"May old acquaintance be forgot..."

Well, my first high holy day in Israel is here: Rosh HaShana (literally "the head of the year"). Rosh HaShana, aside from beginning the new year in the Judaic calendar, is also the beginning of the days of atonement. From Rosh HaShana until Yom Kippur, ten days later, Jews look back on the year that has passed to reflect and also look forward to the coming year. According to Jewish tradition, this is the time when God is writing the Book of Life and deciding who lives and who dies in the upcoming year. So, during the next ten days, Jews atone for their past sins by asking forgiveness of the people in their lives. Once they have atoned with the people on Earth, then can they make amends with God.

Rosh HaShana covers a 48-hour period (unless you're Reform or Reconstructionist and even then it still might), this year from sundown on the 12th until sundown on the 14th. For those of you playing along at home, Rosh HaShana seems extra long this year as sundown on Friday the 14th begins Shabbat. That means all the buses are stopped and all the stores are closed from sundown Wednesday until sundown Saturday. Much grocery shopping was done Wednesday afternoon.

Rosh HaShana, like many Jewish holidays, is also a time of worship and community. Many people travel to spend the holiday with their family or their friends. As Paul and I are ex-pats of a sort (and I'm not even Jewish), we had no place to go. After some e-mailing, though, we ended up at the house of a rabbi with his family and some other congregants.

The synagogue Paul and I have been attending on-and-off the past month is on the liberal side of Conservative. Consisting mainly of retired American Jews who have moved to Israel, it's a far cry from the very conservative synagogues here in Israel and in most of the rest of the world. While most temples separate men and women during the service, this shule not only allows them to sit together but also allows women to participate in the service. They also follow a three-year cycle for reading the Torah, which allows for discussion amongst the congregation after each aliyah, instead of the traditional one-year cycle. Conservative shules aren't common in Israel; there are only 40 in the county and three in Tel Aviv.

The group was comprised as such: the rabbi, his wife, his three daughters, an older woman from the congregation, a Master's student from Montreal who's currently living in Spain and doing research in Israel, Paul, and myself. Of course, this means that introductions must be made all around as most of us don't know each other. Eventually it got around to me, and I said I was here working with the Deaf community and researching for my PhD.

Dvora, the older woman with us, suddenly set her things down, leaned against the table, and stared at me. After a few moments, she signed thank you in Israeli Sign Language followed by, "Sit down; we need to talk". As it turns out, she grew up in Manhattan in the 1940s with two Deaf parents, has written multiple articles about Deaf education both in Israel and America, knows the woman running the Machon where I'm working, and is very much in touch with the Deaf community here in Israel. She also has a book coming out from Gallaudet Press about her experiences growing up with her parents. The Deaf world: it's so ridiculously small.

The evening continued with the kiddush over the wine, and eating the traditional Rosh HaShana foods: round Challah, pomegranate seeds, apples and honey, leeks, carrots, scallions, dates, and beets. In Hebrew, words are formed from a shoresh, or root of three Hebrew letters. The root of the traditional Rosh HaShana foods coincide with the root of other Hebrew words; for example, the Hebrew word for eggplant, chatseel (חציל), is from the same root as "strength/success" (חיל), so eggplants are eaten to be successful and strong in the coming year. Others are more symbolic: pomegranates are said to contain 613 seeds which correlates to the 613 Jewish mitzvot and are eaten to symbolize your remembrance of them.

Through out the meal, different food has different blessings and different meanings. Once the ceremonial food and prayer was out of the way, though, the actual meal began. It was an amazing amount of food but so very, very good. One of the fantastic things about Israel is that all the food here is fresh; the country is slightly smaller than New Jersey, so everything you buy was probably picked the day before, making the food amazingly tasty. We had stuffed cucumbers, a pumpkin/sweet potato soup, salad and wine with pecan pie and oogiote at the end.

The meal ended with grappa, and the singing of the closing prayers. As the daughters of a rabbi, I can only assume that the three of them have heard these prayers sung time and time again. The result, though, was harmonization that would give Nickelcreek, The Indigo Girls, and Simon & Garfunkle a run for their money. Even though I couldn't understand the text, the music and passion being put into the prayers more than made up for it.

The evening ended and we all headed home, only to come back to shule the next morning for services again and the blowing of the shofar. As Rosh HaShana spans two days, this means that the same must happen again the next night. This time, though, we had the meal in the dorms with Paul, Paul's friend David, Posh Dan, and myself. Though not quite as religiously-oriented as the meal the previous night, we managed to whip up some of the traditional foods along with a simple dinner of chicken and couscous. After some lively discussion of the state of Israel and the global community, a few episodes of "Ab Fab", and Paul's brief transformation into a zombie, we called it a night.

And now, Friday afternoon, with a few hours left of the holiday before Shabbat, the new Jewish/academic/Fulbright year has begun. It's time to look back and forward, figure out what we've learned and where we're going, and start the journey into the year ahead. We'll see what it has in store.