Food for Thought

27 Elul, Monday, September 22

Pumpkin, leeks, beets, dates…are these the foods you plan to eat on Rosh Hashanah? In our house, those are the menu items we look forward to the most. Like charoset on Pesach or blintzes on Shavuot, the Jewish tradition provides a special set of ritual foods that are tied to the holiday. And they are, for the most part, fun to eat.

Everyone loves the Pesach seder. And many enjoy a seder celebrating the trees on Tu B’shvat. In the Sephardi community, the tradition of a seder on Rosh Hashanah takes all of our good intentions for the New Year and makes us “eat our words.”

We know that apples and honey are traditional foods for Rosh Hashanah. By eating something sweet, we inaugurate the New Year with an act of sweetness.

It’s not enough to pray that we improve our deeds in the New Year. When we eat the pumpkin, we offer a prayer that any “evil decree’ be torn up and that all of our good deeds be proclaimed  In Hebrew, pumpkin is kara, which sounds a lot like the word for “torn up” and the word for “proclaim.” (We make pumpkin “rugelach” using puff pastry and pumpkin pie filling. Yum!)

Because the Rosh Hashanah seder relies on puns and wordplay, it’s a fun a way to inject humor and delight into your Rosh Hashanah gathering.

From the earliest rabbinic text—the Mishna (c.200 CE)—we read of these simanim. Simanim is the Hebrew word for “signs.” Like a sign on the road, each food points us in the direction of a good New Year.

You can bring this ritual to your own Rosh Hashanah table this year with this handout and host’s guide.  Well worth a visit to this site!

Many people eat pomegranates, because their many seeds remind us of the 613 mitzvot. They offer the promise that in the coming year we will be full of many opportunities to bring goodness and light into the world.

We can use the traditional Hebrew puns, but it’s also fun to make up new ones in English. In addition to the traditional wish for beets in Hebrew, we can hope for a year of peace when we “beat our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks.” Or we can pray for peace by eating peas.

Though the seder officially ends with the head of a sheep (or some substitute the head of a fish), with a wish that we be “at the head and not at the tail,” in our house we place a head of lettuce on the table. Then we all pray for what we hope God will “let us” achieve in the New Year.

All of these foods give us a good start for the New Year, proving once and for all that you are what you eat.

Brisket will never be the same.