A Scramble to Prepare for Early High Holy Days : ‘It’s a lot of pressure. And it doesn’t feel like Rosh Hashanah when it’s 95 degrees outside. . . . It feels strange.’

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, comes early this year. Very early. Earlier than it has for 18 years. So early, in fact, that it catches congregants winding up their summer vacations.

And now the rush is on.

The rush to shop for a nice new outfit. The rush to lay in a supply of gefilte fish, turkey, brisket and honey cake.

The rush to get tickets for the synagogue services that always bring in the biggest crowds of the year.

“Lots of people find themselves not having looked at the calendar, and suddenly wake up with shock, saying, ‘Oh my God, do I have my tickets? Do I have a place to go and where do I go if I don’t?’ ” said Rabbi Harvey J. Fields of Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

His temple’s office, like many others, will be staffed Sunday and Monday, despite the Labor Day holiday, to help those who were not quite paying attention and expected the High Holy Days to start sometime in mid-September or later.

*

The timing for Rosh Hashana is governed by the Jewish calendar, which follows the sun as well as the moon and stays on course with the injection of seven leap months over a 19-year cycle. Sometimes Rosh Hashanah comes as late as October.

But this year, the solemn, reflective period known as the Days of Awe opens on the eve of the New Year on Monday night, as the last barbecue fumes of Labor Day waft away with the evening breeze.

“There’s getting kids ready for school, buying clothes and books, and to have the holidays at the same time, it’s a lot of pressure,” said Shimon Kraft, who owns a book and Judaica shop in the Pico-Robertson district. “And also it doesn’t feel like Rosh Hashanah when it’s 95 degrees outside. . . . it feels strange.”

“If it gets any earlier, I don’t what I’m going to do,” said Elizabeth Kraft, his wife.

Not to worry. The holidays will not fall this early again until 2013.

But for now, the aisles of kosher emporiums such as Elat Market on Pico Boulevard were as jammed with shoppers Thursday and Friday as the display cases were piled high with carp, whitefish, chicken and beef cuts. Another mob scene was expected Sunday and Monday.

“It’s always like this before the Sabbath but with Rosh Hashanah it’s even worse,” Ingrid Paredes, a store employee, said as she looked down on the bedlam from an upstairs office.

“We ourselves would rather not walk downstairs because we’d get stuck,” she said.

A shopper, Rahamim Cohen, a retired oil industry executive from Iran, explained that in addition to main courses, tradition requires the blessing of 10 symbolic foods, especially honey and apples “so all the year should be sweet.”

“It takes days to get ready, but it’s fun,” said Anna Geller, a homemaker from the former Soviet Union. “I came to this country 20 years ago and I learned about the holidays and I love it.”

But with the early onset of the New Year, feelings are decidedly mixed in synagogue offices.

“It’s every rabbi’s and executive director’s nightmare,” said Sonia Silverblatt, executive director of Temple Beth Am near Beverly Hills.

With 2,500 people already signed up, she said, as many as 100 more will come out of the woodwork during the final days of the old year, which is said to be the 5,754th since Creation.

*

According to Jewish belief, Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of a 10-day period when the fate of every soul for the next year is decided. Repentance, prayer and charity are said to avert a harsh decree, so it should come as no surprise that the synagogues are full.

Latecomers for tickets include people who are only seen at services once a year, members behind on their dues, regular worshipers who decide it’s time to join the congregation, and families with last-minute guests from out of town.

Although High Holy Day tickets at Los Angeles synagogues can cost $100 to $200, with full membership going for up to $1,000, rabbis and administrators say that no one will be turned away for lack of money.

There is generally room for the latecomers because there are often members who do not get around to telling the office they would be out of town for the holidays.

But with a few exceptions, no one gets in without a ticket.

This might seem strange. After all, nobody would think of charging for attendance at regular weekly services. Indeed, the Christian way of passing the collection plate would be unthinkable on the Sabbath, when observant Jews will not even touch money.

A few smaller congregations announce an open-door policy, following up with fund-raising appeals once the holidays are over. But with no weekly collection, most synagogues have come to depend on the High Holy Days income as one of a number of fund-raising tools, along with dinner dances, benefit concerts and hard-sell solicitation of wealthy members.

They could not have picked a better time of the year to charge admission.

“These are very serious days, days when we’re being judged, when our fate is being sealed, and there is a religious euphoria or stirring,” said Rabbi Yisroel Kelemer of Congregation Mogen David near Cheviot Hills.

“Synagogues have used this opportunity as a form of sustenance,” Kelemer said. “Giving to the synagogue definitely is charity, and charity is one of the three elements that erases a stern decree from God.”

According to David Ellenson, a history professor at Hebrew Union College’s Los Angeles campus, tickets are a 20th-Century American phenomenon.

“It’s only in a country with a separation of church and state that this occurs,” he said.

In Eastern Europe, where the forebears of most American Jews came from, synagogues were supported by wealthy patrons or by the government, he noted, as is the case in Israel today.

Then there’s security. What with the recent attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets in England, Panama and Argentina, not to mention the low-level anxiety of everyday life in the big city, tickets help control who is walking through the door.

Dues and ticket sales also help support synagogue schools, said Rabbi Morton A. Wallack of Adat Shalom Synagogue in Palms.

“The Jewish community has an obligation to maintain Jewish education. No Jewish child is turned away from a Jewish education,” he said. “Well, somebody has to pay the bill.”

Then he told a joke. A man shows up at the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah without a ticket. He tells the usher that he belongs to the other congregation around the corner and he only wants to say hello to his grandfather.

“Well, OK,” comes the response. “But you better not let me catch you praying!”