*New Signs for the Jewish New Year | Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | September 19, 2025*
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First was my daughter’s teacher, who announced that Rosh Hashanah was coming up and that parents should prepare cards for our children. I read the note and forgot about it. Then I sat down with the calendar of my writing project, “Writing Together”, and there it was again - Rosh Hashanah peeking out between the dates. I saw it, and again I forgot. And then a friend asked where we’d be for the holiday, and again I didn’t remember which holiday it was.
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Maybe because this year Rosh Hashanah shows up for me without connection. Not to life. Not to the war. Not to the headlines that shrink my spirit. Not to the feeling that there is no holiday. Not to the fact that last year opened so many threads but hasn’t yet closed a single one.
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If there is a holiday tradition in our family, it is to travel on holidays. And this Rosh Hashanah too, I’ll be with a group of writers in Greece. Still, this year, maybe because the holiday feels so elusive, I asked myself how I could still feel it. Not the halakhic holiday. But yes, the change of times. The delicate shift between the cycles of the months. The layers of life peeling away. The energy, the light. How will I manage to hold on to it and feel it?
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So I asked my students and readers online to share one personal custom they keep for Rosh Hashanah, and in response I received a beautiful and surprising list of suggestions, out of which I could choose and adopt one for myself. And if you, too, are looking for ideas on how to feel the holiday a little differently this year, here are ten especially wonderful ones I gathered from the responses:
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Racheli: In the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah, we turn the entrance wall of our house into a surprise wall. We write blessings and wishes for each other and hang them on the wall. We decorate it and hang lightweight sweets that can be “picked.” On the morning of the holiday, a gift also awaits each family member. Everyone who enters our home is delighted by the colorful, sweet wall.
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Moriah: In our family, we hide New Year’s cards under the challah cover. When I was a child, these were cards we kids made, and my father would put on a whole show of being utterly surprised and moved each year. My father is no longer with us, but we still hide the kids’ New Year’s cards, and in recent years I also write a personal blessing for each family member and slip it in with my children’s cards. 🙂
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Rotem: Throughout the year we collect lupine seeds. On Rosh Hashanah each family member takes a handful of seeds and goes into the yard, planting one with a prayer for the new year, a prayer or a wish. Later in the year, the lupines bloom along with the prayers. Afterward they dry out, we collect the seeds, and the cycle continues.
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Anat: My daughter and I each write a note with what we dream of fulfilling this year and hide it inside my late mother’s dresser, which stands in our living room. Every Rosh Hashanah we open the note from the year before. We keep the pile of notes from all the years together.
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Orna: I used to buy a helium balloon. We would go up to the roof, release it to the sky, and ask for a blessing. Since the war I haven’t felt like celebrating…but maybe I’ll buy a balloon this year too.
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Ahuva: I used to go with a friend to do tashlich at the sea on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. But with a twist: one of us would bring rice, the other lentils, or another kind of legume. We would stand in the water and say what we wanted to cast off from ourselves, then toss handfuls into the sea, and afterward ask for a new, kinder pattern for the coming year.
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Maya: We share fruit from our garden with the neighbors. At the holiday meal, I put greeting cards and markers on each plate, and everyone blesses the person sitting next to them at the table. Each year we also make a family decision about a donation to a different charity. And finally, I prepare a short study sheet for the holiday, with poems and questions that invite everyone to share something good that happened to them this past year and a wish for the next.
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Tzofia: At night I leave a bag of candy by the kids’ beds, so that they’ll wake up to find it there.
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Ruhama: I hide little hand-drawn blessings inside the sweet rolls I bake, just folded in parchment paper and tucked into the dough. When someone bites in and finds the blessing, they pass it on to whoever it was meant for.
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Yahli: For every guest at the meal I stitch a small handmade booklet. Just folded paper, hole-punched, with threads woven through, easy enough. I also make a playlist of songs that everyone chooses from. While we listen, each person writes or draws a blessing for the one sitting to their right. At the end, everyone has a booklet full of blessings from all around the table. You can read them out loud, or keep them to yourself. One blessing I know will appear in every booklet: that the hostages return, and that the war ends.
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And finally, here’s a list of creative new “simanim”—holiday foods with wordplays, in addition to the traditional ones like the fish head (“that we be as the head and not the tail”):
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Artichoke hearts – “So that we’ll have huge, good hearts.” (Leviyah)
Gummy candies – “For a flexible year.”
Rugelach – “For a calm year.” (Hebrew: “Reguah”)
Coca-Cola – “So that people will keep saying to us kol- ha-kavod - well done!” (Tami)
Cola – “For an easy (Hebrew: “kala”) year.” (Roni)
Meringue kisses – “For a year of love.”
Sweet-and-sour sauce – “For surprising moments.”
Chocolate coins – “For a year of abundance.” (Miki)
Tahini – “That we be loaded (Hebrew: “thunim”) with money and that our pleas (“thinot”) be accepted.”
Pizza – “That we’ll receive compensation (Hebrew: pizzuim).” (Osnat)
Tomato – in Russian pomidor – “That we’ll live here from generation to generation (Hebrew: “dor to dor”).” (Ruth)
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I’ll close with two simple, sweet holiday recipes that Ofi remembered from her mother:
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Kremslach (matzah-meal fritters with raisins):
3 eggs / ½ cup water / ½ cup matzah meal / salt.
Separate the eggs, whip the whites, then add the yolks, water, and salt. Add enough matzah meal (“as needed,” wrote Ofi’s mother). Shape by hand into small dumpling-like patties and fill with: finely chopped dried plums, raisins, grated lemon zest, sugar, and cinnamon. Seal well and fry.
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Rice Babka:
2 cups cooked rice / cinnamon / raisins / 3 eggs / 1–2 Tbsp sugar / a little salt.
Mix together, pour into a greased tube pan, and bake like a cake.
May this year be better than the one before it. May the hostages return to us. May our signs come true. And thank you to all who contributed to this column, all the good, sweet, and striving voices. May this be the energy of the coming year.
Shabbat Shalom,
*Maya Tevet Dayan*