Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, marks renewal and opens the Ten Days of Awe.

If you’re digging into Studies of Religion (SOR), you’ll notice a common thread: time itself is a teacher. Festivals mark moments when communities pause, tell their stories aloud, and imagine the year to come. To bring this to life, here’s a friendly look at one example item you might encounter in SOR discussions, focused on a well-known Jewish festival often called the New Year.

Rosh Hashanah: the Jewish New Year in a nutshell

Let’s start with the core idea. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish civil New Year. It doesn’t blast in with balloons or a calendar flip like January 1 in many places. Instead, it arrives on the first two days of Tishrei, the seventh month in the Jewish lunar calendar. You can expect family meals, special prayers, and a mood of careful reflection. This isn’t just “new year” in name; it’s a time for looking back on the year that has passed and looking forward to the year ahead.

A crucial aspect many students notice is the Ten Days of Awe, which begin with Rosh Hashanah and culminate in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This isn’t a sprint; it’s a period of intensified reflection, self-examination, and, for some, repentance and reconciliation with others. It’s a window into how ritual time can shape personal ethics.

What makes Rosh Hashanah feel distinctive

There are a few familiar and some rather specific rituals you’ll hear about.

• The shofar: a ram’s horn is blown to awaken the conscience and signal a call to attentiveness. The sound is both ancient and arresting, a sonic reminder to pause and listen to one’s actions.

• Prayers and liturgy: the services focus on memory, judgment, and the hope for renewal. The language tends to be solemn but hopeful, inviting people to consider how they’ve behaved and how they want to behave in the year ahead.

• Symbolic foods: apples dipped in honey are a classic. The sweetness stands in for a wish for a good, sweet year. Some families have other foods that carry personal or regional significance, but the apple-and-honey motif is a common touchstone that you’ll see mentioned in many sources.

• Festive meals: Rosh Hashanah isn’t a sad austerity spell. It’s a warm, family-centered time when stories are shared, memories are revisited, and meals become a feast of intention as much as taste.

Why this festival matters in the study of religion

Rosh Hashanah is a prime example of how a festival can weave together time, belief, ritual action, and community identity. In SOR, you’ll see questions about:

• How time is sacred or calendar-driven in a tradition

• The role of ritual acts (like shofar blasts) in shaping communal memory

• The symbolism of foods and meals as expressions of values

• The relationship between personal ethics and communal norms during a holy period

Think of Rosh Hashanah as a lens through which to view renewal, accountability, and hope within Judaism. That lens helps you compare with other traditions, too, which is a big chunk of what SOR invites us to do.

A quick context: other Jewish festivals (a gentle contrast)

To keep the big picture clear, here are a few neighboring Jewish observances you’ll come across in studies of religion discussions. Each marks time in a distinct way and each carries its own set of meanings.

• Passover (Pesach): The festival retells the liberation story of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. It’s about freedom, memory, and the passing of traditions from generation to generation, with symbolic foods like matzah and bitter herbs.

• Yom Kippur: The Day of Atonement, a solemn day of atonement, fasting, confession, and repentance. It’s tightly focused on judgment, forgiveness, and personal renewal.

• Sukkot: The Festival of Booths, a time when communities dwell in temporary structures (sukkahs) and celebrate gratitude for harvest and shelter. It’s about hospitality and dependence on God and community.

Each festival is a thread in Judaism’s broader tapestry, and SOR gives students tools to notice what is unique to one festival and what resonates across traditions.

A little cross-cultural detour (because curiosity loves company)

If you ever wonder how different traditions name and time their New Year, you’re in good company. Some traditions mark a New Year with a strict calendar reset, others with a seasonal shift, and a few blend both. In Islam, for instance, the new year is tied to the lunar calendar and the hijri year, while many Christian communities observe New Year’s Day on January 1, rooted in secular and liturgical calendars. The Jewish New Year, by contrast, binds the textual and liturgical heritage to a concrete time in the yearly cycle and then expands that moment into a period of introspection. The contrast is more than trivia; it reveals how communities imagine the relationship between time, virtue, and community life.

Reading the topic through SOR eyes

When you study these themes, a few practical ways to think about the material can help you stay grounded and curious:

• Look for the ritual acts and what they dramatize. The shofar isn’t just sound; it’s a signal that a sacred time has begun and a call to moral reflection.

• Note the symbolism behind foods and shared meals. Symbols are how traditions encode values in everyday life—hospitality, sweetness, renewal.

• Map the sequence of events. Rosh Hashanah starts a period of reflection that leads to a countdown to Yom Kippur. Time-bound rituals can show how communities structure moral work over a span of days.

• Consider the social dimension. Festivals aren’t only about individual piety; they’re communal occasions that can shape memory, identity, and social ethics.

A practical sample item to illustrate how these ideas show up

Here’s a straightforward example item you might encounter. It’s enough to demonstrate how questions can connect festival details to bigger themes.

Question: Which Jewish festival is known as the "New Year"?

• A. Passover

• B. Sukkot

• C. Yom Kippur

• D. Rosh Hashanah

Answer: D. Rosh Hashanah.

Why this is correct: Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the Jewish civil year. It occurs on the first two days of Tishrei and initiates the Ten Days of Awe, a period of self-examination that leads up to Yom Kippur. The shofar blast and the apples-and-honey ritual are emblematic practices that symbolize renewal and hope for a sweet year. Recognizing these elements helps you see how the festival ties time, ritual action, and ethical aim together.

The point isn’t just the correct choice; it’s the pattern. The question nudges you to connect a calendar label with its ritual and ethical significance, a core skill in Studies of Religion.

Keeping the thread alive: how to approach similar questions

• Read for core terms: “New Year,” “shofar,” “Ten Days of Awe,” and “Yom Kippur” point you to the central ideas.

• Connect ritual to meaning: ask what the sound, ritual food, or prayer communicates about values like renewal, judgment, or mercy.

• Situate it in a sequence: recognize how Rosh Hashanah leads into Yom Kippur and why that sequence matters for understanding the community’s year.

• Compare, don’t just memorize: see how similar patterns appear in other traditions. This is where critical thinking shines.

Let’s bring the curiosity home

Festivals like Rosh Hashanah aren’t just dates on a wall calendar. They are moments when a community pauses, remembers who they are, and makes room for who they want to become. That blend of memory, intention, and shared practice is exactly the kind of material that makes Studies of Religion feel alive—because it connects to real people, real traditions, and real questions about how we live together.

If you keep that perspective in mind, you’ll start to notice how other traditions arrange their own “New Years” or renewal moments. You’ll also pick up a toolkit for reading religious life: observe what’s celebrated, what’s mourned, and what’s hoped for in the future. These are the threads that weave together a living tapestry of belief, ritual, and community.

A final nudge for your broad reading

As you explore more festivals and beliefs, ask yourself: what makes a cycle feel sacred to a community? Is it a particular ritual act, the symbolism attached to food or time, or the way people come together to reflect and renew? The answers will vary, but the conversation—about time, memory, and meaning—will feel wonderfully familiar in the study of religion.

So next time you encounter Rosh Hashanah, see it as more than a calendar label. See it as a doorway into a larger conversation about renewal, ethics, and the shared human longing for a good year ahead. And if you come across another festival with a unique name or a striking ritual, pause for a moment. Ask what it reveals about the people who observe it, and you’ll find a richer, more connected understanding of religion as a living part of everyday life.