Religion: Holy Jewish Days

TEKIAH SHEBARIM TERUAH TEKIAH

TEKIAH SHEBARIM TEKIAH TEKIAH TERUAH TEKIAH GEDOLAH

Happy is the people that knoweth the sound of the trumpet; in the light of thy countenance, O Lord, shall they walk.

In the synagogue the rabbi stands before his people like a Semitic tribal chief. Sunset falls. The rabbi picks up a yellowed ram’s horn and tongues it into the cadences of the TEKIAH. It is the call to Jews, their reminder that God created the world out of a void and howling darkness 5,689 years ago. Rosh Hashonah, the New Year, opens; the Book of Life is closed upon the passed year.

The Book closes on the year 5688 Anno Mundi Friday evening Sept. 14. This time its mystic writings contain happy records: anti-Jewish riots suppressed in Rumania, Hungary, Poland, Russia; Jewish students permitted education practically everywhere; farm colonization in Russia; the economic depression in Palestine overcome; Zionists at last agreeing; Jews and Christians holding love feasts in England and the U. S.; proselytizing of U. S. Jews discouraged; Jewish education aggressively pushed throughout the U. S.; a non-religious renaissance of Hebrew culture everywhere. Jews have become exuberant and expansive in the happy circumstance of tolerance. Their chief fear now is that a politico-economic condition might insidiously arise to throttle them again. An effort to prevent such a thing is the $1,000 prize award announced this week by the New York Jewish Tribune. Its judges will give the money to the U. S. Jew or non-Jew who will have contributed most to the interests of U. S. Jews during the year ending Dec. 1, 1928.

Although the year has been so good to Jews there are private sins and old religious woes to weep over. And this the communicants will do ten days after Rosh Hashonah —on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), which begins at sunset Sept. 23. It is a vigil of fasting and repentance, to be concluded with the cry: “May he who maketh peace in his high places, make peace for us and for all Israel; and say ye, Amen.”