Almost everything on a Rosh Hashanah table is there to say something. The custom is called simanim — signs — and the idea is old and slightly startling: rather than only asking for a sweet year in words, you put a sweet year in your mouth.

The core four

Round challah. Braided in a circle rather than a loaf, for a year that comes back around, and often shaped with a small crown on top. Dip it in honey instead of salt for hamotzi — the one time of year we do.

Apple in honey. After the challah, dip a slice of apple in honey, say the blessing over fruit, eat some, and then ask for what the apple is for:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלֹקֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם בּוֹרֵא פְּרִי הָעֵץ

Baruch atah Ado-nai, Elo-heinu melech ha'olam, borei p'ri ha'eitz.

Blessed are You, L-rd our G-d, King of the universe, who creates the fruit of the tree.

יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶיךָ שֶׁתְּחַדֵּשׁ עָלֵינוּ שָׁנָה טוֹבָה וּמְתוּקָה

Yehi ratzon milfanecha shetechadeish aleinu shanah tovah umtukah.

May it be Your will to renew for us a good and sweet year.

Why an apple and not something sweeter on its own? An apple is sweet and tart. It is not candy. The request is for a good year and a sweet one — the tradition is careful to ask for both, on the assumption that they are not automatically the same thing.

A new fruit, on the second night. Something you have not eaten yet this season, on the table when you say shehecheyanu — the blessing thanking G-d for bringing you to this occasion. Pomegranate is the classic choice, and it has a second meaning of its own: may our merits be as many as its seeds.

Honey, generally. On the challah, on the apple, in the cake, and available on the table. There is no such thing as too much of it these two days.

The rest of the signs

Not every home does all of these, and no one should feel behind for keeping four instead of twelve. Sephardic families often hold a full seder of simanim, each with its own short blessing, which is a beautiful thing to see once.

  • The head of a fish (or a ram, or — in most Venice kitchens — whatever the fishmonger will sell you), for may we be a head and not a tail: may we lead our year rather than be dragged through it.
  • Pomegranate, for merits as numerous as its seeds.
  • Carrots, sliced into coins. In Yiddish, meren means both carrots and to increase; the round slices look like gold coins, which nobody has ever objected to.
  • Black-eyed peas, leeks, beets, dates, gourd — each of the classic simanim turns on a pun in Hebrew or Aramaic between the food’s name and a blessing or a plea.

What we leave off

Nuts. The custom is to avoid them for the two days. Two reasons are given: the Hebrew egoz has the numerical value seventeen, which is also chet — sin — spelled without its final letter; and more practically, nuts generate phlegm, and these are days when you want your voice clear for prayer.

Sour, bitter, and vinegary things. Pickles, lemons, anything sharp. On a day when the food is a request, you serve what you want to receive.

The part that matters more than the menu

It would be easy to hear all of this as folk superstition with a religious veneer — eat a carrot, get money. That is not how the sources treat it.

A siman is not a mechanism. It is a prompt. A person who eats a fish head and thinks nothing has performed a small piece of theater; a person who eats it and actually considers what it would mean to lead their year rather than be carried along by it has done something. The food is a way of getting a thought past the part of us that nods at ideas and then forgets them by dessert.

Which is also why the table matters as much as the plate. These meals are long on purpose, with children at them, and the simanim exist partly so that a four-year-old has something to ask about.

If cooking for this is not your year

It happens — a first year in a new town, a hard year, a kitchen that isn’t set up for it. Both days’ meals at Chabad are open, there is no charge, and you do not need to bring anything or know anyone. Reserve a place on the High Holidays page, or just come.