Non-Rabbinic Judaism

 

The Torah does not speak of a Rosh Hashanah, and if it had it would be the first day of the month of Nissan. The Torah specifies the first day of the Seventh month as Yom Teruah (Day of the Sounding), or Zichron Teruah (Remembering the Sounding). But the meaning of this term is unclear, because the word Teruah could mean a kind of trumpet (or Shofar) blast, but it could also mean a shout of rejoicing, not necessarily the blowing of a particular instrument. The only description of a celebration of the first day of the seventh month in the Bible is the one in Nehemiah 8:1-12 and there the blowing the Shofar is not mentioned. From the Book of Numbers and the Psalms we learn that the trumpet or Shofar were blown on Rosh-Chodesh, on the first showing of the new moon, which was the beginning of the Jewish month, In Rabbinic literature, the Mishnah discusses blowing the Shofar in the Herodean Temple and in peripheral synagogues on Rosh Hashanah. We do not know when this custom began, but it certainly became more significant as time went on and it acquired many symbols. (Best description of these appears in Isaac Arameh's treatise Akedat Yitzhak).

 

The non-Rabbinic forms of Judaism accepted neither the idea of Rosh Hashanah nor the blowing of the Shofar.

 

Samaritans

 

The Samaritans modeled themselves after the Jewish People. However, the Jewish People kept its distance from this polyglot ethnic group. Indeed, when Ezra, the Prophet returned to Jerusalem from his post a court advisor to the Persians (423 BCE), he forbade the Samaritans from building the Temple because they were not legitimately Jewish. The Talmud records that, after the Assyrians in 722 BCE conquered Northern Israel, the Assyrian authorities transplanted populations from their other conquered territories to Northern Israel and vice-versa. Accordingly, although many of these immigrants intermarried with the few Jews that were left, the religion became syncretized with several other pagan religions, always a nemesis of the Jewish faith community. The Samaritans, however, do not recognize Rabbinic Judaism, like the Karaites of the 8th century, In principle, the idea that the first day of the Seventh [biblical) month is Rosh Hashanah is an innovation of Rabbinic Judaism as well as the custom of blowing the Shofar on that day. The Samaritans celebrate the day by prayers and reading from the Torah. There is no Shofar blowing. For them it is also the beginning of preparation for Yom Kippur.

 

Karaites

 

The Karaites rejected the Rabbinic obligation of Shofar blowing. The most important authority on this is the great Karaite Hacham, Eliyahu Basheitzy of the fifteenth century. In his book Aderet Eliyahu (which is still considered the most important source of Karaite Halacha) he specifically denounced the Rabbinic ruling about Shofar blowing. According to Basheitzy, Teruah means noise of rejoicing which is executed by the human voice and not by any instrument.

 

Ethiopian Beita-Israel Tradition

 

It was not until 1844, when a missionary found a people observing Jewish ceremonies, going back to biblical injunctions that Ethiopian Jews were known to the Jewish world. Although there is many disputes about how this sect arose, the most common belief is that some Ethiopian people converted to Judaism when the Temple stood. However, after the destruction of the Temple, this sect was cut off form subsequent mainstream Jewry. Thus, Rabbinical Judaism was unknown to these Jews, most of whom lived in the poverty-stricken Gondar region in Northern Ethiopia. Most scholarship points to the conversion of these African people sometime before the destruction of the Second Temple. After the Romans sacked the Temple and dispersed the Jewish People form Jerusalem, communications apparently broke off from the Ethiopian Jewish community. Much of the religious tradition derives from the Hebrew Scripture, but not in Rabbinical sources. For example, during Passover, they sacrificed a sheep and the family feasted on it on the 14th day of Nissan. There is another school of thought that believes that the Beita -Israel tradition received much of its liturgy from Ethiopian Christian sources. When the first large group of Beita-Israel arrived in Israel, the Jewish Rabbinical courts insisted that all males be re-circumcised evidence that they were Jews, under the Rabbinical tradition. To this injunction, the Ethiopians objected. Nevertheless, they subsequently became involved in the Sephardic ritual community. As to the Ethiopian Beita-Israel tradition. The first day of the seventh month is called "berhan sharaqa" which means "the light appeared" (which is a commemoration of the birth of the world) and "tazkara Abraham", the commemoration of Abraham, relating to the binding of Isaac. About two generations ago they started calling it "re-esha awda amat," the head of the year. We do not know when they started to relate this day to the birth of the world or to the binding of Isaac. Their old customs do not testify to either. Thus for example their reading from the Orit ( the Ge'ez Bible) on this day does not include Genesis 1 or the story of the Akedah. It seems that the associations came from the influence of Jewish Rabbinic sources with which Beita-Israel came in contact from the late 19th century on. From some testimonies, we know that at one point they adopted the custom of blowing the ram's horn in commemoration of the binding of Isaac. But this custom fell soon into disuse and no Ethiopian community practiced it until it was re-introduced in Israel by the Rabbinic authorities of the State (See Kay Kaufman Shelemay, "Music, Ritual and Falasha History," (Michigan State University, 1986).