I was going to apologize for missing the day - it's past midnight, and I only just got home - but when it comes to the Jewish holidays, midnight is of no interest; the day's only just begun! It's Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, until nightfall tomorrow. So: shana tova (a sweet new year) to you, much needed in a time of such bitter news.
My friends J and A invited a bunch of us over - family, friends, and their wonderful 85-year-old neighbor, though we all feel like family there - and we had all sorts of traditional foods: gefilte fish with beet-horseradish sauce, chopped liver, challah bread, chicken soup, braised brisket (cooked with 5 pounds of onions, we learned!), carrots and potatoes, a salad with a sweet (fig) dressing, and, to top it all off, slices of apple with honey (and, since J's family is Italian as well as Jewish, saba), and a scrumptious honey cake. It was a feast!
At one point, M, cousin of J and enjoying her first rosh hashanah meal, remarked that it was so moving to think of people all around the world gathering to eat these same foods. "I was thinking that too," said Neighbor, who was remembering, also, having these foods as a child in Romania in the 1930s, and who knows what else.
Taste goes deep. There's something at once wonderfully civilized and wonderfully human about celebrating religious holidays with shared food.
