Rosh Hashanah

Last evening, I was listening on short-wave to my favorite stock market forecaster, Peter Schiff, and was told he was taking the evening off for New Years. I have known Jewish people and their holy days for many years. Rosh Hashanah is ordained in the Torah, Leviticus 23:24, focusing on ten holy days of repentance. One of four “new year” observances in the Jewish calender.

I was flying back from Boston on one Jewish new year, and a Jewish woman sitting next to me on a place explained the entire celebration to me, the blowing of the shofar, a great meal, “my mother is up to her armpits in gefilte fish, honey and apples”.

One of my best army officer friends, a German dentist, he observed all the holy days. His entire family were victims of the Nazi holocaust, eleven brothers and sisters. He survived simply because he was a dentist, was able to remove the gold from the teeth of those who had died in the death chambers. At the end of the war, he was brought to America by the allied forces, renewed his dental license by studying at Howard University, and then like the rest of us, when into the armed services under the Drafted Doctors Act prevalent during the Korean conflict.

Abraham, the first Jew, the wealthiest man of his day, 4000 BC, was called by God from his home, in Ur of the Chaldees to travel 600 miles north to Canaan (Genesis 11). Abraham took with him is father Terah, his wife Sarah, and his nephew Lot. Terah, a worshiper of idols, died on the way, just outside the city of Damascus. God despises idol worship more than any other sin, and he wanted to eradicate idols from the life of Abraham. This began the study of the most fascinating history of the world, the history of the Jewish people. Just as important today as it was then. When anyone questions your belief in God, your belief in the Bible, tell that unbeliever that you can substantiate everything with just one word, the word “Jew”.

The entire Old Testament, the synoptic Gospels, all just a preliminary study to the study of the church. The only way the rest of the world's population, Gentiles, affects God's Holy Word is only through the effect on the Jewish nation. There is no ancestral study like the historical ancestral study of the Jews. You see this so clearly as you study the ancestry of Jesus Christ, the stalwarts of the faith in his lineage. King David, such recognizable names as Jacob, Joseph, Josiah, such recognizable women's name as Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba. You find those of greater and lesser importance, significant that all of King David's children went astray.

I find most young people care very little for, and have little interest in their ancestry. Names were so important in Judaism, Abraham's name means “father of a great multitude”. Always, every Jewish male's name was preceded by names of his ancestors. In this “me” generation, most young people, even those from prominent homes, care little about the history of anything.

In buying boxes of old books, prints, and papers, I was amazed to find family heirlooms, photographs, family records, military documents, which should have been kept and prized by family members. In the old homes of family members, since I was the only one interested in such things, I found family records, photographs, even historical information which someone should have kept. I listened to everything old people had said about ancestors, land titles, buildings, paperwork, an absolute miracle that someone had not burned them or thrown them away totally. I found ancient records of my father's family from the time of their landing in America...Morristown, New Jersey. In my mother's family home, I found family records, church records, minutes of meetings which should have been preserved for history.

One of my friends told me, that in speaking at very old churches, he would discover records long lost to everyone in the community. As a student at UNC-CH, I discovered historical records about my family and community, knowledge which no else had ever seen or shared. It seems that some Christian families, for some Biblical reason, think it is improper and probably sinful to spend time studying ancestors. I discovered records recently about my great grandfather, for whom, in whose honor, I give two large cash awards to pastors each year, which probably, no one in his family had ever been aware. He had died at age 58.After the last of his twelve children died, probably no one in his family knew anything about him at all, even though they enjoyed the wealth he had left, along with his good name.

In this day, when over 50% of all white children and 72% of all black children never even know their biological father. So many children are reared by a single mother, in a foster home, or simply by the government. Family ancestry, traditions, stability means little, but it should. As you get older, as you see certain facial and other similarities, as the importance of your family medical history, comes up over and over again. You realize that you are at the end of a long line, with much history. I have relatives who know nothing about anything, one said, “after you are gone, there will be no family history, no church history, no community history.” These same people have no knowledge of world history, or even American history. Like the lower animals, they are just here, eating, sleeping, sitting. Plato said, “hereditary honors are a noble and a splendid treasure to descendents.”