Torah and Jewish Idea > Torah and Jewish Idea

'New Years' Eve (aka Sylvester) is still NOT KOSHER!

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muman613:
I have said this every year since I have been on the forum. That I do not celebrate 'New Years' eve in any ritual manner. I ascribe it to a natural phenomenon called the Christian calender and do not engage in any special fashion. This year the news from A7 is that hotels in Israel who actually throw 'New Years' eve parties will be liable to lose their Kashrut certification. I think this is the correct thing to dissuade establishments from trying to cash in on the money which these hedonistic bashes raise otherwise lose their religious clientele who prefer to eat at Kosher places.


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/163462#.UNekOGL1T0E

Rabbinate: New Year's Eve Parties 'Not Kosher'
The Chief Rabbinate warned hotels and restaurants that their kashrut certificates were at risk if they held New Year's Eve parties

By David Lev
First Publish: 12/23/2012, 11:28 PM

The Chief Rabbinate on Sunday issued a notice in which it said that hotels and restaurants that hold “Sylvester” parties – better-known in the West as secular New Year's Eve parties – should realize that they may not be able to advertise their parties as kosher, because a kashrut supervisor would be unavailable to ensure that the laws of kashrut were being followed.

The Rabbinate said that it was aware that, according to Israeli law, the only criteria that could be considered in the granting of kashrut certificates – which are required for an establishment to call itself “kosher” - is the legal status of the food itself. The law does not allow the venue or event where the food is to be served to be a factor in deciding whether or not the Rabbinate issues a certificate.

However, the certificates are issued, the Rabbinate said, only on the condition that the supervisor has full and open access to the venue and the kitchen where the food is being prepared. Thus, the Rabbinate does not issue certificates to establishments that are open on Shabbat, because the supervisor is unable to carry out his duties under those circumstances.

The same could apply to parties on “Sylvester eve,” as the occasion is termed in Israel. “A Jew is not permitted to attend an event that is part of the worship of idols, or the ceremonies of a non-Jewish religion.” Far from being a “secular” day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day is a religious Christian holiday, and as such Jews are not permitted to participate in it. Since the supervisor, who is a religious Jew, cannot enter the venue, the Rabbinate will be unable to issue certificates to venues that hold such parties, even if they have been granted a certificate for the rest of the year.

“We must carefully examine which of the symbols and practices associated with parties on this day are based on religious custom, and which ones are based on folklore. The Rabbinate will issue a list of which practices and symbols it has determined would make it impossible for supervisors to enter the venues holding parties,” the Rabbinate said. “We will instruct supervisors to inform the venues of what the problems are.”

muman613:
Of course there are opinions that the day can be celebrated as long as the day has no religious significance. But those who want to delve deeper into the history of the day will find out that it was indeed a religious day for many millenia.

Here the rabbi expounds this idea, that as long as the day is devoid of any 'foreign worship' then a Jew may partake in it..

http://www.oztorah.com/2010/12/new-years-ev-ask-the-rabbi/

But the history of Sylvester is very upsetting to a Jew...


--- Quote ---http://www.shuvoo.com/newsletters/newsletter-038.php

“SLYVESTER”
(New Years Eve in Israel)

Tonight, the majority of world will celebrate, with gusto, the outgoing of 2007 and the incoming of the year 2008.  Here in Israel, we do not celebrate New Years at this time of the year.  The “New Year” is celebrated on Rosh Hoshanah, the 1st day of the seventh month of Tishri during early autumn.  Rosh Hoshanah commemorates the birthday of Adam at the time of Creation, the day upon which HaKadosh Baruch Hu sits in judgment of mankind.  The day also marks the numbering of the new civic year, the Sabbatical years and the Jubilee years in the Jewish calendar.  This past Rosh Hashanah the year changed from 5767 (corresponding roughly to the Gregorian year 2007) to 5768.  Rosh Hashanah is actually one of several “new years” that Jews celebrate.  Pesach (Passover) falls during the month of Aviv.  The first day of Aviv is decreed by Torah to be the first of the months (see Exodus 12:1).  It begins a new annual cycle of Hashem’s festivals and the months of the Jewish calendar are numbering beginning with Aviv.  Tu b’Shvat (the 15th of the month of Shvat, usually occuring in February or March) marks the beginning of a new year for the trees, when the potential for fruit bearing within them is at its highest.  The new year for the tithe of animals is set for the 1st day of Elul, the sixth month of the calendar year, a month devoted to self-introspection and teshuvah (repentance) in advance of Rosh Hoshanah.  But let us return to the “New Year” at hand.
 
“New Years Eve” is not celebrated in Israel.  Surprised?  In Jerusalem, a few restaurants have advertised New Years menus and celebrations, and there were quite a few more in Tel Aviv, but by and large, it is simply another evening.   Perhaps you are asking yourself, “Why would such a ‘global event’ be downplayed so in Israel?”
 
To be truthful, New Years Eve is known by a different moniker here in Israel.  The evening of December 31st is referred to as “Slyvester.”  To learn why, one needs go back in history.
 
New Years Day was first instituted by Julius Caesar in 46 BCE.  The day was associated with the god Janus, the Roman god of doors and gates who had two faces, one forward, one back.  Caesar felt Janus was an appropriate god to honor with the proclamation of a new civic year and named the “first of months” January to honor the Roman diety.  As is evident, the name stuck.  Even from such ancient times, the day was heralded the evening before with social frolicking both “proper” and “improper”, depending on one’s perspective. 
 
During the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine, the head of the pre- and early Christian church was a man by the name of Sylvester.  Sylvester led the early Church from 314 until his death on December 31, 335 CE.  Slyvester is accredited with “converting” Constantine to the Christian religion and baptizing him.  Emperor Constantine would later officially constitute Christianity and declare it to be the State religion of Roman Empire headed by the Roman Catholic Church.  This occurred at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE.
 
Slyvester was obviously influential in the life of Emperor Constantine, but how much so?
 
The year before the Council of Nicaea convened, Sylvester convinced Constantine to ban Jews from living in Jerusalem, resulting in forced evacuations and persecution.  Not a good year for the Jews.
 
Various sources claim that numerous Jewish “bishops” were still involved in the leadership of the early Christian faith, even at the time of Constantine and Slyvester.  After all, was it not the Jewish followers of one particular Jew who had started the religious movement in the first place?  Apparently it was time for a change, at least in Slyvester’s mind.  He insured that none of the Jewish bishops would be present at the Council of Nicaea.  At the same time, he arranged for the passage of a host of viciously anti-Semitic legislation to be included in the founding principles of the Christian church.  Slyvester continued as Pope of the early Church until his death ten years later.  The Catholic Church bestowed sainthood upon Pope Sylvester posthumously and December 31 was declared Saint Sylvester’s Day.  The celebrations on the night of December 31 are dedicated to the veneration of Sylvester's memory.
 
There will be a few glasses of bubbly consumed at New Years and Slyvester parties in clubs and restaurants in Israel tonight, but they will be in the minority.  Is it any wonder?
 
Ashirah Yosefah
Ad Matai / Shuvoo
Jerusalem
--- End quote ---

Tag-MehirTzedek:
 I dont celebrate it but I dont see any religious significance to it. Also another big problem in these types of parties and most parties as well is the immodesty.

muman613:

--- Quote from: Tag-MehirTzedek on December 23, 2012, 08:28:53 PM --- I dont celebrate it but I dont see any religious significance to it. Also another big problem in these types of parties and most parties as well is the immodesty.

--- End quote ---

I have read that throughout history (until this last century) there were many pogroms against the Jewish people during the New Years celebration... Do we really want to join in celebrating on a day when our people were so savagely abused?


http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/newyearshistory/

A History of New Years

In 46 B.C.E. the Roman emperor Julius Caesar first established January 1 as New Year’s day. Janus was the Roman god of doors and gates, and had two faces, one looking forward and one back.  Caesar felt that the month named after this god (“January”) would be the appropriate “door” to the year.  Caesar celebrated the first January 1 New Year by ordering the violent routing of revolutionary Jewish forces in the Galilee.  Eyewitnesses say blood flowed in the streets.  In later years, Roman pagans observed the New Year by engaging in drunken orgies—a ritual they believed constituted a personal re-enacting of the chaotic world that existed before the cosmos was ordered by the gods.

As Christianity spread, pagan holidays were either incorporated into the Christian calendar or abandoned altogether.  By the early medieval period most of Christian Europe regarded Annunciation Day (March 25) as the beginning of the year.  (According to Catholic tradition, Annunciation Day commemorates the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she would be impregnated by G-d and conceive a son to be called Jesus.)

    After William the Conqueror (AKA “William the Bastard” and “William of Normandy”) became King of England on December 25, 1066, he decreed that the English return to the date established by the Roman pagans, January 1.  This move ensured that the commemoration of Jesus’ birthday (December 25) would align with William’s coronation, and the commemoration of Jesus’ circumcision (January 1) would start the new year - thus rooting the English and Christian calendars and his own Coronation).  William’s innovation was eventually rejected, and England rejoined the rest of the Christian world and returned to celebrating New Years Day on March 25.

    About five hundred years later, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII (AKA “Ugo Boncompagni”, 1502-1585) abandoned the traditional Julian calendar.  By the Julian reckoning, the solar year comprised 365.25 days, and the intercalation of a “leap day” every four years was intended to maintain correspondence between the calendar and the seasons.  Really, however there was a slight inaccuracy in the Julian measurement (the solar year is actually 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds = 365.2422 days).  This slight inaccuracy caused the Julian calendar to slip behind the seasons about one day per century.  Although this regression had amounted to 14 days by Pope Gregory’s time, he based his reform on restoration of the vernal equinox, then falling on March 11, to the date had 1,257 years earlier when Council of Nicaea was convened (March 21, 325 C.E.).  Pope Gregory made the correction by advancing the calendar 10 days.  The change was made the day after October 4, 1582, and that following day was established as October 15, 1582.  The Gregorian calendar differs from the Julian in three ways:  (1) No century year is a leap year unless it is exactly divisible by 400 (e.g., 1600, 2000, etc.); (2) Years divisible by 4000 are common (not leap) years; and (3) once again the New Year would begin with the date set by the early pagans, the first day of the month of Janus - January 1.

    On New Years Day 1577 Pope Gregory XIII decreed that all Roman Jews, under pain of death, must listen attentively to the compulsory Catholic conversion sermon given in Roman synagogues after Friday night services.  On New Years Day 1578 Gregory signed into law a tax forcing Jews to pay for the support of a “House of Conversion” to convert Jews to Christianity.  On New Years 1581 Gregory ordered his troops to confiscate all sacred literature from the Roman Jewish community.  Thousands of Jews were murdered in the campaign.

    Throughout the medieval and post-medieval periods, January 1 - supposedly the day on which Jesus’ circumcision initiated the reign of Christianity and the death of Judaism - was reserved for anti-Jewish activities: synagogue and book burnings, public tortures, and simple murder.

    The Israeli term for New Year’s night celebrations, “Sylvester,” was the name of the “Saint” and Roman Pope who reigned during the Council of Nicaea (325 C.E.).  The year before the Council of Nicaea convened, Sylvester convinced Constantine to prohibit Jews from living in Jerusalem.  At the Council of Nicaea, Sylvester arranged for the passage of a host of viciously anti-Semitic legislation.  All Catholic “Saints” are awarded a day on which Christians celebrate and pay tribute to that Saint’s memory.  December 31 is Saint Sylvester Day - hence celebrations on the night of December 31 are dedicated to Sylvester’s memory.

U.S. News and World Report December 23, 1996

Lisa:
I've never seen New Year's Eve as anything but an excuse for people to stay up late partying and drinking.  I mean, it is the start of the new calendar year.  But that's it for me.  My birthday is September 15, which either coincides with Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashana, or somewhere in between.  When I was born many many years ago, it was on Erev Yom Kippur, and my mother went ahead and fasted.  So that's why I always see Rosh Hashana as the real New Year for me. 

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