E ditor's note: We enjoyed the story so much last year we've updated it for this year. Enjoy! For me, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is all about traditions — creating them and recalling them. And for my family, 85% of our traditions happen around the dinner table.
So yes, of course you’ve got to listen to someone blow the Shofar 100 times. AND, yes, you’ve got to throw bread, or nowadays pebbles or seaweed, into a flowing body of water to symbolize the things you wish you hadn’t done this year (a ceremony known as tashlich). But mostly, you spend a lot of time eating, especially sweet things like dipping apples in honey, because the major underlying theme for this celebration is to ensure that you enter the new year with sweetness and hope.
(Eat your apples and honey now as things only get sweeter as we head into fall, eating dozens of 100 Grand bars as I’m passing out candy to trick-or-treaters or overdoing it with Thanksgiving yams that have been sufficiently marshmallowed). Here are some of my family’s traditions — and some new ones that are evolving in L.A.
as modern chefs take on ancient customs. My mom was born in Newark, but raised in Pico-Robertson. Her parents, Selma and Vic, moved to the neighborhood less for the synagogues and more for the delis — and the ritzy proximity to Beverly Hills.
My mom’s fondest memories of Rosh Hashanah were at the kid’s table in the early 70s, over the hill in Canoga Park at her Nana and Auntie Jan’s house. S.
