Challah, Honey and Apples
A meal during Rosh Hashana usually begins with pieces of apple and challah dipped in honey. This ‘sweet beginning’ is to celebrate a sweet New Year.
The challah also symbolizes the cycle of the New Year with its roundness. The round shape, symbolic of the cyclical and eternal nature of life, express the hope that the coming year will be a good one. Many bakeries add raisins in their challahs.
The custom of eating sweets on Rosh Hashana is more than 1,500 years old. It expresses the hope that sweetness will enter the lives of all Jews in the coming year. Another common food eaten during Rosh Hashana is honey cakes. Honey cake is served with the hope and prayer that those who observe Jewish traditions will be blessed with a ‘goodly portion.”
Art and Crafts: Book Of Life
The High Holy Days end with our fate for the New Year in scribed in the pages of the Book of Life.
What will be written on the pages of your Book of Life this year.
Supplies:
Newspaper to work on
Old, discarded hardcover book
Can of gold spray paint
Pieces of embroidered ribbon, 18 inches long
White-glue
Instructions:
Ask an adult to help you with the spray painting outside.
Open the book to about the middle and place it, pages down on newspaper. Spray the cover and page edges gold. When the paint has dried, turn the book over and spray the inside gold. The paint will cause the edges of the pages to stick together, holding the book in an open position.
The ribbon will serve as a bookmark. Glue one end of the ribbon to the top right in side cover of the book.
Bring the other end of the ribbon up and over the center of the book to extend about 4 inches out from the bottom of the pages.
