Shalom, I am Rabi Jonathan Ginsburg of the Ezra-Habonim, Niles Township Jewish Congregation this video is about Jewish holidays, trying to help understand the development of Jewish holidays. So we start like we do always in Judaism with the Torah. What holidays are in the Torah, well there are six. First of all the Sabbath the torah begins with the combination of time of the week with the Sabbath that comes weekly every Saturday, Friday night and Saturday and then there is five other holidays.
It has that it calls the three pilgrimage festivals Shalosh Regalim. Passover, shover oath and Succoth. Passover occurs according to the Torah in the middle of the first month Nisan and then we count 7 weeks till the feast of weeks Shavuot which occurs in Sivan. Then the other half of the year in the middle of the seventh month of the year by the bible Tishray we have the holiday of Succoth. Those were the three times a year our ancestors were suppose to live there homes and journey to Jerusalem and offer sacrifices in the holy temple. That ended 2000 years ago and the temple was destroyed.
Then we have Rashashana and Yamkipur, truly it is not called Rashashana in fact the Talmud later tells us there are four Rashashanas, the Jewish people today call it the beginning of the year. It is one of the new years and it begins our ten days of repentance and it also celebrates the birth of the world by tradition then occurs in the first day of the 7th month. It is also called the day of the blowing of the ram’s horn. So we have in Jewish tradition Shofa Rams horn. That is one of the major symbols of that day.
Then ten days later we have the Alomkipur the Day of Atonement as the Torah describes. Now in the rest of the bible later we have in the book of Ester, the description of events that supposedly occurred and I have a you tube on Porum. Also at you tube a forum versus Hanukkah food items, which is I think very funny, I hope.
The events of the four century BCE on the Persian time of the Jewish experience and that gave rise to a holiday forum that we celebrate as a spring festival in the middle of Adar the month before Nisan the month before Passover. Latest book of the bible Daniel supposedly is about the Babylonian king Nebuchanezzar but actually it was written during the Greek period and it is about Hanukkah, about the Jews who wrote the book who are afraid to tell the truth. Because of the Greeks they were afraid that they would be accused of interactions so everybody knew but they wrote it about is that it was the Babylonians hundreds of years before. Now Hanukkah we really know actually form the book of Maccabees which are not in our bible, they are after our bible but they tell us Rubriks and the general things that happen to bring about Hanukkah which is a holiday celebrated from 165 BCE.
Now later in Jewish history, during the second temple period, that is before the second temple was destroyed in 70 by the Romans. We learned about the 9th of august being the date when the first temple was destroyed and then interestingly enough it was the same date of the year in the year 70 when the second temple was destroyed so we read the book of lamentations in the bible on that day, commemorate those tragic events as well as others. Finally, we have Tubishbah, the holiday of the new year for trees which Talmud tells us is the middle of the month of Shabbat in the winter.
Later on in Jewish History, this century we have added other days of great significant to us like a Jews and past time to that. We even consider the lighting of Hanukkah candles the Mitzvoth a commandment even though it does not come form the Torah. So we added other holidays in our century because of these enormous events and we do not know, time will tell whether Jews a thousand years and now we still consider these monumentally significant events as we do.
While the cruise at the end of Nisan it is Yalom Ashava Yagura the date which we commemorate the horrible events of the holocaust. The mass murder of over 6million Jews by the Natzi’s with the complicity of much of Europe, that a few days later on the fourth of Ira we commemorate the Israel memorial day. The tragedy that almost every Israeli family has been touched by death of one of their sons or husbands because of the relentless air of desire to wipe our Israel. The Iranian president pointedly says the want the life on Israel and the world does not condemn him, he is still a member of the United Nations. Unbelievable but we have that day to commemorate Israel were fallen and then the next day is Israel’s Independence Day.
There has been three times in Jewish history when Jews have soberly over the land that God promised us. Ones was a very low period between Joshua’s control of the land about 1200 BCE all the way to 586 BCE when the Iraqis the Babylonians at that time destroyed the second temple and took us to Babylonia and then the Jews got it back despite living there often and trying to leave a mat land. The holy land at the time of Hanukah at 165 and that last until the Romans ended that in about 63 BCE then for 2000 years we have wanted nothing but to go back at the end of our Passover say we say all the time next year in Jerusalem but we got it back in the 1948 thank God. And it is now the 59th year of Israel and that we celebrate the 5th of ER. Then we celebrate Yalmi Mushulain the Jews won the war 1948, obtained independence, they could not gain control form the Gorgonians of our ancient holiest places, the western wall, the old city of Jerusalem.
We won that back in 1967, so Jerusalem was unified, and we celebrate that. Those are the new days we have added to our Jewish calendar. And of course time for a Jew and for other religious people but Jews gave the world this idea is that time will get only better in the time of the messiah someday when God deems at the right time. The prophet Melaka tells us that a large of the prophet will come and announce the great and awesome day of the world and nation will not lift absorbed against nation neither shall they learn more anymore. Which are all set under own vine and fig tree and no one shall make us afraid. That is basically the Jewish time and the Jewish holidays.
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