New Year's Day: Rosh HaShana Sheini?

[Daniel Levy]

“Torah Tavlin” magazine of Monsey just printed this interesting Torah perspective on the upcoming New Year’s Day festivities that many of us will be enjoying (in the form of a bank holiday). Someone sent it to me and I thought it was interesting:

 

R’ Yaakov Friedman of Husiatyn ZT”L (Oholei Yaakov, in the name of the Apter Rav) would say:

  ה' יִסְפֹּר, בִּכְתוֹב עַמִּים:

תהילים פרק פז:ו

 

Contrary to popular belief, January 1, the non-Jewish New Year, is an important date for the Jewish people as well. It is when all those tefillos that might not have been prayed with the proper intent on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, and were not accepted in Heaven, get a second chance.

 

Unlike the Jewish new year, when we congregate in synagogues all over the world and pour out our hearts in serious contemplation, the gentiles of the world use their ‘New Year’ to conduct wild, often drunken, parties, to celebrate making it through another year. The contrast is glaringly clear and it often can eliminate any and all prosecution that withheld a good judgment on Rosh Hashana.

 

We must daven extra hard on their ‘New Year’ that we merit a sweet ‘New Year’ even if it didn’t actually start on our ‘New Year!’”

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[rafi]

Where does he get the fact that they are celebrating "getting through another year" - I don't think that's true. For them it is more of an anniversary of sorts - not so different to general idea of the yomim tovim in the Jewish calendar. It happens to be we believe in an idea of judgement on new year which they don't - otherwise our celebrations would presumably be more festive.

Sent from my iPhone

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[Daniel Coleman]

My skeptical side says this idea is worth checking out on snopes. Might the Apter Rav simply have been using the opportunity to discourage his talmidim from sleeping in on new year's day and missing minyan?
It's especially interesting in light of the chassidic idea that (zos) chanukkah is the end of the teshuva period. Maybe new year's is no less (and no more?) 'apt' for teshuva.

Also unusual is an idea I saw recently that the assarah b'teves is connected (each year) to the birth of oso ha'ish. The Tzom would seem to predate his birth by several hundred years!

[Daniel Westbrook]

I think nowadays the non-Jewish new year is no more than a minhag which most do not think too deeply about. It has clear roots in christianity and probably in pagan practices beforehand, but people do not try to rationalise thing that they enjoy.

But more importantly, whether you view non-Jewish new year celebrations as good, bad or neutral I think it is a mistake to look at the world as a competition between us and them.  Although there are many sources to support the idea of קיטרוג when non-Jews do good things that we don't, this is because it is our responsibility to be the ones leading the world forward.  When the non-Jewish world does bad, it is also a reflection of our failure to live up to this role.