IT'S THE JEWISH NEW YEAR.
Rosh Hashana Will Begin at 6
o'Clock This Evening.
Rosh Hashana, or the Jewish New Year, will begin at 6 o'clock this evening, and the day will be properly observed in all of the Kansas City Hebrew houses of worship. In the evening the usual hymns, prayers and sermon will make up the ceremony, and Saturday morning at 10 o'clock one of the most impressive features of the service will be the solemn blowing of the Ram's Horn, as prescribed in the Jewish ritual, taken from the book of Exodus. The blowing of the horn is a symbolical alarm to awaken the soul from the lethargy into which it may have lapsed during the year just past. In its ancient significance, the sounding of the Ram's Horn had a military as well as a religious meaning and was supposed to arouse the sons of Israel to the defense of their faith and land. Following Rosh Hashana comes a season of repentance, solemnly observed, and terminating in the Day of Atonement, which falls on the tenth day of the new year. The Day of Atonement is the most hallowed of all the days of the year, and it is then that the adherents of faith exhalt themselves to a universal forgiveness.
The Jewish religious year, which Rosh Hashana opens, is made up of twelve lunar months of twenty-nine or thirty days each, instead of twelve solar periods. As compared with the solar year, eleven days are lost annually, and to make up for this discrepancy, every third year is a leap year, when a whole month is added to the calendar.
