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Dozens of Jews and non-Jews gathered at the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish Center on Sunday to celebrate the Jewish New Year.
Rosh Hashanah began at sunset. The adults gathered in the main room to pray while the children were playing on the floor. On the side, a meal prepared with care.
Guests at the observance would be forgiven for not being able to recite the Hebrew prayers, but refusing food was not an option.
"This is not a spectator sport," Rabbi Shloime Greene told guests passing plates of food.
For observers, Rosh Hashanah does not only concern the beginning of the Jewish year, but starts for everyone personally.
"It's time to reign and reset," Greene said. "It's a great opportunity that God makes the day when man was created … specifically with the intention of realigning individuals."
Greene and his family have opened the holiday center for everyone, regardless of their level of affiliation to Judaism.
"I want them to experience the traditional dinner at the ancient Rosh Hashanah," he said.
He began by breaking a sweet version of Challah – a traditional Jewish bread – and then began the meal by dipping a slice of apple into honey.
Fruits and sweet foods are key symbols of the Rosh Hashanah meal. While the sweet combination is a way to symbolically invoke a sweet new year, Rabbi Dovid Greene gave a more detailed interpretation of why a product of a spicy insect was chosen for this meal.
"It tells us that the past can be a source of pain," he told the assembled observers. "It turns into sweetness."
The fish heads also served to symbolize a new conscious year.
"There is a Hebrew saying," Can you be the head, not the tail ", said Shloime Greene.
"Everything on this table is symbolic," said Irene Meyer. Meyer, who grew up in Europe and Montreal, said the center was a welcoming place for people seeking to connect with their Jewish roots.
"You do not have to have identification information," she said. "Just come in."
For some transplanted Jews, the center is a place to find and reconnect with friends.
Nelson Gruszczynski, a medical student in Mayo, Montreal, visited the center as soon as he arrived in the city about three years ago.
"It brings me home," he said during his vacation.
"We have a lot of friends at this table," said Allen Pimienta, a resident of the Mayo Clinic in Toronto.
Pimienta and Gruszczynski met not at Mayo but at the center.
As if they both remembered their meeting, Shloime Greene encouraged people to get up, go to the other side of the table and find someone to talk to.
"Maybe you will find another friend," he says. "We could all use more friends."
The observances of Rosh Hashanah continue today with the ritual sound of Shofar, which aims to awaken observers of figurative sleep and reminds us that we often doze in our lives. After the afternoon services, participants will participate in "tashlich," during which observers will visit Cascade Creek in Kutsky Park for a traditional cleanup or emptying of sins.
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