Born on Rosh Hashana

TCPalm

PALM CITY — Rabbi Shlomo Uminer missed the Rosh Hashana services Thursday at the Chabad Jewish Center of Martin and St. Lucie Counties.

Rosh Hashana is the first day of the Jewish year, a day when the whole world is renewed and energized, Uminer said. And it is the day Uminer’s fourth child and third daughter, Rochel, was born at Jupiter Medical Center.

It’s a new life on a day of fresh beginnings.

“It seems very special,” the rabbi said. “It must be only good things in store.”

Uminer said he took his wife, Daniella, to the hospital just hours before the beginning of Rosh Hashana. He doesn’t drive on the holy days, so once the baby was born he couldn’t motor back to Palm City to lead the evening service at the Jewish Center. And he didn’t have time to walk it.

The congregation’s cantor and several congregants led the service in his place, Uminer said.

“It’s a very big deal” to miss the Rosh Hashana service, the rabbi said. “It’s a very important day of prayer.”

Uminer said he blew the shofar the traditional ram’s horn — at the hospital. He said it was “very tough I was praying on my own.”

The rabbi said he grew up in the New York City borough of Brooklyn and lived there until two years after college, when he went to Israel to help teach Jewish studies. He later taught in San Francisco, as well as in Italy and other areas of Europe.