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.
This is a reprint of last year’s Convivio Book of Days chapter for Rosh Hashanah. New year, same message. The image features a recipe for Aunt Ida’s Taglach (which seems to me for sure like a variant spelling of Teiglach) from Pearl Silberg’s handwritten recipe book, which I made handbound 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. Happy new year!
Lovely. Thank you.
Thank you, as always, for sharing. I love everything about this post.