Shanah Tovah! (Good Year!)

We don’t have many items in our collections that relate directly to the Jewish experience. Jewish people are a tiny minority in Scotland – barely 0.1% of the population identified as Jewish in the 2011 census. Despite these small numbers, Scottish Jews can count such notable Scots as Ivor Cutler, Mark Knopfler and Muriel Spark among their number, and there’s even an official Jewish tartan!

But we can still use our collections to tell the story of one of the most important holidays in the Jewish calendar – Rosh Hashanah. The most important element of Rosh Hashanah is listening to the blowing of the shofar – a musical instrument similar to a bugle and made out of a ram’s horn. While we don’t have any shofars in our collections, at Leith Hall there’s a bugle made from a cow’s horn, which gives an idea of what a shofar is like.

One of the reasons the shofar is blown is as a reminder of the biblical story of the Binding of Isaac. This is read from the Torah on the second morning of Rosh Hashanah, and tells how God instructed Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. Abraham did as instructed, but God stayed his hand at the last moment and supplied a ram to sacrifice instead. Whether God actually expected Abraham to go through with the sacrifice is a matter of some debate among biblical scholars.

On the first day of the festival, the story read from the Torah is that of Isaac’s birth to Abraham and his wife Sarah, which took place on Rosh Hashanah. Sarah, who had been unable to have children, had previously encouraged Abraham to take his slave Hagar as a second wife. Hagar had subsequently given birth to Abraham’s first son, Ishmael. However, after the birth of Isaac, Sarah and Abraham banished Hagar and Ishmael to the desert, where an angel sent by God brought them relief.

As is common with many Jewish festivals and holidays, there are several foods associated with Rosh Hashanah that have a special significance. Apples dipped in honey are eaten to express the wish for a sweet year ahead, while pomegranates are eaten to wish for a year filled with as many merits as a pomegranate has seeds. These foods also have deeper biblical meanings as well.