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Jewish Life & Celebrations

Rosh Hashanah

A Secular Program for Rosheshone

The Sholem Community of Los Angeles celebrates Rosheshone this year with a service written by Jeffrey Kaye. The following is excerpted from the original service from 2003-2004.

• Probably around the time of the destruction of the second temple in 70 AD, rosheshone took on characteristics familiar to modern Jews. The belief grew that the period of the New Year was a time in which humankind was judged and our fate sealed. This idea was borrowed from a Babylonian belief that Nabu, the god of wisdom, recorded judgment on the tablets of fate each year.

• To this day, many Jews greet each other with a customary greeting: “May you be inscribed for a good year.” In Hebrew – l’shana tova tikatayvvu in Yiddish: l’shonetoyve tikoseyvu.

A poem by I. L. Perets. Translated from the Yiddish by Max Rosenfeld

L'shonetoyve tikoseyvu -
Everyone, wherever you are!
Whether fate has played you ill
And sent you to the steppes afar,
Or whether, cooling fevered brow,
Before the Western Wall you stand.
Whether on the distant seas.
You're sailing to a promised land.
Or whether, with a patient smile,
You bear the heavy yoke with ease
And buy the very air to live
And pay for every breath you breathe
To everyone, at this new year,
In every tongue in every garb,
L'shonetoyve tikoseyvu -
Everyone, wherever you are!

• To be inscribed for a good year in the Book of Life -- a book that prescribes, in the words of a rosheshone prayer, – “who will live and who will die; who will rest and who will wander, who will live in harmony and who will be harried, who will enjoy tranquility and who will suffer, who will be impoverished and who will be enriched…”

• In Jewish tradition, certainly in secular Jewish tradition, we are more than powerless subjects of fate written into a mythical book of life. We wield the pen (or computer keyboard), write the text, and set the type. To the best of our abilities, we are the authors and the publishers of our Book of Life.

• So how shall we be listed in the Book? This is a time for taking stock, a time to reflect on our own actions -- as individuals and as relatives in the human family, both distant and near.


A poem by Reyzl Zychlinsky. Translated from the Yiddish by Aaron Kramer

Three meters wide
six meters deep
and fifteen meters long -
these are the measurements of one of the pits
in Poland
to which the Germans drove Jews
shot them there
and buried them.
Three meters wide
six meters deep
and fifteen meters long -
the three dimensions.
And the fourth dimension,
the one in which all the slaughtered Jews
cannot die
and cannot live -
is now the silent partner
through all the days of my life.

• By Jewish tradition, rosheshone is also a Day of Remembrance. Our weeping calendar offers far too many opportunities to light the yortsayt candles.

By Yehuda Amichai:

Even the remembering generation dwindles and dies,
half in ripe old age and half in unripe old age,
and who will remember those who remember?

• “Remembrance is not merely an excursion into the past,” says historian Theodor Gaster, "The central theme of the New Year’s Day is the power of Memory itself. Memory defies oblivion, breaks the coils of the present, establishes the continuity of the generations, and rescues human life and effort from futility… If New Year’s Day looks backward, it does so only on the way forward.”


A poem by Yehuda Amichai. Translated from the Hebrew by Karen Alkalay-Gut

A stone rests on my desk with the word "Amen" written on it. It is a piece of a tomb, a vestige from a Jewish cemetery
destroyed a thousand years ago, in the city where I was born.
One word, "Amen," is cut deep into the stone-
A hard and final Amen for all that is past and will not return,
a soft and melodious amen like a prayer.
Amen and amen, and may it be His will.
Tombstones break, words pass, words are forgotten,
lips that uttered them turn to dust,
languages die like people,
and other languages are resurrected,
gods in the heavens change, gods come and go.
Prayers remain forever.


• By James Baldwin:

• I know that sometimes we fail, and that one often feels that one cannot start over again. And yet we must. The light, the light...one will perish without the light. For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light falls, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.


A poem by Hannah Senesh

My life abounds with wonders I hope never end,
The sand and the sea, the rush of the waters.
The crash of the heavens,
The song of the heart.
The strength of my dreams,
The dreams of a people.
The promise of freedom,
The hope of my heart.


A poem by Tali Sorek, written at age 11, Beersheba, Israel

I had a box of colors.
Shining, bright and bold.
I had a box of colors,
Some warm, some very cold.
I had no red for the blood of wounds.
I had no black for the orphans' grief.
I had no white for dead faces and hands.
I had no yellow for burning sands.
But I had orange for the joy of life,
And I had green for buds and nests.
I had blue for bright, clear skies.
I had pink for dreams and rest.
I sat down and painted peace.

• There’s a very old custom associated with rosheshone. It’s called tashlikh, a practice in which Jews shake crumbs into streams and rivers. It’s a way of symbolically casting off sins.

• But traditions change, and we choose to alter the tashlikh practice. Instead of casting our individual sins into waters, we cast away indifference to injustice, and pledge to take on a commitment to change.

Adapted from “Tashlich for a Just City”
Written by Emily Bass

• It is our city, built of our silences and strengths, that is in the balance, here today.
• In the shadows of shortening days, on the bright edge of the New Year,
We come bearing the heft, the inevitable weight of a full year’s
Decisions and inactions, movements and hesitations.
We come to free our hands for work.
With a New Year’s commitment to the balance of our city.

• We cast away the principle that security should be left only to those who carry badges and weapons.

• TOGETHER: We take on a commitment to social and environmental justice.

• We cast away attempts to hijack our democracy and to turn political discourse and public debate into theater of the absurd.

• TOGETHER: We take on a commitment to sincere political action.

• We cast away a system of education where what you learn is based on what your parents earn.

• TOGETHER: We take on the right to a decent education regardless of income.

• We cast away:--
Acceptance of classrooms where hatred grows;
tolerance of crowded spaces;
silence over inadequate resources

TOGETHER: Together we will right the balance of our city.

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