Rosh Hashanah Musings

Dear Chevralah,

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins tonight at sundown. It’s a solemn one sans champagne and toasts. In my family, it’s always been a little different as well. Instead of a feeling of celebration, it’s always been tinged with a sadness that started long before I was born.

No Flowers

While fresh flowers grace our Shabbat table every week, with extra-large arrangements on nearly all the Jewish holidays, when I was growing up there was one rule in my house for Rosh Hashanah, and it never changed: no flowers. Not a bouquet, not a plant, not a single stem. After we moved out, we could bring wine, we could bring dessert, we could bring ourselves, but flowers were never an option, and gifts were frowned upon. And so our Rosh Hashanah table stayed bare.

My mother was twelve years old when her mother died. It was on Rosh Hashanah. So for as long as I’ve been alive, the New Year has arrived in our family with a yahrzeit wrapped inside it. If you listen closely when the shofar sounds, it always sounds like someone weeping.

I was raised Orthodox, and for the most part, despite all the apples and honey and foods to eat with silly puns, Rosh Hashanah was never one of the fun holidays. Purim gets costumes and delicious treats and silly themes. Sukkot gets a beautifully decorated hut, the closest I’ve ever gotten to glamping. Pesach at least gets a script to follow year after year after century. Rosh Hashanah gets a long service, a book being opened, and ten days to fix yourself before it closes. I spent those days looking over my shoulder for my worse angels, sure they were keeping score.

After October 7, something in me flipped. I don’t want to call it a choice, because it didn’t feel like one. It felt like a compulsion to grab onto my observance with both hands. After the numbness passed, I allowed myself to celebrate holidays with every fiber of my Jewishness. I needed the table full and the candles lit and something sweet in my mouth, and I needed it more the sadder the year got.

As it turns out, that’s the oldest Rosh Hashanah instruction there is.

Eat anyway

In the book of Nehemiah, the former Jewish exiles have come home to a destroyed Jerusalem. On the first of Tishrei they gather to hear the Torah read aloud, and they weep. And they’re told to stop.

ויאמר נחמיה הוא התרשתא ועזרא הכהן הספר והלוים המבינים את העם לכל העם היום קדש הוא לה’ אלהיכם אל תתאבלו ואל תבכו כי בוכים כל העם כשמעם את דברי התורה
ויאמר להם לכו אכלו משמנים ושתו ממתקים ושלחו מנות לאין נכון לו כי קדוש היום לאדנינו ואל תעצבו כי חדות ה’ היא מעזכם

Vayomer Nechemyah hu hatirshata v’Ezra hakohen hasofer v’haLeviyim hamevinim et ha’am l’chol ha’am: hayom kadosh hu l’Hashem Elokeichem, al titablu v’al tivku, ki vochim kol ha’am k’shom’am et divrei haTorah. Vayomer lahem: l’chu ichlu mashmanim ushtu mamtakim v’shilchu manot l’ein nachon lo, ki kadosh hayom la’Adoneinu, v’al te’atzevu, ki chedvat Hashem hi ma’uzchem.

Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were teaching the people said to them all:

This day is holy to the Lord your God.

Do not mourn and do not weep. (For all the people were weeping as they heard the words of the Torah.) Then Nehemiah said to them: Go, eat rich food and drink sweet drinks, and send portions to whoever has nothing prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not be sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. (Nehemiah 8:9–10)

Read it again. Nobody tells them to stop grieving; it’s impossible to even try. But even as they mourn their destroyed holiest city, they’re told to eat anyway and to share with those who have none. Joy, in that passage, is a gift handed to mourners who may have been unfamiliar with the feeling.

Notice too what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say cook. It says eat. This matters to a holiday perfectionist, which I am.

Allowing the jar

For years I believed an authentic holiday required a tureen of soup made after peeling endless vegetables and seasoning and cosseting the chicken before cooking. This year I’m allowing the jar some of the time, at least. Manischewitz (nobody’s paying me to say this) has a new line of shelf-stable soups in 24-ounce jars, chicken matzo ball among them (though tomato rice is my personal fave), plus a heat-and-serve carrot tzimmes and frozen rugelach you bake yourself. It’s a holiday. It counts. Does it taste like your mother made it? No. Does it taste like something that nurtures your pintelah yid (your spark of Jewishness) even in a world that seems determined to try to extinguish us? Yes. Yes, it does. And that’s the part worth celebrating as well. Legacy Jewish brands growing with us and not chasing trends, but embracing our collective roots.

Enjoy sweet drinks (if that’s your thing)

And raise your glass and drink sweet drinks if that’s your thing. I know dry wine is sophisticated and popular, but I love me some beautifully crisp and sweeter wines instead.

Thanks to the fine folks at the Israeli Wine Producers Association (IWPA), I’ve spent the past year or so allowing my unsophisticated palate to enjoy Israeli wine without apologizing for it. Over the past two weeks, most of what I savored was dry, and I liked it anyway. Two recent tastings: Binyamina’s new Sheba line (named after the Queen of Sheba!), a Cabernet and a Sauvignon Blanc from the Upper Galilee and a Marselan from the Lower Galilee, along with their Chosen Sapphire and Diamond, the Reserve Merlot, and The Cave. And Psagot, founded in 2003 in the Jerusalem mountains, where they found an ancient coin during the construction of the modern iteration of the winery. The coin was minted and stamped nearly 2,000 years ago: “For the Freedom of Zion.” They’ve gone from 3,000 bottles a year to about a million. More on both another week. Tonight they’re just what’s on our table. Random, but Psagot Blanc De Blanc is my favorite. It’s champagne without the champagne name.

Eons ago I worked in a Judaica store, and one customer bought the same wedding gift every time and for every newly married couple: a decorative honey dish. In his family, newlyweds kept honey on the table for the first year of their marriage and dipped their challah in it every Shabbat, to remind them that a sweet life is something you work toward. It stuck with me.

That’s the whole holiday, I think. We wish for better. We wish for sweetness. And then we bless our days with it until it takes.

Still no flowers in my family on Rosh Hashanah; it pains my mother too much. But there’s honey on the table, and there’s wine. And there are people we love, and food that carries our family’s traditions and our people’s. That’s where I’ve gotten to. Do what you love with people you love and wish for better moments to be shared.

Shana tova from all of us at RWRN and The Kumzits. May the next year be so much sweeter than this one!

What are your Rosh Hashanah plans this year?