Join the local Buffalo Jewish Community for an elevating High Holiday Rosh Hashanah get together. Hear the stirring, unadulterated blasts of the Shofar as we sing selected prayers from the High Holiday liturgy and practice the mitzvah of tashlich. And walk away with a message that you were carrying all along.
This High Holiday event is open to members and non-members. No tickets or reservations are needed. All are welcome, so please invite friends and family to join us!
Date & Time: Thursday, October 3rd at 4:30pm
Location: Hoyt Lake – Delaware Park.
Across the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, by the lake.
199 Lincoln Pkwy, Buffalo, NY 14222
Sponsorships available, email info@chabadbuffalo.com.
For more information about tashlich, click here.
Event Sponsored my Chabad Center For Jewish Life of Buffalo
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Chabad Center For Jewish Life of Buffalo Launches No-Cost, 20-Minute Community Rosh Hashanah Service
Buffalo, NY — Rabbi Mendy Labkowski, of Chabad Center For Jewish Life of Buffalo, knows that to engage members of the tribe one often needs to lower the barriers of entry, sometimes beyond the institutional walls of the synagogue.
To accommodate those who might not be able to make it to formal Rosh Hashanah synagogue services, Chabad Center For Jewish Life is promoting a brief, open to all, twenty-minute Rosh Hashanah ceremony that includes the primary observances of the holiday. The Community Tashlich and Shofar Service will take place at Hoyt Lake – Delaware Park on Thursday, October 3rd, at 4:30pm.
Tashlich is a practice rich in symbolic and mystical meaning, which is customarily performed on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. A brief prayer is recited near a body of water, preferably containing live fish; in which we express our prayerful hope that G‑d cast our indiscretions into the depths of the sea, and that we be granted a good and sweet new year filled with G‑d’s abundant and manifest blessings.
The central observance of Rosh Hashanah is the sounding of the shofar, the ram’s horn which is sounded on both days of Rosh Hashanah (except when it falls on Shabbat).
“According to Jewish tradition the gates of heaven are open on the New Year, and G‑d accepts prayers from everyone,” said Rabbi Mendy Labkowski, “That serves as our inspiration to create Rosh Hashanah opportunities for everyone in the community.”
The shofar, resembling a trumpet, is the central ritual of Rosh Hashanah–the Jewish New Year. It is sounded every day for a month leading up to the holiday, culminating in a sequence of 100 blasts during the holiday services.
Seventy years ago, in 1953, the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the most influential rabbi in modern history, launched a campaign encouraging every Jew to hear the sounding of the shofar at synagogue or beyond. This year, thousands of volunteers will perform the shofar ritual on urban street corners, organize gatherings in city parks or in hospital rooms for those who could not attend synagogue, in cities around from Brooklyn, to Burbank and from Paris to Panama City.
“In times like these, when the fear of antisemitism is prevalent, bringing the sound of the shofar to everyone, especially in public places, instills a strong sense of confidence and pride and is more important than ever,” said Rabbi Mendy Labkowski, director of Chabad Center For Jewish Life of Buffalo. “Folks in our community are enthusiastic to celebrate their Judaism in as public and as proud a way as possible. The shofar campaign also is important for people who couldn’t make it to synagogue and are in the hospital or homebound and it’s critical that we especially remember the most vulnerable when praying for a good new year for all mankind..”