Book of Days

Tonight’s setting sun brings a new year in the Jewish calendar. It is Rosh Hashanah. It begins with the sounding of the shofar, a hollowed out ram’s horn, which gives the day another common name: the Feast of Trumpets. The celebration of the new year concludes ten days from now with solemn Yom Kippur; these are the high holidays/holydays of the Jewish calendar.

What I know of Rosh Hashanah is little, but what I love best are the simple things. Years ago at this time of year, at one of the local bakeries near to where my family lives, we would find pie tins full of honey-dipped balls of fried dough mixed with cherries and chopped nuts: Teiglach is its name, we found, and it was part of the Rosh Hashanah celebration, but we would bring it home each year because it reminded us of the struffoli we would make for Christmas. Teiglach provided an early autumn precursor of our delicious honeyed Italian yuletide dessert. And one September not long ago, Seth and I and the rest of my family got to share a Rosh Hashanah celebration with our niece’s family. There was homemade challah bread, round to symbolize the circle of the year, and there were apples dipped in honey, to symbolize a sweet year ahead.

There was much more, I know. There were prayers, and there were pressed linens, and there were more elaborate things to eat on the table. But it is the bread and the apples and the honey that I remember best. The simple things. Happy new year: Shanah Tovah.

Image: Recipe for Taglach (which seems to me for sure like a variant spelling of Teiglach) from Pearl Silberg’s handwritten recipe book, which I made facsimile copies of some years back at the request of her daughter Rita. She was giving the books to her own children, Pearl’s grandkids. I couldn’t resist making myself a copy, too.

With the setting sun this evening comes, in the Jewish tradition, a new day… and, with this particular setting sun, a new year. It is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. “Shanah Tovah” is the most common greeting you’ll hear, a wish for a good year. This is the beginning of a period of reflection and repentance that concludes with the solemn Yom Kippur, ten days later.

Rosh Hashanah begins with the sounding of the the shofar, a hollowed ram’s horn, and for some, the day is known as the Feast of Trumpets. This (as an aside) always reminds me of my mom and dad’s old neighbor, Tony, who used to say in Italian, “Quando i suoni di tromba…”  meaning, When the trumpet sounds, well… then that’s it, your time is up. So you’d better make things right with God and make things right with the people you love, and maybe even the people you don’t quite care for.

Micah 7:19 reads, “You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea,” and you may find people at the water’s edge during Rosh Hashanah, casting bread into the sea, each bit of bread carrying some of those sins. And with dinner tonight: a round loaf of challah, round to symbolize the circle of the year (as one year ends, another year begins), and, of course, apples dipped in honey. This, for a sweet year ahead.

Image: Feast of Trumpets by Aleksander Gierymski. Oil on canvas, 1884, [Public domain] via WikiMedia Commons.