{"id":7588,"date":"2014-09-19T00:39:13","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T07:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=7588"},"modified":"2014-09-18T16:59:17","modified_gmt":"2014-09-18T23:59:17","slug":"symbols-of-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2014\/09\/19\/symbols-of-new-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Symbols of New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carrots represent the hope that Israel\u2019s enemies will be \u201ccut off,\u201d or kept away.\u00a0(photo by Stephen Ausmus \/ USARS via en.wikipedia.org)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Most Jews, religious or not, celebrate Passover, opening the holiday with a seder \u2013 fewer know that a seder is held on Rosh Hashanah, too. Being the year\u2019s first meal, it gains higher importance in Jewish tradition and, therefore, should be special.<\/p>\n

In the seder of Rosh Hashanah, a dedicated prayer is said, then a meal with symbolic foods is served, each food representing a different blessing for the people of Israel. Some of these foods have a unique prayer that is said prior to eating them. These foods differ slightly between communities, yet some are common, and are served on both religious and secular tables.<\/p>\n

As some of the seder foods may stand for similar blessings, not all of them have been preserved among secular Jews. The most common traditional food served at Rosh Hashanah is an apple, dipped in honey; this custom represents a blessing for the year to be as sweet as honey. Gefilte fish is also served, usually having slightly sweet flavor, for the procreation of the people of Israel like the propagation of fish. On the gefilte fish, sliced carrots are placed, a symbol for Israel\u2019s enemies to be \u201ccut off.\u201d<\/p>\n

A fish head is displayed\/served, symbolizing a blessing for the people of Israel to be the head and not the tail. This blessing has two meanings: (a) we will be the thinkers, the inventors; (b) we will gain leadership by moving forward, following our own will; not backwards, following other peoples\u2019 will.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Beets also represent the hope that Israel\u2019s enemies will be kept away. (photo by Jennifer Kleffner \/ Miles Away Farm via flickr.com)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sometimes, a beet or beet leaves are served for the removal of Israel\u2019s enemies. A pomegranate is served, its many seeds symbolic of the many mitzvot that the Jewish people have and hope to continue to have.<\/p>\n

Although linguistically not necessarily related historically, some of the foods are traditionally linked to their blessings by their Hebrew roots: the carrots placed on the gefilte fish are called gezer<\/em> (pl. gzarim, root gzr) in Hebrew. The blessing of cutting off Israel\u2019s enemies that is symbolized by the carrots makes use of the root gzr: \u201csheig az ru oyveynu<\/em>,\u201d \u201clet our enemies be cut off.\u201d The beet (leaves) is selek<\/em> (root: slk); the related blessing: \u201cshe-is talku oyveynu ve-son\u2019eynu<\/em>,\u201d \u201clet our enemies and haters be gone,\u201d is also represented by the same root slk, \u201cremove.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other traditional foods either make use of a semantic feature of the original notion, or they have undergone a semantic shift to adapt to the holiday\u2019s blessings. For example, we use the feature of quantity of the schools of fish for the parallel blessing: \u201cshenifre ve-nirbe ke-dagim<\/em>,\u201d \u201clet us procreate [literally: be fruitful and multiply] as fish.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fish head represents the brain, as well as the mind, which spiritually lies in the brain, and leadership, by being the head, the first in everything. This word gains a double meaning, as it appears in the name of the holiday, Rosh Hashanah, as well as in rishon<\/em>, \u201cfirst,\u201d derived from rosh<\/em>, \u201chead.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wrote down some of these thoughts from my home shelter during the war. Let us hope to be blessed in the future with real rimonim <\/em>(pomegranates\u2019 fruit), and not rimone-yad <\/em>(hand grenade). Let us bless southern Israeli fishermen to be able to continue fishing, and farmers to be able to continue selling their honey, carrots and beets, so that all of us can have a peaceful Rosh Hashanah seder. Happy New Year.<\/p>\n

Nurit Dekel<\/strong> is an independent academic researcher of colloquial Israeli Hebrew, and principal linguist at NSC-Natural Speech Communication; author of <\/em>Colloquial Israeli Hebrew: A Corpus-based Survey. She is based in southern Israel.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carrots represent the hope that Israel\u2019s enemies will be \u201ccut off,\u201d or kept away.\u00a0(photo by Stephen Ausmus \/ USARS via en.wikipedia.org) Most Jews, religious or not, celebrate Passover, opening the holiday with a seder \u2013 fewer know that a seder is held on Rosh Hashanah, too. Being the year\u2019s first meal, it gains higher importance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[781],"tags":[1801,401,1946],"class_list":["post-7588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holidays","tag-rosh-hashanah","tag-seder","tag-symbolism"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}