Rosh Hashana Review

Before September is completely over, I felt I should journal about this year's Rosh Hashana celebration, for the record if nothing more.

This was actually the first time we celebrated Rosh Hashana as a family... and we dared to invite others to participate as well even though we barely knew what we were doing. I feel that each and every time we practice one of the Lord's feasts we gain a deeper understanding of the Lord and the feast itself. It is one thing to read about them, or study them, but when you practice them personally, it's another entirely. Perhaps this is why the Lord writes, "TRAIN up a child in the way he should go..." and not "Teach a child..." Experience counts. It counts a lot, and we had none. Yet, we forged ahead, invited our pastor and his wife and several friends from church.

I used a book called Celebrating the Biblical Feasts in your Home or Church. For a beginner, it was an excellent resource. We read the book once through and then returned to the feast we were planning and studied it more in depth. I organized a picnic style feast at a park on a river, so we could all participate in Tashlich, a ceremony of repentance.

The book called for some traditional foods, including a fish with the head still on, round Challah bread, carrots, apples and honey. Each food item had significance and so as we passed the food around the table, we taught the group what each thing represented and why it was significant to this particular feast. We blew the shofar. My husband was disappointed that he wasn't able to make much of a sound in it before that day. Learning to blow that thing really isn't as easy as it looks. I was a little more successful, so he started off by talking about reasons to blow the shofar while I blew that thing 12 times. By the end I was a little light headed and my throat hurt, but mission accomplished.

The group stood and seemed to be quite enthralled by the ceremony and the teachings. We taught about the history very briefly and mentioned some of the prophetic significance as well. We all gathered at the shore of the river, collected handfuls of stones (most people were not wearing clothes with pockets so we improvised) and tossed a stone in for each sin we repented of.

All in all, it was a beautiful event, rich in significance and history. Our pastor's wife asked about teaching it next year for children's church and the pastor himself asked to do it for the church.

There is so much rich history, symbolism and prophecy wrapped up in each and every feast. It's a lot like peeling an onion. When you skim through the Bible references to the feasts, you don't get much out of it. When you study them you understand a little more, but when you practice them you begin to see why they are important to God. Notice, I said begin. We have a lot of layers to peel yet. But, we are thankful that some other people began to peel some layers as well and will themselves begin to see the rich gift God gave us when he commanded these feasts.