Rosh Hashanah Food Customs

An unusual Rosh Hashanah custom—which is actually mentioned in the Talmud and in other halakhic codes—is making puns on foods. No, the Talmud doesn’t tell us we should make puns; R. Abaye says that each person should eat at the beginning of the year certain foods that have a symbolic significance. But it turns out that the significance the Talmud cites is based on some adroit wordplay—in Aramaic (b. Horayot 12a). We know about the custom of eating pieces of apple dipped in honey, which is symbolic of the hope for a sweet new year. After Nehemiah read the Law to the assembled people on Rosh Hashanah, he sent them home with the advice to "Go your way, eat the fat and drink the sweet..." (Neh. 8:10). Taking the idea of symbolic foods a little further, the Talmud enjoins us that on Rosh Hashanah night we should eat foods whose names suggest good things for the future. The examples the Talmud mentions would not make much sense to us since they are, of course, in Hebrew and Aramaic, but this idea could certainly be extended to whatever language we speak.

To get into the mood, consider these examples. One may eat an avocado in the hope that God might be our advocate, or the thought that “I will pare away my sins in this new year” could be accompanied by eating a pear. But let us not take this too far: “Lettuce look forward to a wonderful year” might be going over the edge. But restraint wasn’t apparently on the mind of one well-known rabbi, who commented that perhaps eating a raisin with a celery stalk could certainly express the hope for “a raise in salary” (attributed to Rav Moshe Heinemann of Baltimore). But more on this later.

There are many celebratory activities that take place at Rosh Hashanah, and many of these take place at the festival table. Not only do we dip apples in honey; it’s traditional to have honey on the table during the festive meals and dip the challah in it, instead of salting it as is done during Shabbat and all other festivals. The Rosh Hashanah challah is different, too. It is round, to signify the cyclic nature of the year. Some even bake raisins into their challah, perhaps again to enhance its sweetness. In some communities the holiday challah may be formed into the shape of a five-runged ladder; the ladder, Hebrew: sulam, in gematria (study of the mystical relationship of words and numbers), has a value of 130, equal to the name “Sinai.” The symbolism refers to Moses’ ascent of Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah, and also to the ascent of prayers to heaven. Another view of the ladder symbolism is a prediction of how people will fare in the coming year—those whose fortunes ascend and those whose fortunes decline.

Many of us are familiar with some or even most of these food customs. But do you know the reasons that underlie these customs? Let’s look at some Rosh Hashanah food customs. The first three are common, but the ones that follow are less so. Much less common. Remember what I said above about puns? Keep that in mind when reading about some of these foods.

• Honey. The symbolism is clear with honey. It represents a wish for a sweet year.

• Apples. This food has a more complex symbolism, and there are several reasons for eating apples. The Hebrew word for “apple” is tapuach and in gematria, tapuach is equivalent to seh akeida, “lamb of the binding.” In the Genesis story of the Binding of Isaac, which in rabbinic tradition took place on Rosh Hashanah, when Isaac observed that they had the materials necessary for the sacrifice but not the sacrificial lamb, Abraham told him that God would provide the lamb for sacrifice. But Abraham knew that his son was to be the sacrifice, was to be the seh akeida. At the last minute, however, God did provide an animal—a ram—for the sacrifice, sparing Isaac (and giving us another tradition concerning the use of the ram’s horn for the shofar). Through the chain of gematria, by eating apples at Rosh Hashanah we symbolically express the hope that some of Abraham’s merit in trusting God will accrue to us, and we will be granted a good year.

  Another reason mentioned by the Rabbis is based on the Torah, where Isaac blessed Jacob by saying, “The fragrance of my son is like the fragrance of a field which Adonai has blessed…” (Gen. 27:27). The Rabbis of the Talmud identified this “field” as an apple orchard (Ta’anit 29b, Biyur Hagra).

• Pomegranates (rimon). The rimon is ripe in the early fall, so it’s a “new” fruit, and it’s also chock full of seeds. Tradition claims that there are as many seeds as there are mitzvot (613), so eating this fruit symbolizes the desire to observe all of the mitzvot. (Try counting the seeds...people who've done it report results pretty close to 613! Who knew?)
• Fish (or even sheep) head. Eating from the fish head (rosh shel dag) or from the head of a sheep symbolizes the desire to be at the “head” or front of any endeavor. The head also symbolizes the intellectual and spiritual rather than the more base qualities with which it may be contrasted. Also, fish are said to multiply quickly, so a blessing is prescribed when eating fish: “May it be Your will that our merits be fruitful and multiply as do the fish.”
• Beets. The Aramaic word for “beets” is salka. In Hebrew, that word suggests the word meaning “to remove,” as in “remove us from sin and temptation,” or even “remove our enemies from us.”
• Leeks. Called karti in Aramaic, it suggests the Hebrew word meaning “to cut down.” Using this word, one could say, “May our misdeeds, our spiritual enemies, be cut down.”
• Dates. Here we have another Aramaic word with a related Hebrew word. The Aramaic tamri is related to the Hebrew meaning “consume.” I’m sure you’re getting into the flow of the symbolism here.

• A variety of squash. Called kera, it’s a homonym to the Hebrew words for “to read” and “to tear,” as in “May You read our merits in the Book before You” or “May You tear up our negative judgments.”
• Carrots. Changing language for a moment, this vegetable is called merren in Yiddish, which also has the connotation of “more,” as in doing more good deeds, having more knowledge, wealth, whatever.
• A variety of green bean. This vegetable is called rubiyah; the word also means “to increase.” I think we’ve covered enough of these; sufficient for a well-stocked festival table!

Eating a new fruit, that is, one that has just come into season or that the family has not eaten in some time, like several months, is a custom that is observed on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, so that one has an additional reason for reciting the sheheheyanu blessing over something new.

One food that is avoided during Rosh Hashanah is nuts. No nuts. Why? According to gematria, the Hebrew for “nut,” egoz, is equivalent to the word for “sin,” chet. But if you try it yourself, and add up the numerical letter values, you’ll find that egoz = 17 but chet = 18. So what’s the problem with nuts, or didn’t the mystics who did this calculation know how to add? Nothing like that—one of the primary gematria tricks (we would call it fudging) was to assign the comparison word itself a value of one, so that the gematria in both cases is 18. if you don’t buy that argument, consider that on Rosh Hashanah we don’t even want to come within shouting distance of a sin, and 17 is awfully close to 18. So just skip the nuts for two days.