HUMA 1780 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Shofar, Rosh Hashanah, Mesopotamia
23 Jan 2018
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From my understanding, a ritual is something that occurs more than once and has a meaning behind it. A more basic example could be brushing your teeth every morning after you wake up. Rituals are used both by humans and animals. Humans have been performing rituals since the earliest of times for a variety of reasons. In the stone age, rituals could have been used to communicate with gods or dead ancestors. They could also have been used to mark different times of the year. Some rituals even involved masks or other carvings. Perhaps there was even a ritual for making a carving. In ancient mesopotamia, rituals were needed in order to serve their gods and to keep chaos from reigning. One contemporary social ritual that i have participated in is the jewish new year which is also known as rosh hashanah. We use many forms of expression in this ritual.
