Shana Tova - Happy New Year!!!

[lisalisa]

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[lisalisa]

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[Molesworth]

Shana tova to you too lisa!

[harrisey]

Shana tova Lisalisa. What do you do special to celebrate New Year? I'm a Christian rather than Jewish but would love to hear anything special you get up to!

[Nome]

Shana tova lisalisa - I hope this year is a happy one for you!

[foxinsocks]

Shana Tova!

one of the little girls in dd's class is Jewish so they all had little honey cakes

[PrettyCandles]

Shana Tova LL, and everyone.

I'm borrowing a shofar from my synagogue and taking lots of food and honey cake in to ds's school this week, to do a little class on Rosh Hashanna.

[nearlythree]

Shana tova!

I'm a Christian too but would love to know how you mark New Year so I can share it with our dds.

[lisalisa]

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[nearlythree]

I think that's lovely, the 'Christian' New Year is totally secular as far as I'm concerned and we don't really make a big thing of it in our family. The idea of trying to make things better for the coming year is a great one, much better than our New Year's resolutions which always seem to be self-centred.

So what is the symbolism of the apples and honey?

[PrettyCandles]

The apples dipped in honey symbolise the wish that you may have 'a fruitful and sweet year'.

[nearlythree]

That's nice!

[Wintersun]

Shana tova to all.
I am Muslim and believe we should respect all faiths.

[Mercy]

Shana Tova!

(have not previously heard this term, have had a quick look on google)


Wintersun, is it not Ramadan too? Would you like to start a separate thread?

[sunchowder]

Shana Tova!

[Wintersun]

Thanks Mercy - I've started one.
Californifamousfanjo - Its going quite well, thanks. I really enjoy the communal aspect of it.

It always makes me happy when non-Muslims wish me Eid Mubarak etc so, because I appreciate it, I always like to wish others Happy faith celebration days'!

[bambi06]

my kids took in pomegranates in to share plus apples and honey and last year i made honey cakes as well , everyon enjoyed it and especially so as it was the first time a lot of kids had even seen a pomegranate before let alone taste one..and one little boy said he was going to ask his mummy to buy honey from now one! ah sweet![no pun intended] they are also celebrating sukkot next week so lots of building sukkas with fruit hanging.. and my son has already written up his rules for the next new year..no shouting/no argueing/no spitting!? dont know how long he will last out with the first two but ill remind him of his list that he`s produced and see what hapens .tee hee

[SSSandy]

Does shana tova just mean happy new year? Never heard that before.

How come it's celebrated over 2 days?

Actually when I was in Israel many years ago it was Sukkot so must have been this time of the year. I remember we were invited to a (very orthodox) synagogue in Jerusalem where men were dancing with the Torah Rolls. The women were in a room at the top, kneeling on benches to look down at the menfolk. The men seemed to be having a WILD time. So I thought it was more of a joyful occasion but I couldn't actually communicate with the women there so I may have got the wrong end of the stick.

[PrettyCandles]

Shana Tova means, literally, A Good Year.

Many Jewish festivals are celebrated over two days because, originally, before the days when the calendar was fixed and everyone had access to a calendar, the priests in Jerusalem would light a beacon to indicate the begining of the festival, and watchers on hills around would see the beacon and light their beacon and so on. So the message would be transmitted that the festival had begun. But once Jews began living outside Israel there was concern that the might get the message too late, so many of the holy days were celebrated over two days instead of one, just to be certain. Nowadays a lot of festivals which are two days long outside Israel are only celebrated on one day in Israel.

Sssandy, after Rosh Hashannah come ten days of repentance and prayer (called, in English, the Days of Awe), followed by Yom Kippur, whcih is our Day of Atonement. After that the joy and celebration begin, and Succot is indeed joyful festival.

Wintersun, when should we wish Eid Mubarak, and what does it mean?

I love all these differences between us, and wish that more parents would come to the schools to tell the children about the different ways of life, and to let the children taste (literally!) the variety. I'm sure that if other religions and ways of life were more familiar to us, there would be less hostility.

[lisalisa]

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[nearlythree]

Absolutely, prettycandles. The eradication of religion from our childrens' schools and culture (like on CBeebies when they tell the story of Noah and the Flood without mentioning God) drives faiths apart, not brings them together.

I worry because we live in the countryside where other faiths aren't very well represented. I'd love it if dd1's school did what you suggested.

[fransmom]

shana tova x

happy eid mubarak (sp? correct meaning?)

i'm not a churchgoer but i would like to wish those of you who are celebrating in one way or another happy times for the year ahead from fransmom x

[bobsmum]

Happy New Year! Spotted this on my calendar the other day but didn't see anything else about it anywhere.

Just to say, in Scotland, Christmas day wasn't a public holiday until the 1950s or 60s (I think) becsause the Protestant Scots saw it as too much of a Catholic festival. We've always made a big thing of Hogmanay and Ne'ers Day instead. It's changing now, but New Year still wins out in the partying stakes!

[bubble99]

Shana Tova!

We had latkes and honey cake at the nursery. We tried dipping apple slices in honey last year - but ended up in a lot of a mess.