The shofar (a trumpet made of a ram's horn), shown centre left, beneath the Hebrew lettering, is traditionally sounded in the synagogue during Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and at the end of Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement).

Bornfriend was commissioned in 1957 by the architect Eugene Rosenberg, who designed Jews' College, London, to paint a mural for the college library and chose the Jewish festivals as the theme. This series is based on the ideas that Bornfriend dealt with in the mural. Bornfriend's printmaking encompassed drawing, painting and collage and used a combination of processes, including block printing, screen printing and lithography. Pierre Rouve described Bornfriend's images as not literal renderings but 'visual 'abstracts' of their innermost substance', presenting 'a poetic blending of image and cultural meaning'. Another set of these prints is held by the Art Collection of the University of Warwick.