High Holidays · Rosh Hashanah
What is eaten on Rosh Hashanah, and why?
On Rosh Hashanah we eat the simanim, symbolic foods each carrying a blessing for the year — apple dipped in honey, the head of a fish, pomegranate, dates, gourd, leek and beets — and over each we say a yehi ratzon, a short prayer that it may be Your will.
The named source
This is not folklore alone. The Talmud (Keritot 6a; Horayot 12a) teaches that a person should eat certain foods at the start of the year as an omen, a סימן (siman, a sign) of the good we ask for. On Rosh Hashanah night the table itself becomes a quiet prayer: before each food we say a יהי רצון (yehi ratzon), 'may it be Your will.'
The foods and what they ask
Apple dipped in honey, for a sweet year. The head of a fish, that we be a head and not a tail. Pomegranate, that our merits be as many as its seeds. Dates — תמר (tamar) — playing on a word for ending enmity. Gourd, leek and beets, each tied by a play on words to a plea that harsh decrees be torn away and those who wish us ill be gone. The challah is baked round rather than braided, a year come full circle, a crown for the King of the world.
What to do
Set out as many of the simanim as you can find, and say the yehi ratzon over each before you taste it — a printed order lists them all. Begin with the apple and honey; even that one act carries the whole intention. The point is not a full table but a full heart: eating as a way of asking Heaven for a sweet, whole year.
Source: Talmud, Keritot 6a; Horayot 12a.
When you want the words of the yehi ratzon in front of you at the table, My Jewish Day (siddur, zmanim, the Hebrew calendar) carries the order of the simanim so nothing is left to memory.
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