How To Eat Like a Jew on Rosh Hashanah

I blame Rosh Hashanah for the fact that this blog entry is a day late. The Jewish New Year is so involved. It’s not like the secular new year, where traditions include champagne and a party.

Instead, it’s a joyous but serious occasion that involves synagogue services and starting the personal spiritual process that culminates ten days later in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement: re-evaluating one’s actions of the past year, righting any mistakes made, and re-connecting with those one has wronged. You can’t write or cook or clean or shop on Rosh Hashanah, rules whose inconvenience is exacerbated by the fact that the High Holidays tend to fall around the beginning of the school year.

So, yeah, Rosh Hashanah, my tardiness? Your fault. If I hadn’t spent so much time going to services and eating delicious, traditional foods, and eating some more delicious, traditional foods, I… uh, what was I saying again?

Aw, who am I kidding? I can’t stay mad at you.

And if you don’t want to stay mad at Rosh Hashanah either, here is how to eat like a Jew for the lunar new year.

Apples and Honey: Apples and honey are eaten on Rosh Hashanah to symbolize the wish for a sweet new year. Why apples? Probably because they were in season in Eastern Europe where many Ashkenazi Jewish traditions come from. Also, their tartness is pretty yummy alongside the honey’s floral sweetness. Just sayin’.

Instructions:

1. The obvious goal of eating apples and honey is to consume maximum honey with minimum apple. To that end, find the smallest slice of apple you can. This will be difficult, because everyone else eating the kiddush after synagogue services/taking slices from the tray the Hebrew school teacher is passing around/at your family’s post-synagogue lunch is trying to do the same thing. Get there first.
2. But wait! There’s a trap. Because so many apples were cut up at once, a lot of pieces have seeds or sneaky hard bits of core that you won’t notice until you grab one. Choose carefully.
3. Using your fingers to dip the apple is for amateurs. Squeeze bottles are optimal but seldom provided. If you’re at home, there’ll be a jar or pot of honey. If not, it’s probably a shallow plastic bowl. Use a honey thing if there is one; if not, steal a plastic spoon. Cover every inch of that sucker in gooey, golden sweetness, except the teeny corner held by your fingers.
4. Accidentally get honey on your fingers anyway.
5. Get honey on your the fingers on your other hand when the loaded apple starts drizzling honey over the tablecloth on its way from honey jar to mouth.
6. Try and fail to stop honey from dripping down your hand and arm as you consume your apple slice.
7. In an act of desperation, cram the whole slice into your mouth even though it’s big enough for two bites. Get honey on your sleeve/dress/skirt/pants anyway.
8. Try to find somewhere to clean your sticky fingers. Paper serviettes surrender sticky confettis to your skin. There’s a line  for the bathroom. Maybe you can get a glass of water? The water fountain?
9. Next time, take a plate and put it under the honeyed apple on its journey from honey to mouth. Ha! Only one hand this time, stickiness!
10. But all the honey oozed off onto the plate.
11. It’s probably okay to lick it off if no one’s looking, right?
12. I’m sure my nose will stop being sticky soon.

Honey Cake: Like apples and honey above, honey cake also symbolizes the wish for a sweet new year.

Instructions:

If eating honey cake at someone’s home:

1. Enjoy. It will is probably homemade or purchased at a good bakery and delicious.

If eating honey cake after services at synagogue:

1. Note that there are two kinds of cake on the platter. The honey cake is there because it’s traditional. So why did the kiddush organizer order the other kind instead of two honey cakes? Because the other kind is better.
2. If you don’t actually want cake, you can demonstrate #1 by waiting ten minutes until all the other cake is gone but all the honey cake is still there, piled in dry, brown cubes.
3. Take a piece of the good cake while you can.
4. Bubbie’s honey cake is better, so be traditional after lunch instead.

Challah: It’s traditional on most Jewish holidays to bless and eat challah (egg bread) before the meal — it’s kind of part of what makes a meal in traditional Judaism. On Rosh Hashanah, the challahs are baked into round loaves to symbolize the continuity of creation (my generation read: the Circle of Life), and they often have raisins in them to symbolize — you guessed it — a sweet new year. Sometimes, you eat it with honey.

Instructions:

1. Be excited that round challah pieces are way bigger than regular loaf pieces…
2. … until someone cuts them into quarters to make them smaller than regular loaf pieces.
3. Pick out all the raisins. Put them aside.
4. Even if someone points out that you picked out all the raisins, there will be enough people around who don’t like raisins that you’ll get away with it.
5. Otherwise, eye the pieces carefully to find the one with the least raisins.
6. If honey is available, drizzle as much as possible on the bread. Do not dip the bread in the honey by hand — you will lose crumbs and gain nothing but sadness.
7. Consume with considerably less mess than the apples and honey.

Pomegranate: It’s traditional to try a new fruit at the beginning of the year. The pomegranate in particular is popular because , traditionally, the pomegranate is thought to have 613 seeds, the same number of overall commandments* received from G-d.

1. Take a piece of pomegranate on your plate.
2. Be unsure how to eat the pomegranate. You only eat part of it, you know that. Is it just the seeds?
3. One of your Hebrew-school friends told you the actual seeds were poisonous and you’re only supposed to eat the red stuff around them. At least, you’re pretty sure they did.
4. Maybe if you eat the seeds, you’ll die.
5. They wouldn’t put out something that might kill you on the table where kids could get it, would they?
6. I mean, really, they wouldn’t, right?
7. Eat the red stuff and carefully place seeds on your plate.
8. Miss one seed and notice only when you feel the crunch.
9. OMG YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!!!!1!!!!!
10. Do not die.
11. Fail to get the last couple of seeds out of the inner workings of the pomegranate.
12. Forget the stupid pomegranate and go get a cooler “new” fruit like litchi or sugar apples.

Fish Heads: Fish heads symbolize the beginning of the year — “Rosh Hashanah” literally means “head of the year,” so we eat the head of a fish. Oy. Puns.

Instructions:

1. Maybe reconsider trying the pomegranate.

Shana tova (belated) and g’mar chatimah tova!

* Yes, Jews still share the Ten Commandments with other Judeo-Christian religions. 613 is the total number, not just the big ones on the two tablets Charlton Heston makes look so picturesque. Remember, there’s still, like, three whole books of the Old Testament after that part happens, with Moses chilling on Mount Sinai and getting more of the scoop from G-d.