Rosh Hashanah

Moment for gratitude

This fall, for people with compromised immune systems or other health issues, extra precautions – social distancing and masking – remain a wise choice. For most people in Canada, the pandemic is over.

While the pandemic will never truly be past for those who lost family members and those whose health has been permanently affected (in ways we may not fully understand for years), this will be the first fear-free High Holidays since 2019 for the vast majority of Jews.

At the beginning of the pandemic, we were told it might take a couple of weeks’ isolation to overcome the spread. That stretched to three years of various levels of regulation and recommendations, decreasing and increasing again based on numbers of transmissions. Each new cycle of the calendar brought its own adaptations, beginning with outdoor seders and simchas – fine in Tel Aviv and Miami, less so, sometimes, in Winnipeg and Warsaw.

It is perhaps a symptom of both Jewish and human nature that, when one problem is resolved, we focus on another. It has been a dependable habit since the creation of the state of Israel that, when immediate external threats subside, attentions turn to internal disagreements – “Who is a Jew?” is a repeating topic, for example. Of course, one thing need not preclude the other. Israel is currently experiencing both external threats, in terms of a spate of terrorist attacks, and unprecedented political and social divisions.

But let’s not be so quick to find something to worry about. At this time of reflection, we all deserve to take a moment to consider the successes of the recent past. As we gather around holiday tables, we probably do not need to be reminded how fortunate we are to be together. Let us consider extending that sense of gratitude into the rest of our lives.

As young people return to classes, let’s celebrate the incredible resilience of kids who had formative years of their lives disrupted – and their teachers, who responded to exceptional circumstances! And parents, who admirably acted in the breach.

The synagogues and nonprofit organizations that are the backbone of our community transitioned on a dime to deliver programs and services as best they could during the pandemic – in many cases reaching more people virtually than they had in person, and expanding inclusivity and accessibility for all ages and abilities, as well.

Businesses that form the foundation of our economy – locally and globally – encountered supply chain (and plenty of other) constraints that they confronted as best they could.

We should also celebrate the manner in which our community steps up to respond to other urgent issues. Most recently, wildfires in British Columbia, Canada’s north, Hawaii and elsewhere – with Jewish people and organizations helping with accommodations for evacuees, food and other supplies, and more.

We have plenty of reasons to be concerned about the state of the world. There is time for that. During the month of Elul and into the Days of Awe, as we ponder the transcendent, take a few moments to consider and celebrate both the recent challenges overcome and the good fortune you experience in the day-to-day of life.

About the Rosh Hashanah cover art

I spent hours online trying to find a suitable piece of art for this year’s Rosh Hashanah cover, then even more hours for what I might do myself. I really wanted to include a shofar in whatever I did, as a call to hope and action, for myself as much as anyone else.

I stumbled on artist Yitzchok Moully’s Elul Shofar Art Challenge (moullyart.com). Moully’s work is bright, colourful, full of life. As I mulled it over, I received an email from local artist Merle Linde, who generously created art for the JI ’s Passover cover this year and for last’s year Rosh Hashanah issue. She sent me an emotionally charged piece lamenting the countless trees that have been destroyed by wildfires. The base painting was an acrylic pour, and I spent several fun hours learning about and practising the technique, deciding it wasn’t quite what I wanted for my shofar blast.

I eventually came across creativejewishmom.com, the site that inspired my 2020 Passover cover depicting the Israelites (made of corks) crossing the Red Sea, who made a second appearance for Passover 2021, participating in Zoom seders. This time, it was a Tashlich picture made with yarn, coloured paper and felt marker that caught my eye on creativejewishmom.com. Inspired, I made the JI masthead out of yarn and ink, and created the shofar and the hand holding it – I wanted there to be a human presence, as we are critical to any change, for better or worse.

The middle section of the page eluded me for days, and I tried various things that just didn’t feel or look right. Thankfully, a middle-of-the-night couple of hours resulted in the finished cover, albeit with some tweaking in Photoshop. It ended up being more cheerful than I was intending. I am happily surprised at my latent optimism, and hope that readers also find it uplifting.

New recipes for a new year

A family performs the kapparot ritual with two hens and a rooster, circa 1901. (photo from Library of Congress via brandeis.edu)

Whether or not the custom of eating chicken for a High Holiday meal arose from a desire to replace the ritual of kapparot, roast chicken is often served at the holiday table. Here are a few chicken recipes you might like to try this new year, as well as sweet potato sides and desserts made with pomegranates – another food with holiday symbolism. A coffee cake is always good to have on hand for visitors, or to help break the Yom Kippur fast.

ROAST HERBED CHICKEN

1 3-pound chicken
4 garlic cloves
2 bay leaves
3 tbsp melted unsalted pareve margarine
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp sage
1/4 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp marjoram
1/4 tsp basil

Preheat oven to 425ºF. Grease a baking pan.
Rinse and dry chicken. Rub skin with 1 cut garlic clove, then place it inside chicken with other cloves and bay leaves.
In a bowl, mix margarine with salt, pepper, thyme, sage, oregano, marjoram and basil. Place 1 tablespoon inside chicken, tie legs together and place, breast side down, in baking pan. Brush the rest of the spiced mixture over the outside of the chicken. Bake 45 minutes. Turn it over and bake 40-45 minutes longer.

SIMPLEST ROAST CHICKEN

1 5-pound chicken
1 lemon cut in half
4 garlic cloves
4 tbsp unsalted pareve margarine
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup chicken soup, water or wine

Preheat oven to 500ºF. Grease a roasting pan.
Remove excess fat, neck, gizzards and liver. Combine lemon, garlic, margarine, salt and pepper in a bowl and stuff inside chicken.
Place chicken breast side up in a baking pan with legs facing the back of the oven. Roast 10 minutes then move with a wooden spoon to keep it from sticking. Continue roasting 40-50 minutes.
Tilt chicken to get juices into roasting pan. Remove chicken. Put juices in a pan, add soup, water or wine and bring to a boil. Reduce liquid by half. Serve sauce in a bowl or pour over chicken.

CHICKEN WITH DRESSING
(this was a favourite of my mother, z”l)

1 5-pound chicken
salt to taste
3/4 tsp ginger
1 sliced onion
1/2 cup celery
your favourite stuffing
3/4 cup boiling water
4-6 sliced potatoes

Preheat oven to 400ºF. Grease a roasting pan.
Sprinkle chicken cavity with salt and ginger. Place in roasting pan. Stuff with your favourite stuffing. Add onion and celery. Roast 20 minutes.
Reduce temperature to 350ºF and bake 20 minutes more. Add boiling water and potatoes and continue baking 1 1/2 hours more.

MY MOM’S (Z”L) CANDIED SWEET POTATOES

8 sweet potatoes
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup crushed nuts (optional)
2 tbsp margarine
2 tbsp non-dairy creamer
2 tbsp orange juice

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease a casserole dish.
Boil sweet potatoes in water until soft. Remove, cool and peel. Place in a bowl and mash.
Add brown sugar, cinnamon, nuts, margarine, non-dairy creamer and orange juice. Spoon into greased casserole and bake 30-45 minutes.

MY SABRA SWEET POTATOES

6 oranges
1/4 cup Sabra liqueur
6 tbsp margarine
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp nutmeg
4 cooked, peeled, smashed sweet potatoes

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease a casserole dish.
Cut oranges in half and scoop out pulp.
Place mashed sweet potatoes in a mixing bowl.
In a saucepan, combine Sabra, margarine, brown sugar and nutmeg. Simmer for three minutes. Pour over sweet potatoes.
Spoon potatoes and sauce into orange halves. Bake 30 minutes.

APPLE-POMEGRANATE COBBLER
(This recipe is adapted from a Food & Wine recipe)

2 cups pomegranate juice
6 peeled, halved, cored, sliced 1/2-inch thick apples
1 cup sugar
2 1/4 cups flour
kosher salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, or 1/2 cup unsalted pareve margarine
1 cup cold heavy cream or pareve cream
pomegranate seeds
pareve vanilla ice cream

Preheat oven to 375ºF. Place an eight-by-eight glass baking dish on a foil-lined rimmed baking sheet.
In a small saucepan, bring pomegranate juice to a boil over high heat, reduce to 1/3 cup (approximately 15 minutes). Pour into a bowl. Fold in apple slices, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup flour and 1/2 tsp salt. Put into baking dish.
In a bowl, whisk 2 cups flour, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt. Add butter or margarine and cut until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in 1 cup cream.
Gather topping and scatter over apple filling. Brush top with cream, sprinkle with sugar. Bake 60-70 minutes or until filling is bubbling and topping is golden. If crust is browning, tent with foil.
Let cool for 20 minutes. Sprinkle with pomegranate seeds. Top with vanilla ice cream.

POMEGRANATE ICE
(makes 5 cups)

8-10 seeded pomegranates
3-4 tbsp lemon juice
1 1/2 tsp grated lemon peel
3/4 cup sugar

Whirl pomegranate seeds in blender. Strain and save liquid for 4 cups.
Add lemon juice, lemon peel and sugar. Pour into a metal pan and cover with foil. Freeze 8 hours. Remove and break into chunks. Blend into slush. Refreeze until firm.

SOUR CREAM COFFEE CAKE

3 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
salt to taste
3/4 cup butter or margarine, melted
1 1/2 cups sour cream
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped nuts
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/4 cup chopped nuts

Preheat over to 350ºF. Grease a baking pan.
In a mixing bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
Add butter or margarine, sour cream, eggs and vanilla and mix.
Add nuts and blend well. Pour half into baking pan.
In a bowl, mix sugar, cinnamon and nuts. Pour over batter. Add rest of batter. Bake 1 hour.

QUICK CRUMB COFFEE CAKE

2 1/4 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
salt to taste
1 cup sugar
6 tbsp unsalted margarine, melted
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp flour
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp crumbled margarine
1/2 cup chopped nuts

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease a baking pan.
In a mixing bowl, blend flour, baking powder and salt. Add sugar, margarine, egg, milk and vanilla and blend well.
Spread batter on bottom of greased baking pan.
In a small bowl, combine brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, margarine and chopped nuts. Sprinkle on top of batter. Bake 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Sybil Kaplan is a Jerusalem-based journalist and author. She has edited/compiled nine kosher cookbooks and is a food writer for North American Jewish publications. She leads walks of the Jewish food market, Machaneh Yehudah, in English.

Teshuvah: a guide to repentance

Twelfth-century Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides described the sound of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah as a wake-up call for the soul. (photo from flickr.com/photos/gsankary)

The sound of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah, the great 12th-century Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides wrote, is a wake-up call for the soul. Its message: “Arise from your slumber! Search your ways and return in teshuvah and remember your Creator!”

Teshuvah is the central theme of the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, known collectively as the Ten Days of Teshuvah. Typically, teshuvah is translated from the Hebrew as repentance, but it literally means return, as if turning back to something you’ve strayed or looked away from. But that begs the question: return to what? Depending on the time and place, there have been different answers – God, a state of moral purity, the Jewish people and Israel.

The Jewish Experience at Brandeis University asked Near Eastern and Judaic studies professor Yehudah Mirsky about the history of teshuvah. Mirsky, who is also a faculty member of the Schusterman Centre for Israel Studies, is the author of Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (Yale University Press).

Ancient Teshuvah

The Hebrew Bible sees teshuvah as principally a return to God. “Come, let us return to the Lord,” the prophet Hoshea (14:2) tells the people of Israel.

In Psalm 51, King David seeks teshuvah for committing adultery with Bathsheba. Importantly, David’s confession is addressed to God because, as he says, “Against You alone have I sinned.”

Traditional rabbinical commentators have interpreted this to mean that teshuvah requires confessing your sins to God. Part of achieving intimacy with Him involves His knowing your sins. And only in that way can you return to Him.

Talmudic teshuvah

For centuries after the destruction by Rome in 70 CE of Jerusalem’s ancient temple, where Jews would say confession and offer sacrifices for atonement, the rabbis reworked biblical ideas and practices of teshuvah into a roadmap for spiritual and moral growth.

In the Mishnah and the Talmud, the vast collections of law, theology, interpretation, folklore and more compiled roughly between 200 and 500 CE, they called for introspection, changing one’s ways, and asking others for forgiveness.

This line of thinking reached its apotheosis in Maimonides’ Hilkhot Teshuvah (The Laws of Return). He placed confession and regret at the centre of repentance so that teshuvah, according to Mirsky, became a process of “moral and spiritual self-cultivation and self-education.”

Teshuvah was no mechanical act. It had to involve genuine contrition and the individual becoming a better person. In addition to being a scholar, philosopher, jurist and communal leader, Maimonides was also a physician.

“One senses his medical sensibility was at work here, too,” said Mirsky. “Transgression sickened the soul and teshuvah is the cure, a return to full spiritual and moral health.”

Cosmic teshuvah

Already during the talmudic period, rabbis had begun talking about teshuvah as a spiritual energy flowing through the universe that was created by God when He made the earth.

The medieval mystics who wrote the great texts of the kabbalah took this even further. They said teshuvah comes not only from inside the individual but is also a dynamic force all around us. To repent, you tap into it. As Mirsky put it, “You catch the wave.”

In the 13th-century Zohar, the foundational work of Jewish mysticism, teshuvah became a way of repairing a rupture or tear in the spiritual fabric of the universe. When the varying energies at work in the world – justice and mercy, male and female, tradition and change – go out of whack, teshuvah helps to rebalance them. In other mystical texts, return is seen as a kind of rebirth and the achievement of the soul’s deepest freedom.

Some 300 years later, Rabbi Isaac Luria, the great mystic of Safed in northern Israel, famously connected teshuvah with tikkun olam (healing the world). Through teshuvah, Jews perfect God’s work, helping usher in the Messianic Age.

For Luria, this largely meant a kind of spiritual healing. But, over time, and especially in the last century, Jews have begun to connect this to ideas of social justice, adding another layer of interpretation to Jewish messianic ideals.

Teshuvah and Israel

In Mirsky’s view, the Zionist movement secularized and redefined teshuvah.

Political passivity, which the rabbis thought was anathema to the survival of the Jewish people, was now considered a sin. Repenting involved identifying with the nationalist yearnings of the Jewish people for a homeland. In this way, teshuvah returned Jews in the diaspora to Israel, and the Jews as a whole to a more vital sense of group identity.

Kook’s teshuvah

Past and present interpretations of teshuvah came together in the work of Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of modern Palestine and the leading thinker of religious Zionism. To him, all existence is rooted in God and seeks to return to God. That return takes the form of religious practice, social and ethical commitment, art and culture – everything we consciously do to make the world better for the Jewish people and ultimately all of humanity. And, all of these elements – the ritual and ethical, material and intellectual, the Jewish and universal – all need one another to do God’s work in the world. (For more on Kook, see Mirsky’s book.)

American teshuvah

Teshuvah in the United States reflects the inescapable individualism of American life. The great American Jewish thinker Abraham Joshua Heschel linked teshuvah to the nation’s ethos of spiritual growth and renewal. He wrote:

“The sense of inadequacy ought to be at the very centre of the day [Yom Kippur].… To put contrition another way, develop a sense of embarrassment.… We have no answer to ultimate problems. We really don’t know. In this not knowing, in this sense of embarrassment, lies the key to opening the wells of creativity.

One belief all Jewish thinkers share about teshuvah – the process only begins during the High Holidays. It’s afterward when the real work begins.

For more on teshuvah during the Middle Ages, see Mirsky’s article, “How a lover of wisdom returns” in Sources Journal (sourcesjournal.org/articles/how-a-lover-of-wisdom-returns).

– from the Jewish Experience / Brandeis University

Shattering complacency

The existential themes of the High Holidays are meant to create a sensitivity and appreciation of the precious significance of everyday existence. (Jordan Gillard Photography)

The themes of death and the “thinness” of human existence recur in the liturgy of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and during the entire period, beginning with the month of Elul. This is not because of a morbid desire to undermine human confidence and autonomy or to shock us into fearing God out of a sense of helplessness and sin. The existential themes of the High Holidays are meant to create a sensitivity and appreciation of the precious significance of everyday existence.

Existentialists spoke about confronting one’s mortality as a necessary condition for achieving human authenticity. Although a preoccupation with death can create nihilism and a paralyzing sense of the futility of human initiative, nevertheless, the Jewish tradition believed that the themes of human mortality and finitude could be integrated into a constructive and life-affirming vision of life.

The language of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur prayers, such as the explicit enumeration of the different ways that a human life can be destroyed, is not meant to terrorize us into self-negating submission. The stark, evocative imagery of the liturgy is aimed primarily at shattering complacency. The impact of this experience can be life-affirming insofar as it serves as a catalyst in a process of self-creation and moral renewal.

Focusing on human mortality and the contingencies that wreak havoc upon human lives heightens our sensitivity to the deadening effects of habit and routine. People often deceive themselves into believing that they can successfully defer living the kind of lives they consider worthwhile until some future time. While not questioning the importance of reflecting on the meaning of one’s life, they believe they can postpone dealing with this issue.

“Why become confused and troubled by the meaning of my life now? I can deal with it later, when I retire, when economic realities are more favourable, when I will be free of parental responsibilities.…” This attitude is naïve and self-deceptive because it ignores the real consequences of present patterns of behaviour and learning that can weaken and that ultimately extinguishes one’s natural capacity to live life deeply and seriously.

Another theme of Yom Kippur, teshuvah, is expressed in the call to return, to renew, to re-create one’s self, and in the appeal for divine forgiveness and atonement, in the recitation of “for the sin we have sinned …” and other confessional sections of the liturgy. The essence of teshuvah – the crucial principle without which this concept would be empty of meaning – is the belief that the past need not define the future. A person can break the causal chain of habit and defy the seeming necessity of repetition that suffocates spontaneity and the joy of life.

The call to teshuvah, therefore, is expressed not only in the plea to God for forgiveness and in the affirmation of God’s gracious love and reluctance to mete out punishment and retribution, but also, and most poignantly, in the repeated attempts at convincing the individual to believe in the possibility of change. The personal significance of Yom Kippur ultimately turns on the individual’s ability to believe that his or her life can be different. The major obstacle to teshuvah is not whether God will forgive us but whether we can forgive ourselves – whether we can believe in our own ability to change the direction of our lives, even minimally.

Teshuvah is grounded in the idea of an open future, in the belief that the possibilities for human change have not been exhausted, that the final chapters of our personal narratives have not yet been written. The sense of empowerment felt on Yom Kippur reflects an underlying faith in the power of the human will to break the fixed cycles of the past and to chart new possibilities for the future.

Many scholars who take issue with translating God’s name, ehyeh asher ehyeh, which was revealed to Moses at the burning bush as “I am that I am,” insist on emphasizing the future orientation of the verb ehyeh, “I will be.” For many, the Jewish concept of God must convey the idea of newness – of new spiritual possibilities in the future, of new ways of understanding and of relating to God. To sense the presence of God in one’s life is to believe in the possibility of radical surprise and of genuine human change.

Communal forms of worship must not be allowed to degenerate into automated, mind-numbing exercises in herd conformity. Our rabbis taught that, although Jews stood as a people at Mt. Sinai, each individual personally appropriated the word of God. We must not be intimidated by the High Holiday prayer book. Although we share a common liturgy, we must be capable of appropriating its significance in terms of our individual lives and concerns. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur challenge us to discover the meaning of personal authenticity and self-renewal within the context of community.

Rabbi Prof. David Hartman (1931-2013) was founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute. This article was first published in September 2009. Articles by Hartman, z”l, and other institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.

Rosh Hashanah table talk

In his diaries, Franz Kafka reflected that our not knowing “the real highway” we’re on means that “we drift in doubt. But, also in an unbelievable, beautiful diversity. Thus, the accomplishment of hopes remains an always unexpected miracle.” (photo from Piotr Malecki)

The Chassidic Rebbe Haim of Tzanz told this parable: A person had been wandering about in the forest for several days, unable to find a way out. Finally, in the distance, he saw another person approaching him, and his heart filled with joy. He thought to himself: “Now, surely, I shall find a way out of the forest.” When they neared each other, he asked the other person, “Brother, will you please tell me the way out of the forest?”

The other replied: “Brother, I also do not know the way out, for I, too, have been wandering about here for many days. But, this much I can tell you. Do not go the way I have gone, for I know that is not the way. Now come, let us search for the way out together.” (Adapted from S.Y. Agnon, The Days of Awe)

Perhaps this is a story to read at your Rosh Hashanah table, to start a discussion about your – and your guests’ – hopes for new direction in life. Think about a new path you would like to explore this coming year, or let others know about an old path you have tried that they might best avoid.

In his diaries, Franz Kafka, the 20th-century Czech Jewish writer, reflected on the difficulty of finding our way and yet our eternal hope:

“If we knew we were on the right road, having to leave it would mean endless despair. But we are on a road that only leads to a second one and then to a third one and so forth. And the real highway will not be sighted for a long, long time, perhaps never. So, we drift in doubt. But, also in an unbelievable, beautiful diversity. Thus, the accomplishment of hopes remains an always unexpected miracle. But, in compensation, the miracle remains forever possible.”

The poet and Bible scholar Joel Rosenberg speaks of Rosh Hashanah as a homecoming, rather than as journeying:

“The Hebrew word for year – shana – means change. But its sense is two-fold: on the one hand, change of cycle, repetition (Hebrew, l’shanot, reiterate, from sh’naim, two), but, on the other hand, it means difference (as in the [the Pesach seder when we ask] mah nishtana? How is this night different?) We are the same, we are different. We repeat, we learn, we recapitulate. We encounter something new. ‘Shana tova!’ means, ‘Have a good change!’”

And yet, how familiar is this time! The chant, the faces, the dressed-up mood, the calling on the same God, the words, the blessings, the bread, the apples, the honey, the wine – all are the same, and yet completely new. We meet ourselves again and for the first time.

A year that begins anew is also the fruit of the year that preceded. Good or bad, it has made us wiser. It will not constrain us. We choose from it what we want and need like gifts we brought from journeys. Rosh Hashanah is always like coming home – just as Pesach was always going on a journey.

“How do we find our Divine Parent who is in Heaven? How do we find our Parent who is in Heaven? By good deeds and the study of Torah.

“How does the Blessed Holy One find us – through love, through brotherhood, through respect, through companionship, through truth, through peace, through bending the knee, through humility, through more study, through less commerce, through the personal service to our teachers, through discussion among the students, through a good heart, through decency, through No that is really No, and through Yes that is really Yes.” (Midrash Seder Eliyahu Rabbah 23)

Noam Zion is a senior fellow emeritus of the Kogod Research Centre at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He has developed study guides on Bible, holidays and rabbinic ethics. His publications and worldwide lectures have focused on “homemade Judaism” – empowering families to create their own pluralistic Judaism. This article was originally published in 2014; it is adapted from his Rosh Hashanah seder. Articles by Zion and other Hartman Institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.

About the art on the cover of the JI’s Rosh Hashanah issue

Merle Linde, working out of Malka’s Studio in Steveston Village, chose four symbols of Rosh Hashanah for her painting.

The shofar: the mournful cry, sounded 100 times during the traditional Rosh Hashanah service, evokes the freedom we gained when we returned to the Holy Land.

The pomegranate: a symbol of righteousness, knowledge and wisdom because it is said to have 613 seeds (arils), each representing one of the 613 mitzvot (commandments) of the Torah.

The apples: slices dipped into honey are eaten to symbolize the desire for a sweet new year.

The honey: given to us by the bees, who can inflict pain with their sting and yet produce delicious honey. Linde would suggest that we eat only “sustainable” honey (the food of the bees) so that the bees can survive and continue to pollinate the pomegranate and apple trees.

L’shanah tovah u’metukah! Wishes for a good and sweet new year.

Importance of food in celebration

A round challah symbolizes a long life, or the unbroken circle of the full new year to come. (photo by Przemyslaw Wierzbowski)

On Rosh Hashanah, we are supposed to feast. Why? This is said to come from the passage in the book of Nehemiah (8:10): “Go your way, eat the fat and drink the sweet, and send portions unto him for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy unto our lord.”

Round, sweet challah

The most common Rosh Hashanah custom for Ashkenazi Jews is the making of sweet challah, primarily round in shape, to symbolize a long life or the unbroken circle of the full new year to come. Some people place a ladder made of dough on top of the loaf, so our prayers may ascend to heaven, or because it is decided on Rosh Hashanah “who shall be exalted and who shall be brought low.” Some place a bird made of dough on top, derived from the phrase in Isaiah: “as birds hovering so will the Lord of Hosts protect Jerusalem.”

According to John Cooper, in Eat and Be Satisfied: A Social History of Jewish Food, the tradition in disparate Jewish communities of baking fresh loaves of bread on a Friday morning has its roots in the talmudic era. The custom was ignored by medieval rabbinic commentators, he writes, but was revived by the Leket Yosher, a report compiled by Joseph ben Moses in the 1400s on the teachings and practices of his teacher, Austrian Rabbi Israel Isserlin; and by Rabbi Moses Isserles, the 16th-century Polish scholar of halachah, at the end of the Middle Ages.

According to Jewish tradition, the three Sabbath meals (Friday night, Saturday lunch and Saturday late afternoon) and two holiday meals (one at night and lunch the following day) each begin with two complete loaves of bread. This “double loaf” (lechem mishneh) commemorates the manna that fell from the heavens when the Israelites wandered in the desert after the Exodus. The manna did not fall on Sabbath or holidays; instead, a double portion would fall the day before the holiday or Sabbath.

Pomegranate blessings

photo - The pomegranate is eaten to remind us that G-d should multiply our credit of good deeds, like the seeds of the fruit — The pomegranate is eaten to remind us that G-d should multiply our credit of good deeds, like the seeds of the fruit. (photo from pxhere.com)

On the second evening of Rosh Hashanah, it is customary to eat a new fruit not yet eaten in the season and recite the Shehechiyanu, a prayer of thanksgiving for the first time something happens. It is said that, in Europe, this fruit was often grapes; in Israel today and around the diaspora, it is often the pomegranate.

The pomegranate is eaten to remind us that G-d should multiply our credit of good deeds, like the seeds of the fruit. For many Jews, pomegranates are traditional for Rosh Hashanah. Some believe the dull and leathery skinned crimson fruit may have really been the tapuach, apple, of the Garden of Eden. The word pomegranate means “grained apple.” In Hebrew, it is called rimon – also the word for a hand grenade!

Some say each pomegranate has 613 seeds for the 613 mitzvot, or good deeds, we should observe.

Symbolism of fish

The first course of the Rosh Hashanah holiday meal is often fish. Fish is symbolic of fruitfulness: “may we be fruitful and multiply like fish.” Fish is also a symbol of immortality, a good theme for the New Year, as are the ideas that we should aim to be a leader (the head) and that we hope for the best (to be at the top). Another reason for serving fish might be that the numerical value of the letters of the Hebrew word for fish, dag, is seven and Rosh Hashanah begins on the seventh month of the year.

Importance of tzimmes

Tzimmes is a stew made with or without meat and usually with prunes and carrots. It is common among Ashkenazi Jews, particularly those from Eastern Europe and Poland, and its origins date back to Medieval times. It became associated with Rosh Hashanah because the Yiddish word for carrot is mehren, which is similar to mehrn, which means to increase. The idea was to increase one’s merits at this time of year. Another explanation for eating tzimmes with carrots for Rosh Hashanah is that the German word for carrot was a pun on the Hebrew word, which meant to increase.

Tzimmes also has come into the vernacular as meaning to make a fuss or big deal. As in, they’re making such a tzimmes out of everything.

Lekach & other sweets

Among Ashkenazim, sweet desserts for Rosh Hashanah are customary, particularly lekach, or honey cake, and teiglach, the hard, doughy, honey and nut cookie. Some say the origin of the sweets comes from the passage in the book of Hosea (3:1): “love cakes of raisins.” There is also a passage in Samuel II (6:10) that talks about the multitudes of Israel, men and women, “to every one a cake of bread and a cake made in a pan and a sweet cake.”

Ezra was the fifth-century BCE religious leader who was commissioned by the Persian king to direct Jewish affairs in Judea and Nehemiah was a political leader and cup bearer of the king in the fifth century BCE. They are credited with telling the returned exiles to eat and drink sweet things.

According to Cooper’s Eat and Be Satisfied, references to honey cake were made in the 12th century by a French sage, Simcha of Vitry, author of the Machzor Vitry, and by the 12th-century German rabbi, Eleazar Judah ben Kalonymos. By the 16th century, lekach was known as a Rosh Hashanah sweet.

Among the Lubavitch Chassidim, it was customary for the rebbe to distribute lekach to his followers; others would request a piece of honey cake from one another on Erev Yom Kippur. This transaction symbolized a substitute for any charity the person might choose to receive, like the traditional kapparot ceremony, where, before Yom Kippur, one transfers their sins to a chicken.

Some Sephardi customs

Food customs differ among Jews whose ancestors came from Spain and Portugal, the Mediterranean area and primarily Muslim Arab countries. For example, whereas Ashkenazim dip apple in honey, some Sephardim traditionally serve mansanada, an apple compote, as an appetizer and dessert, according to Gil Marks (z”l) in The World of Jewish Desserts.

Just as gefilte fish became a classic dish for the Ashkenazi Jews, baked sheep’s head became a symbol – dating back to the Middle Ages – for many Sephardi Jews for Rosh Hashanah. Some groups merely serve sheep brains or tongue, or a whole fish (with head), probably for the same reason – fruitfulness and prosperity and new wishes for the New Year for knowledge or leadership.

The Talmud mentions the foods to be eaten on Rosh Hashanah as fenugreek, leeks, beets, dates and gourds, although Jewish communities interpret these differently. According to Rabbi Robert Sternberg in The Sephardic Kitchen, Sephardi Jews have a special ceremony around these and sometimes other foods, wherein each one is blessed with a prayer beginning “Yehi ratzon” (Hebrew for “May it be thy will”). The Yehi Ratzones custom involves preparing in advance and then blessing the Talmud-mentioned foods, or dishes made with the foods, as well as over the apples and honey, the fish or sheep head (some substitute a head of lettuce or of garlic) and pomegranate. In doing this, people recognize G-d’s sovereignty and hope He will hear their pleas for a good and prosperous year.

Sybil Kaplan is a Jerusalem-based journalist and author. She has edited/compiled nine kosher cookbooks and is a food writer for North American Jewish publications.

Bafflement part of life

Just as in life outside shul we don’t understand everything we encounter, we don’t all necessarily understand the Torah reading and other parts of the High Holiday service. The High Holidays serve as a metaphor for life itself. (photo from flickr / Lawrie Cate)

Throughout the High Holidays, we repeat in the liturgy pronouncement after pronouncement about our lack of control: we are born against our will, we die against our will, we are but clay in the hands of God, we turn our eyes heavenward as children before a parent, and as slaves before a master. It would be dissonant in such an environment to try to assert our autonomy, to try to shape the experience around our own emotional needs.

And, while we want the High Holidays to be relatable for people, the season by necessity must not be customized to the individual. This is because their meaning lies precisely in the challenge of giving up our individual sense of entitlement in favour of something more important: meaning.

The High Holidays serve as a metaphor for life itself. During this season, we enter into an experience that has been curated for us, that existed before we ever did and which has elements that we are comfortable with and elements that challenge us. I may find myself standing in a synagogue next to people I don’t know, reciting words that I don’t know or would never have written, on a date that means very little to me personally except as a construct of the Jewish calendar.

This is true to life in general: I participate in a world that I don’t completely shape, with others who think differently than I do, within a system that I did not create. We do not choose to be born, nor to which families, nor under what circumstances or accompanied by what baggage. We likewise do not choose what natural successes or tragedies befall us. And, while we do our best to shape our lives, so much of the table is set for us and is beyond our control.

The High Holidays then bid us instead to think about meaning, about the control we do have. If life is not about what we choose, it is about how we choose to engage with what we encounter. We choose how we are going to interpret and how we are going to make meaning of it. How will we choose to see life, and how will our attitudes guide our actions? We may choose to read what we experience charitably or stingily, optimistically, realistically or nihilistically, or more often a messy combination of all of the above. But make no mistake: it is our own choices that will give rise to what we make of those lives that are given to us, to those circumstances that challenge us.

Eschewing a sense of entitlement and control in favour of a sense of meaning and potential is the work of the High Holiday season. It allows us to reflect on how and why we get in our own way, how our sense of entitlement, whether consciously or subconsciously, overrides our good judgment. This helps us to understand the idea of repentance, which is at the core of the High Holidays.

The talmudic sage Rava declared: those who are willing to forgive others easily will likewise be forgiven by God. The language attributed to him is literally, “One who overlooks his/her measurements, [God will overlook all of their sins].” Forgiveness, too, is about letting go of what we may still feel we are owed in favour of building relationships with others. Rather than standing on ceremony over what could have been, I am willing to loosen the reins, to be open to what might emerge. Oftentimes what needlessly keeps us from forgiveness is a focus on what we deserve, what we are entitled to. And, when this happens, we find ourselves once again getting in our own way and holding on to a vision of complete control over what happens or does not happen to us.

Letting go of trying to control the experience is hard. But it can also be liberating. For the High Holiday season, it relieves us of the expectation that we need to relate to everything. More importantly though, for life itself, it relieves us of the expectation of perfection – from ourselves, from others, from life itself.

At the same time, it reminds us of the depth of the human heart and the power of our own will in deciding how we will chart our path forward: that we can come to synagogue not only to be forgiven, but also to forgive; not only to be moved, but to choose to move ourselves.

Wishing all a meaningful New Year.

Dr. Elana Stein Hain is the director of faculty and a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where she serves as lead faculty, directs the activities of the Kogod Research Centre for Contemporary Jewish Thought and consults on the content of lay and professional leadership programs. Articles by Stein Hain and other institute scholars can be found at hartman.org.il. This article was first posted on Times of Israel.

New year, new attitude

One of my twins urges us, after every meal, to offer him dessert. What started as a “desserts on Shabbat, weekends and holidays” and “dessert is a sometimes food” became ”let’s have dessert after nearly every lunch and dinner,” all summer long. He has a sweet tooth. He can often sway us with temptations. It’s hard to resist.

My other twin is often self-limiting when it comes to food. He eats lots of fruits and vegetables, gets full quickly, and often tells his brother, “no, it isn’t a dessert night.” He’s sometimes a little too much into self-denial. It’s a weird sort of sibling pressure and a complicated dichotomy to manage as a parent.

Recently, I studied page 53 of the talmudic tractate Ketubot (marriage contracts). Dr. Sara Ronis offered an introduction from My Jewish Learning. She highlighted an episode in this page of Talmud that describes just how tricky peer pressure can be. It’s a complicated story, so I’m going to summarize Dr. Ronis’s account. Rav Pappa’s son is marrying Abba of Sura’s daughter. They’re writing up the ketubah. Rav Pappa invites his colleague, Yehuda bar Mareimar, along. Abba is a person of limited financial means and Rav Pappa talks through all the potential financial constraints without letting his colleague get a word in edgewise. Then Rav Pappa insists Yehuda should come inside for the ketubah writing.

Yehuda sits silently. Abba feels worried that Yehuda is angry with him. Abba feels pressured and writes an enormous amount of dowry into the marriage contract. It’s all the money he has. Then Abba says (paraphrasing here): “What, you still won’t talk? I have nothing left!”

Yehuda sees the damage and finally speaks up. “Well, don’t act for my sake, this isn’t OK with me.” Then Abba says to Yehuda, “OK, I’m going to retract this.” Then the kicker comes. Yehuda responds (again paraphrasing): “I didn’t speak up so you would be ‘that kind’ of person who retracts a legal document.”

Essentially, this story is a tragedy about social pressure. Even silence can wreck things when a person is very sensitive to peer pressure and power dynamics.

In the great dessert debate at my house, I’ve observed how variable brothers who love each other can be when it comes to this kind of pressure. I’ve got one twin like Rav Pappa (talks a blue streak, seems occasionally clueless and sometimes applies pressure when it comes to dessert) and another kid, maybe like Abba, who is overly self-conscious and senses his parents’ hesitancy. He feels the social pressures so strongly that he overdoes it and self-limits sometimes even when the dessert is offered.

Over the High Holy Days every year, we’re listing a whole slew of sins and failures. Even though the landscape has changed and some of us may be streaming services rather than attending in person, the liturgy doesn’t change. Some of us feel heavily concerned and pressured to repent for the community for every sin on the list, even the ones that well, frankly, we couldn’t possibly have committed. Others of us are not engaged or aware of the pressure, possibly still out in the metaphorical synagogue hallway during services, still trying to cut deals or make potential business connections with others.

It used to be, in a pre-pandemic world, in many congregations, that women would wear new clothing and new hats, in a “see and be seen” Jewish New Year version of the Easter Parade. The pressure to dress up in a certain way is another kind of social pressure.

Perhaps the first step towards understanding the complexity of our social pressures and how to manage these interactions is to recognize that they exist. Once you “see” some of these issues, it’s hard to un-see them. We can then begin to reflect on how to manage the pressures and do better.

I’ll be honest. Although I love dessert, I also have the self-limiting guilty dessert tendencies. Finding that “middle ground” between the all-dessert-all-the-time routine and the “we don’t deserve dessert’” is a path we all may struggle to find. Acknowledging this dynamic and saying out loud that Twin A should stop pressuring us to eat sweets and Twin B should allow himself a scoop of chocolate ice cream sometimes – this is part of speaking and observing this aloud.

When my kids attended Chabad preschool, their birthday parties included cupcakes with lots of icing and a special moment. Each year, the teacher would ask my twins what new mitzvah (commandment) they would take on to celebrate their new age. Like Rosh Hashanah, it was a new year and a chance for self-reflection. The answers of 2-, 3- or 4-year-olds were typically funny ones, but the social pressure was realistic and pushed them towards doing good things. It was often something like, “I’m going to be nicer to my brother” or “I’m going to try to hit people less when I’m angry.”

Sometimes I wonder if we, as adults, could use the pandemic changes to step back, recognize the social complexities around us, and treat Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur differently. It’s a whole new year, like those preschool party mitzvah choices. We might experience vastly different things from social situations. We may be heavily influenced by powerful people like Yehuda bar Mareimar. Perhaps we’ve been overexcited and clueless like Rav Pappa. Or, like Abba of Sura, we lose everything because we feel pressured to do things against our own best interests.

Here’s to a meaningful, restful and contemplative holiday, full of love and, yes, good food, including – moderate amounts of – dessert. Wishing you a sweet, honey-filled and happy 5783!

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.