped half-way, who will die by water and who will die by fire, who will be killed by the beast and who by hunger, who will wander and who rest, and so on. In all these, there is a renewal of awareness that the Almighty is the King of the Universe, the Judge, and the Redeemer.
In the afternoon, the Jews go out to a riverbank or the seashore and recite the last lines of the Book of Micah: “And Thou wilt cast their sins into the depths of the sea” in the belief that all their troubles and worries will flow with the waves and get drowned in the sea.