The Jewish Calendar

We are coming up on the new year for jewish culture and this year will start with the high holidays.  The high holidays are two different holidays over the course of 10 days. The first is Rosh Hashanah, a two-day celebration of the Jewish new year. Eight days after that, we have Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Rosh Hashanah starts on the night of Wednesday September 24 this year, and Yom Kippur starts Friday night October 3.  
Jewish religion actually follows a separate lunar calendar, thats why holidays like hanukkah change on our regular calendar.  The Jewish calendar is also different in that each day is defined to start at sunset, rather than at midnight. That’s why Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur start at night.
I often wondered how and why the jewish holidays shift so dramatically each year, turns out they have an entirely different calendar.  And by the look of it we are coming up on the biggest jewish holidays of the year!  

Why Jewish men don't shave their beards

The Torah actually forbids destruction of the beard and the talmud defines destruction as shaving with a razor.  Others like Maimonides say the reason for this forbiddance is because shaving was a practice of idol-worshipers. In addition, Kabbalah attaches great importance to the beard, teaching that the “thirteen locks” of the beard are representative of God’s thirteen supernal attributes of mercy. Growing a beard makes one a beneficiary of the bounty which originates from God’s compassion.

I never thought a beard was that important to people, apparently cultures respect it very highly and forbid the destruction of it.  Although this is a practice usually held by more traditionalist jews it is interesting to learn that so much of how jews dress and act is all in accordance with god, even their beards.

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/494236/jewish/Why-dont-chassidic-men-shave.htm

Rabbi Announces who the messiah is

Rabbi Announces Who the Messiah is

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/23877


The article above tells how one of the nations most prominent rabbi's Yitzhak Kaduri supposedly had written down the name of the messiah before his death which he requested to remain sealed until may of 2013.  In this note he claimed the messiah to be jesus.  Obviously this claim has been widely criticized.  Even his son says the note is forgery and not his fathers actual handwriting.  But all his family will admit that Yitzhak, during the last year of his life, was frequently mentioning the coming of the messiah.  A few months before his death Yitzhak said the messiah had come to him and gave a message at his synagogue on how to identify the messiah.  The details of this are in the article.