On Apples and Honey
The Jewish New Year, seed stars, and drips of honey
We’re tipping into fall and one thing I find deep joy in is the changing of seasons. So this newsletter will depart from anything crafty to instead chat about an important season: apple season. Plus honey.
My husband has Jewish heritage and it’s important to me to be sure our kids can feel a connection to that, if they wish to explore it more as they grow up. The last few years we’ve celebrated Rosh Hashanah in early fall, and it’s a lovely holiday that’s become one of my favorite family traditions (and not only because my husband makes amazing challah).
It’s the celebration of the Jewish New Year, and what a perfect time for a new year to begin— we already feel that pull with back to school and Virgo season reminding us to get our lives organized and sharpen our pencils. Rosh Hashanah feels like a harvest festival to kick off the year right, celebrating the wheat that goes into the challah, the apples from the orchard, and the honey from the bees.
It falls perfectly in September or October, right during apple season (this year it’s Sep 15-17). I know we can all find apples year-round, but I can’t resist the autumnal pull of an apple orchard. When I was growing up in Denver my grandparents, who lived in Grand Junction (the fruit pantry of Colorado), would drive bushels of fruit down Glenwood Canyon to Denver, and my mom would can jars and jars of applesauce. A few special jars would get a red hot candy dropped in them for a kick of cinnamon and pink color.
Here in Portland we head down our own canyon, the Columbia River Gorge, to the Fruit Loop, a series of orchards just outside Hood River. We pick all the varieties we can carry, especially ones with fun names, then make the same pilgrimage back home to can applesauce. These days we’re lucky, being awash with heirloom varieties that have resurged, so the pink applesauce actually comes from pink-fleshed apples and not Red 5.
Apples drop into the background the rest of the year, but picking them from the trees reminds me of how special they are, how many folktales we have about them worldwide, and how they hold a kind of enchantment even while being mundane. King Arthur’s Avalon was known as the Isle of Apples, the Russian firebird eats up the Tsar’s golden apples every day, the Norse goddess Idunn gives out apples of immortality to all the gods, Snow White eats a poisoned apple, Hercules is sent to pick the golden apples from Hera’s orchard, and America’s own Johnny Appleseed is the folk hero of boozy cider (the alcohol part doesn’t show up in the kid’s books). My favorite part of apple magic is cutting them horizontal to reveal a secret star in the seeds.
I haven’t planned our apple-picking yet this year but we’ll still give thanks to the orchards, the farmers, and the pollinators at Rosh Hashanah. The tradition of dipping apples in honey is key, a practice of ensuring the year to come will be full of sweetness.
Shana tova u’metukah: Have a happy and sweet new year!
“When we offer this greeting to one another, we are not simply wishing each other a pretty okay year, we are invoking a year so delicious we want to suck it down with relish, gnawing on a year so ripe the juices run down our fingers and faces.”
The days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are known as the Days of Awe and one tradition during that time, from the 7th century, is to leave a dish of honey on the table for the duration, to dip and lick and enjoy.
Golden magic itself, honey. Antimicrobial, healing, preserving. A famous jar in King Tut’s tomb was still perfectly preserved after 3,000 years! Bees and honey deserve an entirely separate newsletter that could be filled with incredible science facts, thousands of years of history, and rich folklore.
So this apple season, whether you celebrate Jewish holidays or not, choose the prettiest apple around, cut it horizontally to see the star, and drizzle it in honey. Celebrate the orchards, the bees, the juiciness of life, and offer a dose of sweetness to the year ahead.
Things Inspiring Me:
Dori Midnight is a lovely voice of queer Jewish-ness. In Portland, Max from Roots and Crowns is another thoughtful and generous voice that’s I’ve learned a lot from.
Odd Apples: beautiful photos of “rare and curious apples” by William Mullan.
Eyeing this Making Ink from Acorns class by Rebecca Desnos, part of the (free!) Making Zen Retreat this Sep. There 20 different workshops in all, each free for 24 hours.
I know we’re all trying to look at our phones less, but the 72 Seasons App is a sweet reason to keep checking it. It follows the ancient Japanese calendar which divides the year into 24 seasons then again into 72 micro-seasons, lasting 5 days each. Every season offers photos, haikus, and tracks the subtle changes in the natural world around us. I’m obsessed. This micro-season, around Sep 7-11, is named White Dew, for the dew that appears more often now that mornings are chillier, even if days are still summer hot.
I'm so happy you are creating memories for your family. It's the best. Now don't start applying sauce making without me😅