One of the most familiar rituals of Rosh Hashanah is dipping a slice of sweet apple into even sweeter honey and reciting the blessing: “May it be Your will, Lord our God, to renew for us a good and sweet year.” There is an alternative tradition of dipping challah in honey to symbolize the hope for a sweet coming year.
Both apples and honey have symbolic resonance in Jewish tradition. Honey has long represented abundance and blessing, perhaps most famously in the Torah’s oft-repeated description of the land of Israel as “flowing with milk and honey.” Similarly, the apple holds positive symbolic meaning in Jewish tradition. In Song of Songs, the apple is a symbol of refreshment and love.
Although the most recognizable edible symbol of the holiday today, apples and honey were not the first symbolic foods eaten by Jews on Rosh Hashanah. The Talmud prescribes (Ketirot 6a) prescribes the eating of gourd, fenugreek, leeks, beets and dates. Commentators explain that each of these grow and multiply quickly, which represents abundance in the coming year. In Sephardi communities, it is traditional to hold a Rosh Hashanah seder and taste all of these foods, which have subsequently been connected to blessings that are based on puns of the Hebrew names of the foods.
The custom of eating apples and honey seems to have developed in the German Ashkenazi Jewish community in the medieval period. The Tur, one of Judaism’s premier law codes, explains:
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Abbaye said: “… a man should accustom himself to eating citron, squash, beans, leeks, beets and dates on Rosh Hashanah.” (Keritot 6a) … And from this grew the customs, every place according to its custom; as in Germany, where they are accustomed to eating sweet apple with honey at the beginning of the meal, to say, “Let this new year be sweet for us.” And in Provence they are accustomed to bring all types of novelties and to eat a sheep’s head and lung, to say, “Let us be at the head and not at the tail;” and the lung because it is light. And our teacher, Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg, was accustomed to eat the head of a ram to commemorate the ram of Yitzchak. (Orach Hayim, 583:1)
This suggests that in the 14th century, apples and honey were the predominant symbolic food for Rosh Hashanah in Germany, but not necessarily elsewhere. Today, however, apples and honey are nearly universally eaten on Rosh Hashanah.
