Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Dip the apple in the honey. Hi, I'm Rabbi Nachum Albin, and welcome to do it yourself Judaism, where we learn about practical Judaism in your own place, at your own pace. Welcome back to episode three. So we'll continue to talk today about some of the significant foods of Rosh Hashanah. Many people have heard of dipping an apple in honey. Where does that come from? What's a little bit behind that?
[00:00:30] The Talmud talks about the fact that there are certain foods that have significance, and the idea has been explained by many that eating the food is not kind of a magic trick that gives us a happy, healthy, sweet new year.
[00:00:48] It always is about our emotions and our connection to goddess. But these sweet foods remind us to express our deepest desires to God, our prayers, our thoughts, that we want a happy, healthy, sweet new year. We want all these wonderful things that are talked about, and they push us to give appropriate blessing, appropriate thanks, and appropriate request to God for these things. So the first is the apple. The apple and honey. That's the sweet. We talked last time about the significance of the apple. Apple has additional significance besides reflecting in the name of God. The world to come is called, in kabbalistic thought, a field of apples and the idea of having a sweet food and a sweet new year. We're praying for a sweet new year. We want this year to be a sweet, healthy, happy, good year for us and all juice some of the other traditional foods that are eaten. Just going through a list in a rosh hashanah prayer book at random.
[00:01:57] The carrots. Carrots, based on the yiddish word for carrots is marin. Marin sounds even in English like more. We ask God to increase our merits, to let things. What does that mean, increase our merits? If we did a mitzvah, we did a mitzvah. If we didn't, we didn't. The idea is that when you do a mitzvah, how did you do it? Did you do it because you had to? You helped someone cross the street? You held open the door for an elderly person because you have to with a groan, with a grumble. So you did the mitzvah. But that type of mitzvah is somewhat crippled.
[00:02:33] You could do the same mitzvah with enthusiasm, with excitement, with zest. That's a lively, pumping, excited mitzvah. So we ask God to increase our merits. Look at all our mitzvahs as if they're excited, full of life, and giving us the strength and vitality needed for the next year.
[00:02:51] Some of the foods. Leek or cabbage in Aramaic, the language of the Talmud is called karthi, which is a reference to yikartu, cut off. We ask that our enemies be cut off. Enemies mean the spiritual, our desire for potential, desire for evil as well as physical. Enemies be cut off. The same with beets in Aramaic. Our silka, she is tal ku, that they should be removed. Our enemies should be removed.
[00:03:22] And dates are called tamar. In Hebrew, Tamar is a date.
[00:03:28] It's similar to the word the have finished. Our enemies should be finished from bothering us. Finished off. Now, those were three that reflected our enemies being removed.
[00:03:43] There's a custom to have gourd as well. So that could be a piece of pumpkin or some other form of squash, butternut, whatnot. And chara is the aramaic word for gourdez. And we ask that God, this is a double one, that anything that is evil should be torn up. Kara is the hebrew word for torn. The evil parts of our decree should be torn, and that our merits should be read in front of God and take the effect that we want. A famous one that many may have heard of is the pomegranate. Pomegranate, besides for being one of the seven traditional foods of the land of Israel, has many, many seeds. Some like to say it has 613 seeds. Like the number of mitzvahs I've never counted, there definitely seem to be a lot of seeds. I don't know that every pomegranate has 613. Check it out yours and let me know. But there, we just reflect on the amount of seeds in the pomegranate. You open it up and wow, there's so many seeds. And we want to ask God to give us the opportunities that we have as many merits as the pomegranate. We want to be full of mitzvahs, of good jewish deeds as we can be.
[00:04:54] Fish is eaten. The idea of a fish is fish multiply, lots. To Nifre vanIrbekidagim, we multiply and increase as fish in the sea. And finally, the traditional ones is the head of a fish, or the head of a lamb is eaten, or a piece of the head. It could be a piece of tongue, it could be some, you know, get a whole fish, whole smoked fish that you can put. We've started to get now, and that's right, is that we should be for the head, not for the tail. We should always be leading in our Judaism. We're not just following along and doing just because we should be using our head and focusing, growing in our Judaism now, being as a lot of these are plays and words. The custom has developed in many communities to add various other foods like this that, based on a play of words, are asking for a merit for us. For the new year. There was in the Ukraine, the Jews would give their children chicken livers on rosh hashanah. Chicken liver in Yiddish is called leber leberlach and it sounds very similar to the yiddish word. Yiddish phrase leb live erlach righteously or uprightly. Live your life honestly and uprightly and don't you know, without finagling or cheating, which is a good message for the new year. Over the years there have been some that have been developed in English as well. So for example, a starfruit. You can ask God for us to be like the stars of the sky, which was his original promise to Abraham. And I'll include in the notes a list of the ones we've mentioned as well as some others. There's a little bit of license here to find something that speaks to you and helps you formulate, inspires you to pray to God for good, healthy, happy, sweet new year.
[00:07:00] Thank you for listening. Be sure to hit the follow button so you'll get the next episodes as they come out.
[00:07:08] Your questions and comments inspire my next episodes, so reach out to nachamalbintorahub.org nachumalbinorahub.org and you'll be the inspiration of the next episode. Till then, have a great one.
