Jews Celebrate Their Holiest Days

As several dozen wide-eyed children gathered around his feet, Rabbi Bernard P. King held aloft the shofar, a traditional wind instrument fashioned from a ram’s horn, took a good, deep breath and blew with all his might.

Although his face turned a bit red, the resulting noise sounded like a weak car horn, and the youngsters of the Temple Shir Ha Ma Alot congregation giggled and nudged one another.

“Hmmm, not that great, huh?” King asked the smiling young critics.

Jokes, candy and magic tricks were all part of King’s special children’s service Monday, a casual ceremony designed to bring the messages and themes of the Jewish High Holy Days, which began Monday, down to a kid’s eye view.

“We try to make the meanings accessible,” said King, who heads the reformist temple. “Demystifying is very important to me.”

The High Holy Days continue today with the second day of Rosh Hashanah, and end Sept. 17 with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year and a time that many of Orange County’s estimated 100,000 Jews seek to take stock of their religious and day-to-day lives.

During the 10 days, it is said that God holds up each person in judgment, and inscribes his or her “karmic debt” on a tablet of destiny, King said. On the first day, God opens the Book of Life, and the names of the completely righteous find their way onto its pages, while the names of people deemed completely wicked are cast out. On sunset of Yom Kippur, the process ends and the book closes for another year.

For the vast majority of the faithful, the period is a chance to atone and repent through prayer, fasting and seeking forgiveness from people they have wronged. Through these efforts, they hope to be “listed” in the Book of Life.

The period is also one rich with tradition and ceremony, such as tashlik, the throwing of bread crumbs into a body of water to symbolize sins cast away, and the dipping of bread and apples into honey to represent hopes for a “sweet” forthcoming year. The last day, Yom Kippur, is the most solemn day in Judaism, and many Jews will go into an intensive prayer period and abstain from working, eating, drinking, washing and many other activities prohibited by custom.

Also, High Holy Days ceremonies are punctuated by the sharp wail of the shofar, which signifies spiritual reawakening and God’s sovereignty.

“I liken it to a lifeguard’s whistle,” King said. “In a sense, it’s like an alarm. Like when you swim out too far, the lifeguard blows the whistle to remind you, to caution you that you may be getting in too deep.”

If the shofar is a whistle from the shoreline, the ocean depths it warns of would be the fast pace of modern life, King said. Too often, people focus on success or superficial priorities and forget the truly important things, such as family and faith, he explained.

“Some people are like walking dead,” King said. “They may make a good living, they may be good-looking and have all sorts of successes, but you look in their eyes and they are dead. And, even though they are alive, they are listed in the Book of the Dead.”