The bible just says rest and do no work so I guess its up to the individual to decide what that means for them whereas you have it all written down I think????
Ok, in Jewish tradition this just doesn't work. We believe at Mt Sinai, G-d gave 2 things to Moses. The written bible (what you call 'old testament') and the oral tradition. They are both considered devine. The oral tradition was handed down from generation to generation, until a point in history where they felt it might not get passed on exactly, and was written down (in the form of the Jewish Mishnah, which got expanded to the Gemara). Basically the bible is more like the cliff notes, and the oral tradition explains it. So when it says 'do no work'... you look it up in the oral tradition you will see exactly what G-D intended to mean by that. If you spend time studying the bible (especially in original Hebrew), you will find that it is basically impossible to read and understand without the Oral tradition. In traiditonal Judiasm, you can't really have one without the other, eveything we believe and practise is from both...

From the oral tradition (and the bible), it is where our 613 commandments come from, which dictate all the things we do and how we kive our life (dietry laws etc).

Also, if you read translations of the bible, not only are there so many errors in there (i.e. Red sea was originally Reed Sea, but in the 16th cent somebody dropped an 'e' when printing... Virgin as in Virgin Mary is actually the Hebrew word for 'young maiden'...), so if you do read a translation, you are really absorbing somebody's spin on it all. Bu the best one going with Hebrew and English is called "the Living Torah, by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan". It basically has the most accurate translations of words.

Oh, and i looked it up.

1) festival of trumpets, is Jewish New Year... There we blow Ram's Horns (if you google Rosh HaShana you will come up with pics of what i mean).. I've normally heard it referred to as festival of blowing, thats why i didn't automatically make the connection.

2) The last great day is actually Shemini Atzeres, which is celebrated basically joined onto the festival of Tabernacles (Fest of tabernacles goes for 6 days, and Shemini Atzeres starts that night, so we have no break basically). You don't eat in booths (we call these sukkah's, we build one outside once a year, and we eat (DH sleeps in it also), basically do most stuff in it. For Shemini Atzeres (most people just refer to it all as sukkos, as they run for 8 days consecutively), you don't have to do that, but you still have all the restrictions like sabbath on us.

3) I got the passover thing wrong. Basically what is refered to as The festival of Passover isn't celebrated anymore (we only do that when we have a temple.. long story), and what we celebrate for 8 days is actually the festival of unleaved bread. To make it more difficult, the festival of unleavened bread is called Passover (Pesach), even though it isn't really.

Hope i didn't confuse to many people.. its hard to explain when typing!