Symbolic Foods To Mark the New Year
What would a New Year be without omens? And, what would those omens likely be if not food? Could Scots look forward to a year of safety without a Black Bun at the first footing? Can African Americans expect a year of prosperity without Hoppin’ John on the first of January?
Few Jews are unaware of the traditional apple and honey to ensure a sweet year. Yet, this custom barely scratches the surface of the existing—and growing—lists of simanim, i.e., foods that are eaten on Rosh Hashanah for the express purpose of ensuring various types of good fortune throughout the next 12 months.
The Talmud sets forth five specific foods that we should eat to tip the scales in our favor. In Hebrew or Aramaic, they are karsi, tamri, kara, silka, selek and rubia. These plant products are eaten before the meal with the appropriate blessing depending on whether the item is a tree fruit or a vegetable and with a request for the desired result indicated by the siman. According to Rashi, these particular foods are significant not only because they are quick-maturing, sweet-tasting or both, but especially because their spelling lends itself to hopes that we can express for the year to come. Thus, when we eat leeks, karsi in Aramaic, we ask that those that hate us be “cut off” based on the Hebrew word karas. Similarly, when we eat a date, tamri in Aramaic, tamar in Hebrew, we ask that those that hate us “cease to exist” based on the Hebrew verb tam.
Identifying all of these plants for a modern table is not, however, always quite so straightforward. For instance, you may have noticed that six vegetables are listed even though the Talmud states that there are five. Because the Talmud is written in Aramaic, which is quite close to Hebrew (although not as close as a dialect would be), most produce named in the Talmud is readily identified with its Hebrew counterpart—not so silka, which is probably spinach, and selek, which is a beet. Beets are, in fact, chards, which is why they are described as beetroots in other English-speaking countries in order to distinguish their roots from their greens. They are similar to spinach but do not share the same genus. Because the consonants are the same except for the terminal aleph, a distinguishing feature of a great many Aramaic words, we can use either spinach or beets, or even both, after which we pray that “our enemies will leave.”
Kara in Hebrew or ka’ra in Aramaic is a gourd, probably a bottle gourd, which is barely edible. In current usage, kara can also refer to a pumpkin or, perhaps, another winter squash, neither of which was known outside of the Americas until the 15th century C.E., long after the recording of the Talmud. If you choose to use canned pumpkin, be aware that the contents are more likely to be butternut squash, as actual pumpkin flesh tends to be stringier and less palatable. While the kara in Hebrew sounds almost identical to the Aramaic ka’ra, the word in Aramaic is spelled with an ayin and in Hebrew with an aleph, both of which have evolved to become silent letters. This lends itself to two different Hebrew verbs and two different outcomes to seek: that the evil decree be “torn up” (with an ayin) and our “merits be read out” (with an aleph).
There has been much learned discussion over the centuries of what rubia actually is. While the Hebrew word represented by the food is universally accepted as ravah, “increase” in English, the food to which it applies may be any of five that have been variously suggested. It is translated from the Aramaic as fenugreek. The Hebrew word for fenugreek, khilba, is clearly quite different from the Aramaic, and for that and perhaps other reasons, this herb was unknown to much of the Diaspora. You are most likely to find it in Indian curries. Rubia was early identified with tilsan, which referred to any trifoliate plant. In North Africa, lubia or cowpeas, which, as members of the pea family, Fabaceae, are, like fenugreek, legumes, were thought to be close enough. Elsewhere it is identified with other legumes, such as clover and with a clover lookalike, shamrock or wood sorrel, which is neither a legume nor a sorrel. It resembles clover and has the lemony taste of true sorrel, the basis for the traditional soup schav. White Dutch clover and wood sorrel are both edible, ubiquitous lawn weeds in New Jersey and much of the rest of the United States. It may have been these difficulties that led the Magen Avraham in the 17th century to rule that any vegetable that would correspond to a translation of ravah into any language may be used. Thus, carrot, mehren in Yiddish, was reminiscent of mehr, “more” in English, and the basis for asking that “our merits be increased.”
pressure in the next year.
What with losing our haters and enemies, multiplying our merits and avoiding an evil decree, it might seem that adding the above simanim to our Rosh Hashanah table would have us set up pretty well for the year to come. Ah, but that is only the beginning. There are a number of simanim that have become traditional and no less essential than those of the Talmud. Many of these are not based on repurposed spelling, but rather on attributes of the food itself. When we eat apple and honey, we therefore ask for a “good and sweet year,” even though the root of the word for apple can be translated as “become bloated” and can no doubt provide an opportunity for a creative Hebrew speaker to add to the proceedings. We ask for “our merits to be multiplied like [the arils of] a pomegranate,” a rimon, even though a similar word, rimah, can be translated as “deceive.” When we eat a fish, we ask that we be “fruitful and multiply like fish;” when we eat its head, that we “become the head and not the tail.” When we eat lamb, we ask that we be “remembered in the merit of Isaac, our ancestor.”
When vernacular simanim are added, the puns begin to show up again. Chopped liver was served in the Ukraine because leberlach, chicken livers in Yiddish, sounded like “leb ehrlich,” “live honestly.” Celery stalks stuffed with peanut butter and studded with raisins, known as ants on a log since the middle of the last century, are served in America to ask for a “raise in salary.”
There is no reason to stop here. There are endless possibilities in English as well as in the basic attributes of other foods. Have you lost something that you want to reappear? Maybe a turnip will help it “turn up.” Do you wish for a long life? Perhaps yard-long beans can form the basis of a petition. Do you yearn for peace? Green peas may add significance to your prayers. This past year has not been a happy one for our people—not in Israel, not in America and not really any place else. If we have hopes for a better one, the Rosh Hashanah table surrounded by family and redolent of tradition is a good place to start.
Sue Kleinberg is a contributing writer for JLifeNJ from Monmouth County.
