The World's January 1st Celebration of New Year's Day

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

A shofar, pomegranates, wine for kiddush, apple and honey – symbols of the Rosh Hashanah holiday, except the wine is not our traditional Manischewitz grape wine

A bulletin just came out about the history of New year's Day being January 1st being a new phenomenon.  It listed the earliest recording of a New Year celebration was believe to have been in Mesopotamia around 2,000 BCE and was celebrated around the time of the vernal equinox, in mid-March. They can't come out and say that this could have been the Jewish people on the Exodus following Moses' directions?  

 I guess they hadn't ever heard of the Jewish New Year High Holidays that are celebrated around the world wherever there are Jews in the autumn.  It's called Rosh Hashanah 'head of the year') which is the New Year in Judaism..   Leviticus 23:23–25, that occur in the late summer/early autumn of the Northern Hemisphere. Rosh Hashanah begins ten days of penitence culminating in Yom Kippur, as well as beginning the cycle of autumnal religious festivals running through Sukkot which end on Shemini Atzeret in Israel and Simchat Torah everywhere else.

Though it's a Jewish holiday, and the world only has 0.02% of its populations as Jews,  it is listed on many calendars in the USA where the population shows 2.4% of the population were Jewish.  

School Principals who have Jewish teachers in their school would be aware of this holiday, however, as they would need a substitute for 2 days.  It's a 2-day holiday.  

The article did go on to mention that a variety of other dates tied to the seasons were also used by various ancient cultures.  The Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians began their New Year with the fall equinox, and the Greeks celebrated it on the winter solistice.  Nary a word about the Jews, though.  All this information probably came from an encyclopedia. In those days our ancestors were called the Israelites, and that word isn't used, either.  

How could they not list Jews separately?  Phoenicians are an ancient people, without anyone living today as a country which Israel is the only Jewish country in the world.  Egyptians continue with a country and Persians have reclaimed their old name of Iran and continue on as a country. Greece continues as Greece.  

The reason I'm miffed is that the history of the Jews and their New Year celebration is found right in the Bible, the "Old Testament" of course, straight from Moses' directive to celebrate 3 special festivals.  Moses gave Jews their religion called Judaism from the name of their state of Judaea, the southern part of ancient Israel, a break from the polytheism going on in the world at the time from which Christianity and Israel became off-shoots of Judaism, certainly borrowing much to monotheism.  Leviticus is part of the 5 Books of Moses;  the first section of the bible. It's given the big snub;  not even mentioned.