For Bob Mendelssohn of Jews for Jesus, the next few days represent the prime season for reaching Jewish people with the hope of salvation through Christ.
What’s known as the Jewish High Holidays (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) are taking place on Monday and Tuesday, 26 and 27 September and then Wednesday 5 October. This is the season when Jewish people become aware of their sins and their need to make themselves right before God and with each other.
“Of course, Jewish holidays always start the evening before (Remember Genesis 1, ‘evening and morning.’) As a result of that, we will be conducting evening services on Sunday night the 25th of September in Bondi Junction in cooperation with the Church in the Marketplace,” says Mendelssohn.
“They extend to us their facility and many of their own people attend our events. It’s a great opportunity for some of you who live nearby to bring your Jewish colleagues, neighbours, family and co-workers, too.”
Rosh Hashanah translates to the idiom “New Year” or literally “Head of the Year,” which celebrates the anniversary of the Creation of the world as recounted in the book of Genesis.
“As a result of that awareness, we represent much of this in our prayers and in our dress and in our activities. We wear new clothes and put food on new tablecloths. The calendar is cyclical, and thus we eat foods that are circular, like apples and like round challahs – the usual braided Sabbath bread,” says Mendelssohn, adding that people usually dip the apple slices in honey as a request for a sweet new year.
Read the article by Anne Lim in Eternity News.