Challah journal---continuing in the new year, echoing Creation

A round challah, pomegranate seeds, apples, honey, and even yogurt--milk and honey!  are all symbolic of the Biblical New Year!! Happy and Sweet 5780 to you!  May we honor our Creator all the days through! 

Let heaven and earth praise Him, the seas and everything moving in them.

Psalm 69:35

A sweet and exquisite first day of the Year 5780 to all!

Rosh Hashanah morning. Before going to synagogue with my Dad, I took a bicycle ride down to the beach with a New Year's round challah (*note, it is a challah from the bakery)  in my back pack!  A challah adventure of the New Years kind.  When I was growing up on Long Island, my family always walked to the synagogue.  My Dad always said that it never rains on the Jewish Holidays!! So there is a kind of weather I associate with the High Holidays, and it was just that weather this New Year.

There would be feasting with the congregation later, but in the morning, a quiet time.  The ocean was High tide, and the sky was like it might have looked on the first day of Creation!!  Today the day, yes, the day the Big Shofar is blown.   When I set the round challah down on the beach blanket, immediately its shape echoed the sky and the sun rising already up above the horizon.  It is also an echo of "Return".  The High Holidays are about "Teshuvah", which means to return, as in to return to God our Father.  Not only personally, but nationally as a people as well.   The  circular shape,  it goes around and around, a reminder of the shape of His days, always bringing us closer and closer to Him,  the Creator of all things, welcome O welcome to the King of all Kings.

Wind

 

He rode upon a cheruv and flew.

He was seen on the wings of the wind.

--2 Samuel 22:11

  Flying a kite is one of the traditions of games and things children do at the New Year in Japan.  Though some of those traditions are fading as more and more kids just turn to their electronic devices, sadly not even noticing the wind of God`s touch on their cheeks.  

So it made me so happy to see one child flying a kite on New Years day.  

I watched this little girl flying her kite, and when it came down I asked if I could try it.  

It was so fun to hold the string and feel God`s wind blowing the kite, and moving into the wind and with the wind as the kite surged up and danced with the wind, changing directions and flying higher.   I wanted to fly up with it to His heavens!!!

I will share a few scriptures about the Wind to praise God for His Wind, for being the One who directs us and points us in the directions He wills for us to go.

He loosed the east wind in the skies,

and by His power He drove the south wind.  --Psalm 78:26 

Here are a few! Any more? Please add some in Praise of ADONAI!! 

And if you haven`t flown a kite in the New Year, do try it!! 

It`s really fun and returns us to a childlike heart!!

God Bless you! Have a great day!!

For behold!

He who forms mountains

who creates the wind,

who declares His thoughts to man,

who makes dawn out of darkness,

who walks above the heights

of the earth---His Name is

ADONAI Elohei-Tzva`ot! 

---Amos 4:13

L'Shana Tovah! Happy New Year 5777!

L`Shona Tovah!  Happy Sweet New Year! 5777

First steps to braiding a round Challah!

Round Challah is said to represent circle of life, circle of sweetness, the Crown for the King! Dip the apples and the challah into honey!

Happy Sweet New Year!!
It's been such a wonderful 'homecoming' to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, for the first time in seventeen years in Japan!

Rosh Hashanah is known as the Jewish New Year although it's actually the seventh month on the Hebrew calendar.  It comes from Yom Teruah, the feast of blowing shofarot (the plural of shofar)  in Leviticus 23:23-25, and has also come to be referred to as The Feast of Trumpets.

"In the seventh month on the first of the month you shall have a Shabbat rest, a memorial of blowing  (shofarot), a holy convocation. You are to do no regular work, and you are to present an offering made by fire to ADONAI."
  ADONAI's instructions to Moses for the people of Israel, from Leviticus 23:23-25, TLV

Every thing about the holiday from the blowing of the shofar, to the sweetness of the food, to the special customs like going to the river (I went to the moat of the castle, our nearest body of water) to cast out our sins, to the special week which it begins of taking time of prayer and repentance, has indeed been filled with AWE! Actually another name for these Holy Days which lead up to Yom Kippur on the Kingdom Calendar are the Days of Awe.

I gave New Year Postcards to some friends here where I live in my community in Japan.   When I gave a card to my friend Etsuko, she exclaimed, 5777?!  I told her that is the year we are in on the Hebrew Calendar.  Then she also took interest in the words, L'Shana Tovah, and I told her they were Hebrew for Have a Good Year.  She looked at the picture of a shofar and had absolutely no idea that it was an instrument or anything about it at all.  It was exciting to be able to share the culture that I am from and that she knew nothing about, like a whole new world opened just from the postcard!!  After so many years in Japan where people so generously share things with me about their country, I am excited to start to share about where I am really 'from'.

In all the years we celebrated Rosh Hashanah growing up, I  never knew that this is also a feast to celebrate the creation of the world!  And of course most of all the Creator of the Universe.  Another thing I learned about the Fall Feasts, High Holy Days, is the concept of Teshuvah, which means "return".  When we repent and return to our Creator, our King it can also be a special time of rejoicing.  Even as we are approaching and preparing for a more solemn time of repentance at Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, there is so much joy in the return.  Some people say once we are saved, why celebrate all the holidays as we are forgiven of our sins in Yeshua.  Its true He is our Salvation, yet because of that it makes us see even more the beauty of these days and what that Salvation means.  I feel like a child in this season, looking through new eyes to obey, honor and delight in God's commandments from returning to Him through Yeshua.

Making the round first round challah.  Redemption. Forgiveness and the anticipation of His return.  Casting our sins in the depth of the sea and opening our hearts and eyes to the wonders of creation.  Those are some of the things to celebrate as we feast and fast in this season of awe.

Who is a God like You
pardoning iniquity,
overlooking transgression,
for the remnant of His heritage?  He will not retain His anger forever, 
because He delights in mercy.                  --Micah 7:18

He will again have compassion on us.  
He will subdue our iniquities,
and You will cast all our sins
                          into the depths of the sea.           --Micah 7:19

when doing my first `Tashlich` of casting our sins into the depth of the sea,

 I looked into the sea and saw the wonders of God`s creation...

Shabbat Shalom!

The earth is full of the love of ADONAI.

    ---Psalm 33:5 TLV

credit note & thanks: I made the Challah in this post and the challah in the post above from this recipe for Honey Apple Challah on Tory Avey.com.  The blog author there makes it so beautiful.  Mine still needs practice, but it was delicious and very fun to try the braiding,  the recipe is great and easy to follow!