The Jewish community on New Providence came together recently to celebrate Rosh Hashanah the Jewish New Year with a holiday service and dinner.
Over 60 people came together at a celebration at Melia Nassau Resort for the opportunity to be thankful for the past year past and hope and pray for a sweet and good new year.

"The period of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur [which was celebrated Tuesday evening through Wednesday evening] is a time when the Jewish people take on New Year's resolutions, work to improve their ways, and ask God's blessing for a happy, healthy, and sweet New Year," said Rabbi Sholom Bluming of Chabad of Bahamas.

"These actions are completed through prayer, blowing the shofar -- a ram's horn that reminds followers to repent and resolve -- and by eating sweet foods such as apple dipped in honey and honey cake, to symbolize a sweet new year."

"It's a time to gather as a community and be thankful for the blessings we have and pray for the all in the wider community for health, joy and prosperity," said Bluming.

The director of the Nassau Jewish community said there is no greater time on the Jewish calendar that beckons Jews to introspection than the two-day holiday of Rosh Hashanah.

"It is a universal message of a search that takes us into the depths of our very essence, uncovering our soul, and a search for the deeper dimension of life. Rosh Hashanah is also the birthday of Adam -- the first man created by God himself ... the progenitor of all generations to come.

According to the Rabbi, Rosh Hashanah also brought with it a call for Teshuvah, which in Hebrew means repentance, and more correctly, a "return" to the source. The word Teshuvah in Hebrew also means answer.

"Significantly, to find the proper road to return, we must know the answers to what makes life meaningful, we must reassess our values and sometimes recalculate our destination. To return we must be able to answer to a higher authority who, upon creation of a world, has given mankind the wisdom to discern between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong, between purpose and pettiness. Knowing the answers will reconnect us to the ideals that have kept us strong as a people in the past," said Bluming.

 

 

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