Wednesday September 4 will begin eve Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the High Holy days of the Jewish liturgical year. The observance is established in Leviticus 23:24-25. This is the Jewish New Year. This is a observance that follows the Jewish lunar calendar which means it fluctuates when it occurs according the Western solar calendar. Some years it occurs in early September as it does this year but some years is can occur as late as early October.

Friday September 13 will be the eve of Yom Kippur, the end of the High Holy Days. Yom Kippur is also known as the Day of Atonement. Whereas Rosh Hashanah (Day of Remembrance) celebrates the sovereignty of God Yom Kippur is about making restitution to one’s neighbor as well as one’s God. It can occur as early as mid-September and as late as mid-October. This observance also finds clear reference in Leviticus 16.

This year between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is Patriot’s Day, September 11.This semester as the Christian Scriptures 1 class reads the Torah and historical Books of the Tanak we want to continually ask what does history tell us about what is theologically going on around us. I am struck by the way history overlaps itself. The day of one commemoration may spark the memory of other events.

I was minding my own business listening to a concert of Pete Seger, Arlo Guthrie Holly Near and Ronnie Gilbert from 1980 something. He had song inspired by the Chilean theater director, poet and freedom fighter Victor Jara. But he was also a member of the Communist Party of Chile. Jara was influenced by the folklore of Chile and other Latin American countries. As he moved from drama to music he was instrumental in the Nueva Cancion Chilena (New Song Chile) movement. This movement was part of the artistic movement that accompanied the election of Salvador Allende who became president of Chile.  On September 11, 1973 a Chilean coup to overthrow the democratically elected began. On September 12 of that year Jara was arrested taken to with thousands of others to Chile Stadium.  The torture he experienced including the breaking the bones in his hands, so he could not play. Fellow prisoners reported that he was told by his captors play your guitar now. The beatings he received also broke his ribs. Even after the beatings he continued to sing “Venceromos” (We will win) a song of Popular Unity coalition.  Somehow before his assassination he was wrote the poem that he did not name but has been called, “Estadio Chile.” (Chile Stadium)The poem was smuggled out in the shoe of a friend.  Pete Seger penned a song by the same name to commemorate Jara.

In 2008 a Chilean court investigated the assassination of Victor Jara. The testimony of a conscript testified that an officer Pedro Barrientos Nunez played” Russian roulette” with Jara’s life. Nunez put a single bullet in a chamber of a revolver and then would spin the cylinder and fire at Jara’s head. Nunez repeated the process a couple of times until a shot fired and Jara fell mortally wounded on the grounded. He then ordered the conscripts to finish the job. Jara was machine gunned. Someone took his body to the outskirts of Santiago. When they did the autopsy they found 44 bullets in his body.

There are events that impress themselves so emphatically on our memory that we remember where we were when they occurred. My parents remembered where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor. I remember where I was when John Kennedy was assassinated. I remember where I was when Martin Luther King was assassinated I remember where I was when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. But most of all I remember where I was when the airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center that is a September that I remember. I was watching the morning news in Austin Texas before I went into school. I did not remember where I was on September 11, 1973

History loops back in a way that one memory now impacts another. Chile Stadium was renamed Estadio Victor Jara in September 2003. It is today one of Chile’s largest homeless shelters.  Now the National September 11 Memorial and Museum is open. The Days of memory that is Rosh Hashanah leads us into September 11 with the memory of so many lost lives in New York and Chile. But these memories do not stop there. They push us to Yom Kippur and the work of atonement.

But it is too early in the semester to work on Leviticus. But we should remember that Yom Kippur prepares us for Sukkot (Leviticus 23). The reform of Ezra (3) began with Sukkot. We may come back to this as September 18 through 25 nears.