Mysteries of Rosh Hashanah
It’s a day of shofar blowing, but the Bible never mentions a shofar. Strictly speaking, the whole association with shofars may be completely post-biblical. It’s a day of remembrance, but we don’t know of what. It’s a day of a…
High Holidays 101: Elul and Its Meaning
Throughout Elul and into the Days of Awe (Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur) and Sukkot (Tabernacles), I will be posting information and inspiration for a wide audience. Because there are so many Bible readers and fans in this great big…
Elul: The Month of Teshuvah
Elul, the month on the Jewish calendar that precedes Rosh HaShanah, begins tonight at sundown. Rosh Chodesh Elul (the new moon of Elul) is a spiritually significant time. It is the beginning of a long period of introspection, increased fervor,…
The Tashlikh We'll Never Forget
It was a dark and stormy Rosh HaShanah. On the second day, we tried to get a few families together for tashlikh, the ceremony of casting bread crumbs representing sins into a river or similar body of water accompanied by…
Rosh HaShanah: Spiritual Empowerment
When I was a new student of the Hebrew Bible, I marveled time after time when I would find what I considered to be a New Testament concept in the Hebrew Bible. I concluded that there is little new in…
Rosh HaShanah: Yeshua & the Apostles on Repentance
This High Holiday season, Messianic Jews should not be surprised to find that the theology of repentance in the Siddur and in rabbinic literature follows similar lines to what Yeshua and the apostles had already said. The apostolic message flows…
Rosh HaShanah: Maimonides on Repentance
Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204) was a Spanish rabbi, physician, philosopher, and commentator on the Talmud. Better known as Maimonides or Rambam, he fled Spain when a Muslim conqueror offered the choice of conversion or death. He eventually became the physician…
High Holidays: Should we mourn and repent?
I hear the sentiment often, and from many points of view, that it is not fitting for Messianic Jews to mourn and repent in the High Holiday season. The argument goes something like this: Yeshua died to end the curse…
The Rabbi of Nemerov (A Rosh HaShanah Story)
This is my favorite Rosh HaShanah story. The author, Isaac Lieb Peretz (1852 – 1915), was a Yiddish playwright and author who is said to have prepared the way for Shalom Aleichem. It helps in understanding the story if you…
A Friend's Question About Rosh HaShanah
I have a friend who lives rather far from our congregation. I hope she doesn
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