A New Year

I've been meaning to share this one with you for awhile but my camera and Shofar were never in the same place at the same time.

This is one of my favorite times of the year. The weather is finally starting to cool down, (in the evenings, anyway)! School is in full swing and the Jewish New Year begins and it's time for a fresh start.

Rosh Hashana, the new year began last Monday evening. A Shofar making workshop was held a few weeks ago and even though the Chicklet couldn't attend, I was there with lots of other children and their parents and made one for our family. It's a tad rustic but it was fun sharing the experience with everyone.

I stopped by Sunday school before Rosh Hashana and the students were practicing blowing their shofars. It was a bit of a racket but a happy, familiar sound. Our new congregation is renting space from a local church. A class was going on and the teacher stuck his head out and was very perturbed, asking what the racket was. We tried to explain that the students were learnign to blow shofar for the new year but he still didn't get it. We did close the door to muffle the racket.

It was a bit of a clash of cultures. Something that sounded so familiar to me was noise pollution to someone else. The rabbi did go and explain later and all was well shortly afterwards.

Services for Rosh Hashana were held in the churches' main sanctuary. Since we are a completely new congregation, maybe a month and a half old, a torah was borrowed, a cabinet was painted to house the torah, services were new..... new traditions, some new faces, a smaller congregation but a lot of old friends and much enthusiasm.