Adath Jeshurun

Rosh Hashanah Customs

Reprinted with per­mis­sion. For more about Jew­ish hol­i­days and Jew­ish life, visit MyJewishLearning.com.

By Rabbi Jill Jacobs

More than any other Jew­ish hol­i­days, the High Hol­i­days take place in the syn­a­gogue. While most Jews asso­ciate Passover, Hanukkah, and Shab­bat pri­mar­ily with home cel­e­bra­tions, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kip­pur con­jure up mem­o­ries of hours spent in services.

But these synagogue-based hol­i­days can be enhanced through home rit­u­als that add mean­ing to the mes­sages of the day. Here are some ideas, old and new, for bring­ing the lessons and themes of Rosh Hashanah into your home.

Foods for a Sweet Year

As with most Jew­ish hol­i­days, food is the focus of home cel­e­bra­tions of Rosh Hashanah. Fam­i­lies and friends gather for extended meals, which include tra­di­tional foods, such as apples and chal­lah dipped in honey. Honey, a sym­bol of the wish for a sweet new year, also appears in other hol­i­day foods, such as tayglach—-a honey and nut pastry—-and honey cake. The chal­lah, nor­mally braided, is round, as a reminder of the never-ending cycle of life.

Like other fes­ti­val and Shab­bat meals, the Rosh Hashanah meal begins with Kid­dush, the sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion of the day over the wine. Both at din­ner and at lunch, the Rosh Hashanah Kid­dush includes a ref­er­ence to the sho­far, the most promi­nent sym­bol of the holiday.

In some fam­i­lies, it is tra­di­tional to serve the head of a fish or lamb (though meat sub­sti­tutes would also do the trick for veg­e­tar­i­ans) in the hope that every­one at the table will be at the “head” and not at the “tail” of what­ever they do in the new year. You might add per­sonal mean­ing to these rit­u­als by ask­ing every­one at the table to offer a wish for the new year as he or she dips the apple or chal­lah in honey.

New Fruit

On the sec­ond night of Rosh Hashanah, it is com­mon to eat a “new fruit”–a fruit that par­tic­i­pants have not tasted for a long time. This tra­di­tion has become a way lit­er­ally to taste the new­ness of the year, by enjoy­ing an unfa­mil­iar food. Often, a pome­gran­ate is used as the new fruit, as the pome­gran­ate is said to have 613 seeds, cor­re­spond­ing to the 613 mitzvot. The pome­gran­ate has also long been a sym­bol of fer­til­ity, and thus of the unlim­ited pos­si­bil­i­ties for the new year.

The tra­di­tion of eat­ing a new fruit need not, how­ever, be restricted to pome­gran­ates. Instead, this rit­ual can be an excuse for scout­ing out the “exotic fruit” sec­tion of the pro­duce depart­ment, or explor­ing fruit mar­kets to find fruits that fam­ily mem­bers have not before tasted. (Inter­est­ingly, the cus­tom devel­oped as a tech­ni­cal solu­tion to a legal dif­fi­culty sur­round­ing the recita­tion of the she­he­hiyanu bless­ing on the sec­ond day of the hol­i­day. The bless­ing, usu­ally recited to com­mem­o­rate a new sit­u­a­tion, is said on the sec­ond day of Rosh Hashanah both in honor of the day and the new fruit.)

Pun Food

A num­ber of other food-based rit­u­als can also enliven the home cel­e­bra­tion of Rosh Hashanah. Sephardic com­mu­ni­ties (which trace their ances­try to Mediter­ranean lands) have devel­oped a Rosh Hashanah seder, which revolves around the eat­ing of sym­bolic foods and the recita­tion of prayers that trans­form these foods into wishes for the com­ing year.

Many of these prayers are based on Hebrew puns involv­ing the food in ques­tion. For instance, the prayers before eat­ing a date (tamar in Hebrew) includes the phrase “yitamu hataim”–may the wicked cease. Before eat­ing pump­kin or squash (k’ra’a in Hebrew), Sephardim say “yikaru l’fanekha z’khuyoteinu”–may our good deeds call out our merit before you–. Alter­na­tively, they might use the resem­blance between the word “k’ra’a”–“pumpkin” and the word “kara”–to cut or rip–to express the hope that any bad deeds will be ripped out of God’s book.

Other sym­bolic foods include leeks and onions, which are asso­ci­ated with the exo­dus from Egypt; beets, whose Ara­maic name “silka,” sim­i­lar to the Hebrew “salak”–go away– is used to express the hope that our ene­mies dis­ap­pear; and peas or beans, men­tioned in the Tal­mud as “ruviah,” a word that sounds like the Hebrew “to increase,” and there­fore indi­cates a desire for increased bless­ings in the new year.

The foods eaten and puns used change from com­mu­nity to com­mu­nity, accord­ing to the types of veg­eta­bles avail­able and the inher­ited tra­di­tions. In plan­ning your own Rosh Hashanah menu, you can be cre­ative in devel­op­ing your own Eng­lish puns. For instance, you might eat raisins to com­mit to “raisin’ your expec­ta­tions for the new year” or peas in the hope of increased peace. Your salad might be a chance to say, “Let­tuce find hap­pi­ness in the new year,” or “We will beet any obsta­cles that come our way,” or to remind your­self to say “Olive you” to fam­ily and friends. Chil­dren can be involved in cre­at­ing puns and devis­ing a menu based on these newly-symbolic foods.

Repent­ing

Prepa­ra­tion for Rosh Hashanah, as well as the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kip­pur, can also include dis­cus­sions of the mean­ing of teshu­vah [repen­tance] and fam­ily res­o­lu­tions for the new year. This may be a time for sib­lings, par­ents, and chil­dren to apol­o­gize to one another for inci­dents dur­ing the pre­vi­ous year and to make promises for the com­ing year. Chil­dren may also make up lists of class­mates, friends, and fam­ily mem­bers to whom they wish to apol­o­gize, and adults may make sim­i­lar lists of friends, co-workers, fam­ily mem­bers and others.

Many peo­ple have the cus­tom of send­ing Rosh Hashanah cards to loved ones. Chil­dren can be involved in choos­ing or draw­ing these cards, and older chil­dren may also write per­sonal mes­sages in some of the cards. Chil­dren may also cre­ate their own cards for fam­ily mem­bers and for their own friends. In some fam­i­lies, it is tra­di­tional to take fam­ily pic­tures before each Rosh Hashanah. Com­par­ing this pic­ture to the pic­ture from the pre­vi­ous year can serve as an oppor­tu­nity to talk about what has changed over the course of the year.

The first day of Rosh Hashanah (or the sec­ond day if the hol­i­day begins on Shab­bat) includes the tash­likh cer­e­mony, in which we sym­bol­i­cally toss away our sins by throw­ing bread crumbs into a body of run­ning water. To make this rit­ual more con­crete, you might help your chil­dren to make a list before­hand of the things they want to throw away. As part of tash­likh, you can throw this piece of paper in the trash (not in the water, where the paper will just be a pol­lu­tant.) You can also turn the prepa­ra­tion for tash­likh into an art project. Chil­dren can paint, with water­col­ors, what they wish to get rid of in the com­ing year. When you float the draw­ings in water, these unwanted habits will mag­i­cally disappear.

To empha­size the new­ness of the year, you might try doing some­thing new right before or after the hol­i­day. For instance, you might learn a new game, visit a place you’ve never been, or try a new hobby. Many peo­ple buy new clothes for the hol­i­day and wear these clothes for the first time on Rosh Hashanah. Enjoy­ing a new expe­ri­ence or acquir­ing new knowl­edge can spark a con­ver­sa­tion about what else new might hap­pen in the com­ing year.

Rosh Hashanah can be an oppor­tu­nity for reflect­ing on the year that has passed and set­ting goals for the year to come. Tak­ing time for such reflec­tion can make the themes of the hol­i­day come alive for the entire family.