Rosh HaShanah is the beginning of the new year according to the Jewish calendar. Like any other nation celebrating the new year, we hope that it will bring us a good renewal.

The Rosh HaShanah holiday is preceded by a period called Selichot (Repentance), when we make a critical analysis of everything we have done over the past year, checking how well or how badly we treated people.

Judaism is built on the principle of loving one’s neighbor as oneself, so a person is obliged to calculate whether he really behaved kindly toward all people in the world. And then he sees that he did not always comply with this principle, and therefore repents and asks for forgiveness for offending people, committing a crime, or an unintentional oversight. After such repentance, we come to a special day from which the new year begins: Rosh HaShanah. After all, according to the Torah, the world was created five days before Rosh HaShanah. And on the sixth day, a man was created, Adam, who, as is known, sinned and was banished from paradise. Therefore, we are obliged to correct Adam’s transgressions because we are all parts of his soul.

In fact, there are four beginnings of the year. The year really begins with the exit from Egypt, about which it is said: “Now you have become My people.” Therefore, the new year, the new period should be counted from the moment of leaving Egypt, that is, in Pesach.

The second beginning of the year is Rosh HaShanah, which we are celebrating now. And then there will be a celebration of the beginning of the year for trees, Tu BiShvat. And there is another beginning of the year to commemorate the giving of the Torah.

It turns out that we celebrate all four beginnings of the year, but the most traditional holiday of the beginning of the Jewish year is Rosh HaShanah.

The traditional symbols of Rosh HaShanah celebrations are apples with honey and round challah. They express our hope for a good new year. It is also customary to eat pomegranate on the holiday, symbolizing with its seeds a large number of good deeds that we commit to doing in the new year.

It is customary to eat round challah on the holiday since the circle is a symbol of perfection. The apples and challah are dipped in honey to commemorate a good, sweet year.

It is also customary to eat the head of a fish and wish each other to be the head and not to stay in the tail. Fish represent a creature living in water, and water symbolizes mercy, Hesed. The child at birth comes out of the maternal waters in which he grew.

All these symbols indicate that we are entering a new period, a new life.
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From KabTV’s “The World” 9/5/21

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