(RNS) — Most people think of Rosh Hashana as a Jewish holiday, which of course it is: It is the start of the Jewish year and the first of three days of remembrance, repentence and celebration that occur within a few weeks each year.
But the essential aspect of Rosh Hashana is universal. It is described in the Talmud as the Day of Judgment for all the world, on which God designates the fates of every human being, and of nations, for the following 12 months.
This awe-inspiring idea might appear to be out of step with the widely observed Rosh Hashana custom, duly recorded in the religious legal codes, of lavishing puns on the food consumed at the festival’s first meal. It is customary, for instance, to eat a piece of apple dipped in honey, to symbolize our hope for a sweet year, a wish we verbalize. Less known is the custom of eating foods whose names punnishly augur well for the future. Hebrew or Aramaic puns are preferred if you’re able, but at least one commentary directs us to pun whatever language we speak.
“Help us pare away our sins” before consuming a pear might thus be an appropriate example. Or asking God to be our advocate before eating a piece of avocado. “Lettuce have a wonderful year” might be pushing it a bit, but maybe not. One respected rabbi once smilingly suggested partaking of a raisin and stalk of celery after expressing the hope for a “raise in salary.”
Other customs regarding Rosh Hashana are more sober, like the recommendation that the Jewish new year be carefully utilized to the fullest for prayer, study and good deeds. Similarly, Jewish sources caution against expressing anger on Rosh Hashana. The Jewish new year is to reflect only the highest Jewish ideals.
A man blows a shofar, a ram’s horn, marking Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, overlooking the port of Haifa, Israel, Oct. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
But it is precisely Rosh Hashana’s gravity that justifies this frivolity.
The 16th-century Jewish luminary Rabbi Yehudah Loew, known as the Maharal, stresses the crucial nature of beginnings. The trajectory of a projectile — or, we might similarly note, the outcome of a mathematical computation — can be affected to an often astounding degree, said the Maharal, by a very small change at the start of the process. A single degree of arc where the arrow leaves the bow — or an error of a single digit at the first step of a long calculation — can yield a surprisingly large difference in the end.
Modern scientific terminology has given the concept both an unwieldy name, “sensitive dependence on initial conditions,” and a playful one, “the butterfly effect,” an allusion to the flapping of a butterfly’s wings that might crescendo into a tornado halfway around the world.
Rosh Hashana is thus much more than the start of a year. It is the day (the two days, technically) from which the balance of the year unfolds, a time of “initial conditions” exquisitely sensitive to our actions. Rosh Hashana puns, too, reflect that sensitivity. After all, wordplay is not suggested for any other time of the year.
By imbuing even things as seemingly inconsequential as our choice of foods with meaning on Rosh Hashana, we symbolically affirm the truism that beginnings have unusual potential, that there are times when the import of each of our actions is magnified. By seizing even the most wispy opportunities to try to bestow blessing on the new year aborning, we declare our determination to start the year as right as we possibly can.
And so, whether or not the punning has any inherent power, it unarguably impresses upon us the extraordinary degree to which our actions at the start of a year affect how we will live its balance.
An invaluable lesson; indeed, one that should lead us to begin each new year working to make ourselves better people in our relations both to one another and to our Creator.
The world is in a precarious state. And all of us who inhabit it must not discount the spiritual effect that our personal actions have on larger things. And so, as we face a new Day of Judgment, may we all seize its power as a beginning laden with potential, to live and act in ways that merit a … turnip for the better.
(Rabbi Avi Shafran writes widely in Jewish and general media and blogs at rabbiavishafran.com. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)
