{"id":2280,"date":"2014-09-28T18:57:09","date_gmt":"2014-09-28T18:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/?p=2280"},"modified":"2014-09-28T18:57:09","modified_gmt":"2014-09-28T18:57:09","slug":"the-rosh-hashanah-feast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/the-rosh-hashanah-feast\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rosh Hashanah Feast"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nicole Sivan
\n\"POM\"<\/a>
\nYou can feel Rosh Hashanah in the air this week. The season is beginning to change and the first hint of autumn crispness is blowing in on the evening breeze. The beach and pool season is still open but the swimming days for this summer are numbered. Although the leaves don\u2019t change color in Israel like they do in many parts of the United States, the first droplets of rain soon promise to fall, washing away the yellow dirt and dust that clings to everything here during the dry summer months. The rain will usher in the winter season, which is a season of growth, bursting with flowers and greenery. The fall fruits are ready for harvest, especially local apples and pomegranates, two fruits symbolic of the Rosh Hashanah holiday. Children in Israel, although only back in school a few weeks after their summer break, look forward to the autumn holiday season, kicked off by Rosh Hashanah and soon to be followed by Yom Kippur and Sukkoth. <\/p>\n

The holiday meal for Rosh Hashanah, as well as Passover, is an important family event. Missing the holiday celebration is equivalent to denying an American family your presence for the Thanksgiving or Christmas feast. Trying to coordinate which family members will dine at whose house is a feat of delicate negotiating, one that usually erupts in someone\u2019s disappointed yelling, \u201cBut the in-laws got you last year! It\u2019s our turn this holiday!\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike the constraints of Passover, a holiday that dictates which foods one must eat, Rosh Hashanah is a creative cooking celebration. One can experiment with the types of dishes to prepare and try foods or recipes not eaten the rest of the year. As long as everything is sweet, representing the desire for a sweet near year, everyone will be happy. Sorry diabetics, this is not an ideal holiday for you.<\/p>\n

The main attraction at a traditional Rosh Hashanah meal will be a sweet meat dish. One of my favorites is chicken pieces slow cooked in the oven and smothered in prunes and honey, seasoned with sticks of cinnamon. When the meat falls of the bone and the sauce becomes a thick, sticky gravy, it\u2019s ready. This chicken dish is decadently sweet, spectacularly delicious, and perfectly appropriate for a Rosh Hashanah feast. <\/p>\n

Brisket is another popular main course on this holiday. Israelis are not usually big beef eaters, mainly because beef is so much more expensive here than chicken, but Rosh Hashanah is the one holiday when Israelis go all out and treat themselves to something really special, like a brisket. Also, goose legs, slow-roasted with dates and apricots, is another holiday favorite. <\/p>\n

Despite Rosh Hashanah\u2019s call for creativity in the kitchen, there are few symbolic foods you will find on every Israeli table during this holiday. Pomegranates are an important Rosh Hashanah food, partly because they ripen this time of year, but more importantly because, according to legend, pomegranates contain exactly 613 seeds, one for each of the 613 commandments in the Torah. Therefore, Jews eat pomegranate seeds on Rosh Hashanah to remind them of the commandments in the New Year.<\/p>\n

Honey is another main staple of the Rosh Hashanah feast and serves as symbolic prayer for a sweet new year. It is tradition to dip apples in honey prior to sitting down to a Rosh Hashanah meal and to use this time to ask God to bestow upon you and your family a sweet new year. <\/p>\n

Another traditional food for this holiday is a sweet Challah bread. Normally, Challah is a breaded loaf consumed as part of the traditional Friday night Shabbat meal. On Rosh Hashanah, a special circular Challah is eaten, round representing a smooth new year with no bumps in the road. The Challah is often stuffed with plump raisins or glazed in honey syrup, again representing the hope for a sweet New Year. <\/p>\n

This year, at my work\u2019s daytime holiday Rosh Hashanah celebration, the local Rabbi came in and gave a speech wishing everyone a wonderful New Year. He spoke of the symbolism of the different foods on this holiday and then asked how many of us put a leaf of lettuce, a raisin, and a stalk of celery on our holiday table? Everyone, from my religious co-workers to my secular ones, was stumped? Lettuce, Raisin, and Celery? We had never heard of such a tradition. What could these foods possibility symbolize? The Rabbi laughed and looked directly at our CEO and said, \u201c\u2018Let-uce\u2019 have a \u2018Rais-in\u2019 \u2018Celery.\u2019\u201d Get it? \u201cLet us have a raise in salary.\u201d What a nice wish for the New Year! We all thought it was an hysterical way to begin the holiday festivities. <\/p>\n

Lastly, no Rosh Hashanah feast would be complete without dessert and honey cake is the most traditional and popular choice for this sweet holiday. Baking honey cake is not an easy feat as the honey often dries out the cake, making it very dense. The secret to any light and fluffy honey cake is a bit of black tea, a cup of good coffee, or a generous pour of whisky. The cake does not really take on the flavor of these liquids but they somehow help to keep the cake from feeling like a brick made in Egypt by the ancient Israelites. <\/p>\n

I hope everyone had a chance to experience a Rosh Hashanah celebration this year and I wish everyone a sweet and healthy New Year! Shana Tova!<\/p>\n

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By Nicole Sivan You can feel Rosh Hashanah in the air this week. The season is beginning to change and the first hint of autumn crispness is blowing in on the evening breeze. The beach and pool season is still open but the swimming days for this summer are numbered. Although the leaves don\u2019t change more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[136,28],"tags":[75,625,631,181,213,214,391,125,390],"class_list":{"0":"post-2280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israeli-culture","8":"category-israeli-life-culture","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-israeli-news","11":"tag-israeli-life","12":"tag-jewish-calander","13":"tag-jewish-feasts","14":"tag-jewish-holidays","15":"tag-new-years","16":"tag-news-from-jerusalem","17":"tag-rosh-hashana","18":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2280"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2283,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280\/revisions\/2283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}