Honey for Dipping Challah and Apples

Appears in
Jewish Holiday Cooking
Jewish Holiday Cooking

By Jayne Cohen

Published 2008

  • About
Traditions create the “we”-ness of families. There are traditions each family observes as Americans (we eat turkey on Thanksgiving, we watch fireworks on the Fourth of July), and there are practices followed as members of an ethnic group (as Ashkenazi Jews, we eat latkes on Hanukkah). But it is the unique traditions that each family invents for itself that make the family a “we” unlike any other.

On Rosh Hashanah many Jews dip apples and chunks of challah into honey, embodying their prayers for a sweet new year. So from her earliest days, my daughter always looked forward to the holiday, when she was actually told to indulge her Pooh-like honey-love, dunking slice upon slice of fruit and eggy bread into unmitigated sweetness.