Sweet New Year Greetings 

Gazeta Wyborcza , 16 September 2004

Anna Drygalska

Shana Tova – that is, good, sweet New Year – wished the guests at the Galicia Jewish Museum on the occasion of the Jewish New Year. Yesterday evening began the first day of the month of Tishri 5765. They saw in the New Year with traditional chopped apples and challa in honey.

Jews celebrate the New Year four times in the course of one of our calendar years, but only now do they change the number of the year. Rosh Hashanah is connected with the harvest, but the most important New Year was at the beginning of the month of Nisan – at the turn of March and April. The Jewish calendar is lunar-solar. If it wasn’t for the drab weather, we could see the new moon – explains Dr Przemyslaw Piekarski, an UJ Orientalist. In the Galicia museum there was no shofar – the traditional ram’s horn – to be heard. It was sounded only in the synagogue. It was possible to listen to Jewish tunes, watch Jewish dances with constant foot- tapping, try the famous slivovitz and – at the end – accept a blessing. As Dr Piekarski explains, in Yiddish not only the right is right to left, but many things are the other way round. After two feast days comes the time for contemplation, for the weighing of conscience. After the so-called Days of Awe end, next Friday is the day of unity, when one must stand in the synagogue next to the Ark of the Torah.

- In the course of the census only a thousand people gave their nationality as Jewish. The majority of these are elderly. Krakow is not the largest Jewish centre in Poland, before Krakow come Warsaw and Lodz, adds Dr Piekarski.