Think Eating Apples Dipped In Honey On Rosh Hashana An Ancient Jewish Custom? Think Again.

It turns out most of those 'ancient' Jewish customs most of practice on Rosh Hashana aren't really all that ancient. Here's a brief breakdown of the top few, including when they were first started and what they morphed into.

 

Think Eating Apples Dipped In Honey On Rosh Hashana An Ancient Jewish Custom? Think Again.
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

As reported earlier this week, Rosh Hashana appears not come to have been considered to be the Jewish new year until sometime after some Jews returned to Israel from the Babylonian exile and brought with them the Babylonian non-Jewish tradition of a new year commemoration, foreign to the Canaanites and to other peoples neighboring Israel – and from what we now know, likely foreign to Israelites as well. And Rosh Hashana likely did not become knwown as Yom HaDin (the Day of Judgement) until even later than that.

So when did the various traditions tied to Rosh Hashana as we now know it begin? Here’s a brief breakdown according to Ha’aretz (with further explanations added by FailedMessiah.com):

• Eating honey to start the new year with sweetness. During the Geonic era, which ran from about 589 CE (more than 500 years after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans) until 1040 CE with the death of Hezekiah, the last gaon to head the Yeshiva of Pumbedita in ancient Babylonia (which was located near what is the modern-day city of Fallujah, Iraq).

• Eating raisin hallah to start the new year with sweetness. During the High Middle Ages (about 1000 CE to 1300 CE), eating honey morphed into eating hallah with fruit. Eventually, that morphed into eating apples dipped in honey. Even so, raisin hallah – a leftover from the earlier custom – is still in vogue, as well, and it is very common to be at a Rosh Hashana table where both raisin hallah and apples and honey are served.

• Eating pomegranates because they have 613 seeds, the same number as there are mitzvot (Torah and rabbinic commandments). About the time hallah eaten with fruit was morphing into apples dipped in honey, eating pomegranates on Rosh Hashanah became a new custom based on the (false) belief that the average number of seeds in a pomegranate is 613.

• Eating a calf's head (yes, in order that we finish the year ahead). This custom also began in the Geonic era. Later, heads of sheep or goats were substituted for the calf’s head and even later, fish heads came to used – which is the custom among many Sefardi and some hasidic communities even today. Pre-hasidic Ashkenazi custom, which is still prevalent today, replaced fish heads and whole fish with gefilte fish – likely because the Ashkenazi community had already adopted a Shabbat stringency to not remove bones from fish on Shabbat due to the possibility that doing so might be a violation of the rabbinic Shabbat prohibition on borer (removing unwanted, spoiled or bad things from something good or wanted). Some Sefardi/Mizrachi communities eventually substituted fish stews like chraime for the whole fish or fish head, perhaps for the same reason.

• Tashlikh, emptying the contents of your pockets into a body of water or a well to symbolize casting your sins into the waters to be wased away or washed clean. The commonly observed tashlikh ritual is first mentioned only in the 15th century.

Related Post:

Did Rosh Hashana Really Exist? Maybe Not.

Comments

[JACK]

And who ever thought or said it's an ancient custom? Even my 10 year old kid could have told you that,
In other words,Haaretz needs to tell Shmaryah that dipping apple into honey is not a Mitzvah rabbinicaly ordained,but a recent custom.
Scotty,you have just proven to us what we suspected for a long time,
You are a big AM HAARETZ,a ignoramus when it comes to anything having to do with Judaism
Get out of your basement and either start learning ,or go get a job
What a waste

[Shmarya]

JACK –

Really now, were you actually born this stupid? Is it genetic? Are your parents also idiots?

Or did you pick up your stupidity in your Chabad yeshiva years?

Or is it some fetid combination of both?

[Mefoar]

Its silly to comment on the am haaretz's of Shamarya how he tries to show to be this big knowledgeable person in Judaism when he knows very little.
But for the kicks i will.
Whatever "Ancient" means all of the above is mentioned in Shulchan Aruch and some are mentioned in the Talmud including that Rosh Hashana is the Yom HaDin.
As the Yiddish saying goes: go learn with a goy Bartenura.

[JACK]

Shmaryah,you did not answer the question,why do you need Haaretz to tell you ,that the custom of dipping apple into honey is only a recent one?.
By answering with juvenile and childish insults,only proves that you are a thin skinned ignoramus when it comes to anything having to do with the subject of judaism

[Allan]

What about the belief that Rosh Hashanah marks the sixth day of creation? Was that always a part of the holiday or was it yet another rabbinic innovation. You’d think the Torah would be pretty explicit about when the universe was created. Instead I believe it became a matter of Talmudic debate – Tishrei vs. Nisan.

Now we have a ridiculous situation where the moment the world was created it was already the “seventh month” although months 1 – 6 never existed that first year. (As if the idea of a 5775 year old universe isn’t crazy enough…)

[Yoel B]

Or, as the local Chabad Rabbi says when he serves the salad on Rosh Hashana, we eat symbolic foods, sometimes based on the sounds of the names of the foods....

Lettuce have a raisin salary in the coming year.

[dh]

Very interesting, Shmarya. Thanks. It's important to know this stuff and to remember many different things via traditions and events. For instance, JACK's ten year old goat reminds us of the importance of vasectomies and birth control.

[Meir]

• Eating pomegranates because they have 613 seeds, the same number as there are mitzvot....

It doesn't say they have 613 seeds (they don't) it says mole
H mitzvos krimon ... To be filled with mitzvos .. Just as a rim on is filled with seeds..

[Just Curious]

A fascinating (though entirely unsurprising) demonstration of the fundamentally evolutionary nature of the Rabbinic Judaism we practice.

Incidentally, RIP, just for your edification, the earliest extant haggadah is a fragment from the Cairo Genizah and I believe the oldest complete manuscipt of the Haggadah comes from the siddur of Saadia Gaon (which dates to the 10th century, if I remember correctly), both of which considerably antedate the 15th century.

Also, it is not accurate to say that "parts of [the haggadah] are already cited in the Talmud", rather, the basic structure of the Seder is outlined in the Mishnah and the haggadah (which has developed evolutionarily since then) cites the relevant Talmudic passages.

[me]

What a shame that you are such am ahm haoretz. These all have a mkor going back to the tanayim.

[Josh]

As usual a bunch of frummers missing the point. Good at analytical thought - useless at critical thought.

You are all comfortable with a Judaism that is evolutionary in practice - what happened to that?

You all appear just as comfortable that the creativity that the tanoim, Amoroim and geonim bought to Judaism has been strangled and bought to a screeching halt to be replaced by a gutless uninspired rabbinate whose final invention was "chiddush ossur min hatorah" which is cynically used to justify the unwillingness to make changes to deal with injustices while merrily allowing changes when it suits the agenda (of course one just pretends that these are mesorah going back to Sinai).

[Yochanan Lavie]

Just because something isn't ancient doesn't mean it's meaningless. Why get your panties in a knot?

[Jeff]

Shmarya didn't say he didn't already know these things. He's quoting the Haaretz article because they've done the work of putting together a list.

This must be another example of the superior reasoning skills and mental acuity, resulting from a yeshiva education, that I keep hearing about.

Meanwhile, this appears to have struck a nerve. Quite a few brilliant responses here from the usual characters.

I'll ask a question I often ask, but to which I've never once received an honest answer. Why are you people here? If you really believe the things you keep saying - that Shmarya is wrong, that hardly anyone listens to him or takes him seriously and that the few people who do support him are apikorsim who are going to hell and deserve no pity - why do you waste your time? Why do you come here, day after day, to spew your venom and bile?

Most of you won't have the courage to reply to this, and if one or two of you do, it will be something along the lines of, "I'm here to stand up for true Yiddishkeit!", or "Typical liberal! You only believe in freedom of speech for people who agree with you!" These responses will, of course, be bullshit.

The reason you people keep coming here is because you're absolutely terrified Shmarya may be right - that you've been fed a pack of lies, that your rebbaim don't know what they're talking about and that you're wasting your lives - and you lash out, like frightened children, trying to convince yourselves, in the desperate hope that you can continue to keep clutching that security blanket for a few precious moments longer.

So you continue to plod on, day after day, praying to a being many of you suspect may not really be there, continuing the cycle of ignorance and abuse by enrolling your children in the same institutions that abused you when you were their age, sacrificing them on the altar of your addiction, so that you need never face reality.

Of course, it is highly doubtful any of you are bright enough or self-aware enough to understand this. A bigger man than I would feel sorry for you, but I'm unable to.

[DJT]

considering that Yom hadin is in less than a week,why so much hatred,and venom in your comments.

shana Tova to All Am Yisrael may you all have a healthy,Blessed and Good Year.

[Yochanan Lavie]

The chareidim spew vitriol all the time at everybody who disagrees with them, or tries to stop their wrongdoing. Pot to kettle: "Black!"

[gevezener chussid]

Who cares? It tastes good.

[Sarek]

Hey, wait a minute! Eating apples dipped in honey, or a raisin challah will provide me with a sweet new year every bit as much as my mezuzah protects my home.

[ruthie]

jack: fuck off

s: thank you, i just learned a lot and appreciate it.
shana tova and happy new year to all my friends here.

[Fleishike Kishke]

In Judaism as cinema, Haredi rejects all films after the silent era. Talkies? Color? Dolby? Special effects? CGI? Digital? 3D? Which is why they have to stay ignorant, because once you watch a (good) modern movie . . . not that the early pictures don't have their place.

[SkepticalYid]

Just because something isn't ancient doesn't mean it's meaningless. Why get your panties in a knot?

Posted by: Yochanan Lavie | September 19, 2014 at 06:50 AM

YL— a double negative??? You twisted my panties into a knot!

[wkovacs]

if a custom is over a thousand years old, isnt that by definition, ancient?

its a custom, not halacha

[AAron]

The obvious point here is that Minhag Yisroel Halacha , mean any stupid thing picked up after a few generations becoem torah . We all know that moshe rabeinu aore a striemel too