Rosh Hashana Recipes

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, is a time for prayer and reflection, and it has long been a time for the familiar aromas of traditional recipes. For many Jewish families, the menu for Rosh Hashana dinner, from the chicken soup to the honey cake, is set in stone, and has been for generations.

But Jews live all over the world, and there are many dinner-table customs, and many recipes. So Rosh Hashana, in some ways the most traditional of Jewish holy days, is changing, not so much through new rituals as through new ingredients, recipes and flavors. Overnight shipping makes just about any fruit or vegetable available in large urban markets, and American Jews are taking the opportunity to plumb the culinary customs of Jews around the world.

Sometimes, the ''new'' food is not exotic, just something grandmother would not have considered using. A cold tomato soup, perhaps, taking advantage of an abundance of late-summer tomatoes, at one meal and a traditional chicken soup with kreplach at another.

Instead of gefilte fish, there might be grilled halibut — the symbolic elements of fish and fertility, but in a new form.

Jews from North Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union have brought kitchen traditions to the United States that their neighbors are quickly adopting, like making a cooked Moroccan beet salad with cumin or a Tunisian artichoke salad with oranges and mint, dishes that can be prepared in advance and served cold.

Stews flavored with tamarind or pomegranate sauce and blessings said over fresh seasonal vegetables and herbs like pumpkins, fenugreek, leeks, gourds, quinces and zucchini are also breaking traditions in this country.

Many ingredients in traditional Sephardic recipes are now readily available and even fashionable, like tamarind and pomegranate paste, so recipes requiring them do not seem so daunting anymore.

It's not just that there are new ingredients available — having them on the Rosh Hashana table signifies a new understanding of how diverse Jewish cultures and traditions really are.

For some people, though, tradition is tradition, nostalgia is nostalgia. For them, the holidays are a time to pull out old recipes. Whatever good new ingredients there may be, kugel and matzo balls will still be on the table. — Adapted from “Tamarind Sits on the New Year Table,” by Joan Nathan, The Times, Sept. 8, 2004



Rosh Hashana Recipes Navigator
A list of resources from The New York Times and from around the Web about Rosh Hashana recipes as selected by researchers and editors of The Times.

From The Times, Remembrance of Rosh Hashanas Past
"The Jewish New-Year"
Sept. 30, 1859
"Jewish New Year Ushered in With Impressive Ceremonies -- Tammany Hall a Synagogue"
Sept. 5, 1899
"Jews the World Over Keep Rosh Hashanah"
Sept. 20, 1906
"Throng Synagogues for Rosh Hashanah"
Sept. 26, 1908