Rosh Hashana: Local Jewish Center combines holiday with hope for peace in new year
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (KCTV) - The local Jewish Community is praying for a safer future for Israel and Judaism everywhere as they ring in a new year on their calendar.
Rosh Hashanah began Wednesday at sundown. Rosh Hashana is a time of reflecting back on the last year and looking ahead.
However, this time around the Jewish Center of the Greater Kansas City says they can’t do that without mourning. So, they created a display with rocks that each represent someone killed last October 7th.
They hope it symbolizes the start of a new year of peace.
“It feels like it’s been a million years, and it also feels like Oct. 7th was yesterday,” Net Meltzer said.
This past year was devastating to Judaism, and Neta Meltzer can’t easily look ahead.
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“It’s challenging to look at a new year in a time of renewal and to think about what that means when the war is ongoing,” the Interim Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Bureau of Kansas City recalled. “The hostages remain and we don’t have resolution.”
As Rosh Hashana begins, their center has an important message to Kansas City and the entire world.
Meltzer added, “We really want to be clear that even though what happened on Oct. 7th happened 6,000 miles away, the impact of it could be felt right here with people in our own community.”
To symbolize that message, the center created this “a year without” exhibit. Laying 1200 rocks to honor everyone killed Oct. 7th. Sarah Markowitz-Schreiber helped paint a few.
“These are human individual lives that were lost, human family whose lives forever lost,” Markowitz-Schreiber expressed. “And changed forever on Oct. 7th and since then.”
Last year, Rosh Hashana came in September with nobody expecting the deadly year to come for Judaism. Now, Jews we met hope they can look back on this holiday as a turning point for peace.
“We hope for peaceful existence for Jewish Communities all across the world and especially in Israel,” Meltzer said. “We hope for the hostages to come home.”
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“Hopefully this Rosh Hashana what will be written and sealed is a better, happier, safer New Year for everyone,” Markowitz-Schreiber added.
Another way people are reflecting on this year for Rosh Hashana is leaving sticky notes on this board saying where they were on Oct. 7th.
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