Shana Tova! To a good year!
The Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, begins tonight at sundown, and to celebrate Jews around the world will sit down this evening for a joyous feast with family and friends to begin two days of festivities and prayer. While the dishes on those tables will vary depending on cultural and geographic customs, many of the traditional Rosh Hashanah foods are symbolic, reflecting the desire to be sealed for a sweet, healthy new year. In fact, the Jewish culinary scholar, chef, and rabbi Gil Marks writes in his authoritative Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, "No other holiday has more symbolic foods than Rosh Hashanah."
So what's on the menu? Here's a look at the meaning behind some traditional Rosh Hashanah standards:
Round challah: During the rest of the year, the braided sabbath bread is an oblong loaf, but the tradition among Ashkenazi Jews from Central and Eastern Europe is to eat a round challah, often studded with raisins or dried fruit, for the new year. The circular shape represents the continuous cycle of the year, while the morsels of fruit are symbolic of the hopes for a sweet new year. To make life even sweeter, after saying the customary prayer over the challah, the bread is broken and dipped in honey, instead of in salt as is done during the rest of the year.
Apples and Honey: So essential is the practice of dipping apples in honey at the Rosh Hashanah table that many families have special honey pots shaped like apples that they only bring out once a year. According to author Gil Marks, the practice of dipping apples in honey comes from twelfth-century France, where celebrants ate red apples for Rosh Hashanah to symbolize everything "new and bright." Today the practice is continued, recited with the phrase "May it be Your will to renew us for a good and sweet new year." Among some Sephardic Jews, the practice is to first dip the apples in lemon juice and then in sugar.
Pomegranates: Many families put out pomegranate seeds on their Rosh Hashanah tables to symbolize fertility, or, in other interpretations, the desire to have one's worthiness increased over the course of the year like the bounty of seeds inside the fruit.
Tzimmes: This thick, sweet stew of root vegetables is a popular Sabbath dish among many European Jews, but it's a regular on the Rosh Hashanah table because of its sweetness. Another explanation connects the custom to one of the dish's main ingredients, the carrot. Yiddish for carrot is merren, which also means to increase, making tzimmes another symbolic culinary prayer for a prosperous new year.
Leeks: After dipping apples in honey, Persian Jews, who follow a seder (which means order) in their Rosh Hashanah dinners, then "tear a piece of leek — meaning to rip the enemy apart — and then throw the leek over our shoulder," cookbook author Reyna Simnegar, recently explained to Tablet Magazine.
Lamb or Sheep: In some communities it's traditional to display a lamb or sheep head on the holiday table to symbolize that the diners should be at the "head and not the tail" (taken from Deuteronomy). The lamb also recalls Abraham and Isaac's sacrifice of the ram. The lamb head is often baked and eaten as part of the meal; in other communities, fish with the head still on is served, acting as a similar symbol.
Honey cake: For more sweetness for the new year, honey cake (or lekach) is a staple of the Ashkenazic Rosh Hashanah table. It's usually prepared without any dairy so it can be eaten in the same meal with meat without violating kosher restrictions against combining milk and meat.
For more reading:
Encyclopedia of Jewish Food by Gil Marks
The Book of Jewish Foodby Claudia Roden
Spice and Spirit: The Complete Kosher Jewish Cookbookby Esther Blau, Tzirrel Deitsch, and Cherna Light