Sabbath Customs

In order to avoid work and to ensure that the Sabbath is special, all chores like shopping, cleaning, and cooking for the Sabbath must be finished before sunset on Friday.

People dress up for Shabbat and go to considerable trouble to ensure that everything is really nice to obey the commandment to make the Sabbath a delight.

Sabbath candles are lit and there are Sabbath blessings, prayers, songs and readings.

It's traditional for parents to bless their children on Shabbat.

The blessing for daughters asks that they become like the four matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, while sons are blessed to grow up like Ephraim and Menasheh, two brothers who lived in harmony.

Some of the family will have been to synagogue before the Sabbath meal, and it's likely that the whole family will go on Saturday.

Holy days

The Calendar

The Jewish calendar is a combined moon and sun calendar, unlike the conventional Western (or Gregorian) calendar.

The result is that Jewish festivals move about the Western calendar from year to year. The Jewish calendar also starts each day in the evening.

This is because when God was creating the world he started each day in the evening.

Sabbath -- the Holy Day

One day each week is set aside as the Sabbath, (in Jewish circles it's usually called Shabbat).

Once again this is something that God instructed the Jews to do.

The High Holy Days

The High Holy Days come in Autumn, at the start of the month of Tishri. This is the most spiritual period of the year for Jews, a time for looking back on the year just passed, and for taking action to get right with God and with other people. It runs from Rosh Hashanah for ten days until Yom Kippur.

Because Hebrew dates begin at sunset, the events begin on the evening before the festival day.
Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year festival and commemorates the creation of the world.

Days of Awe or Repentance are the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur during which everyone gets a chance to repent.

Yom Kippur is the most sacred and solemn day of the Jewish year and brings the Days of Repentance to a close.

The Pilgrimage Festivals

These commemorate the journey of the Jewish People from Egypt to the Holy Land.

Passover, or Pesach is a spring festival that marks the escape from captivity in Egypt.

Shavuot marks the time that the Jews received God's laws at Mount Sinai.

Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles, commemorates the years that the Jews spent in the desert on their way to the Promised Land, and celebrates the way in which God took special care of them under impossible conditions.

Other Festivals

Purim marks the defeat of an attempt to wipe out the Jews by Haman.

Yom Hashoah or Holocaust Memorial Day is a day that has been established to commemorate the lives of millions of Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

Hanukkah is the Festival of Lights and marks the restoration of the temple by the Maccabees in 164 BCE. Hanukkah is celebrated at roughly the same time as Christmas, but there is no connection at all between the festivals.

Tish B'av is the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av which usually falls in July or August in the western calendar. It is a solemn occasion because it commemorates a series of tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people over the years, many of which have coincidentally happened on this day.

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