New year, wrong season

Everything about Rosh Hashanah assumes autumn. Apples and honey, the harvest safely in, a year winding down towards winter.

Then you step out of shule into an Australian September, where the wattle is out, the evenings are stretching, and the whole country is heading the other way.

Congregants have raised the mismatch with Rabbi Yaakov Glasman of Melbourne’s St Kilda Shule “multiple times over the years”, he says.

Pesach is usually where the penny drops: “It is called the Festival of Spring, yet here it arrives in autumn.”

Rosh Hashanah carries the same imported assumptions.