Countywide : Rosh Hashanah Celebration to Begin

At sunset today, many of the estimated 100,000 Jews in Orange County will begin celebrating Rosh Hashanah, a two-day holiday that begins a 10-day period of repentance that culminates in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a time for introspection and a time for taking stock, said Rabbi Mark Miller of Temple Bat Yahm in Newport Beach.

“I always try to strike a balance between themes of the hour and eternal themes,” Miller said, adding that current themes include the unification of Germany, the Middle East and the exodus of Jews from the Soviet Union.

The county’s 22 synagogues and temples throughout the county will hold services tonight, Thursday and Friday.

All Rosh Hashanah services include the sounding of the shofar, a ram’s horn. According to Jewish tradition, the shofar’s sound serves as a reminder to re-evaluate marriages, relationships and personal ethics.

The Jewish New Year is a solemn time in which each person’s fate is said to be subject to review and judgment in the divine “Book of Life”; thus a greeting in Hebrew that translates, “May you be inscribed for a good year.” Prayers for forgiveness are part of the cycle of High Holy Day services.

The overriding theme of this year’s High Holy Days is the plight of the hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing Russia for Israel.

Chelle Friedman of the Tustin-based Jewish Federation of Orange County said close to a million Jews are expected to immigrate to Israel from Russia in the next three years. In order to help pay for food and housing for the arriving families, Israel has asked American Jews to raise $450 million during the three years.

Orange County’s share of “Operation Exodus” will be $1.2 million, Friedman said. Along with raising money for the Russian Jews, Orange County congregations will also be asked to raise an additional $250,000 for a “Freedom Flight” to bring Jews who fled Russia for Israel but became stranded in Eastern Europe.

Unlike many of the other Jewish holidays that focus on the family and community, said Rabbi Steven Schatz, Rosh Hashanah is a time for individuals to take a look at themselves. “It is a time to look backward and ask, ‘How did I handle things?’ It is a time to ask, ‘How can I be a little better in the coming year?’ ” Schatz, of Temple Adat Ari in Yorba Linda, said his congregation, like many others, will observe tashlik, a ceremony in which sins are represented by bread crumbs symbolically cast into a body of water.