Apples and Honey: The Meaning Behind the Rosh Hashanah Custom

An apple slice, a bowl of honey, a blessing. It is the simplest ritual in the Jewish year, and probably the most photographed. But the pairing is not arbitrary - both halves carry meaning, and the reason they appear together says something about how Jewish tradition thinks about hope.

Why honey

The obvious answer is sweetness: dip something in honey, wish for a sweet year, done. And that is genuinely the primary meaning - the blessing said over the apple asks explicitly for shana tova u'metuka, a good and sweet year.

But honey carries a second association that runs through the whole Hebrew Bible. Israel is described repeatedly as a land flowing with milk and honey - eretz zavat chalav u'dvash. Honey is the taste of the promised land, of abundance, of arrival after a long journey.

There is also a detail people enjoy: honey comes from bees, which are not kosher animals. Yet the honey itself is kosher. Tradition has long read something into that - that sweetness can emerge from unlikely sources, that the year ahead may bring good from places you did not expect.

Why apples

Apples are less obvious. Several explanations circulate, and they are not mutually exclusive.

The mystical tradition connects the apple to the Garden of Eden and to a verse in Song of Songs comparing the beloved to an apple tree. Kabbalistic texts describe an "orchard of holy apples," and the fruit came to carry associations of divine care.

There is also a practical reading. Apples ripen in early autumn across the northern hemisphere - exactly when Rosh Hashanah falls. Much of Jewish practice is built on what was actually available at a given season, and the apple was there.

And there is the shape: round, like the challah baked for the same meal, like the year itself coming back around.

The wider table

Apples and honey are the headline, but Sephardic communities in particular observe a fuller sequence of symbolic foods, each with a blessing built on a Hebrew pun:

• Pomegranate - that our merits be as numerous as its seeds
• Leek or cabbage - karti, that those who wish us harm be cut off
• Beetroot - selek, that adversity depart
• Dates - tamar, that bitterness end
• Fish head - that we be a head and not a tail

The wordplay does not survive translation, which is part of the charm. These blessings only work in Hebrew, and saying them is a small act of keeping the language alive at the table.

Why the image endures

Apples and honey have become the visual shorthand for Rosh Hashanah in a way no other Jewish holiday symbol quite matches - recognisable enough to work on a card, a shop window, or a piece of clothing without any text explaining it.

Part of that is simple graphic appeal: red fruit, golden honey, strong colours that read clearly at a distance. But part of it is that the meaning is genuinely accessible. You do not need any background to understand a wish for sweetness.

That is why it appears so often in holiday apparel and gifts - it communicates instantly, to Jewish and non-Jewish eyes alike.

Doing it at home

If you are hosting for the first time, the ritual is short and forgiving. Slice a sweet apple. Put out honey in a small bowl with a spoon or dipper. After the blessing over the bread, dip a slice, say the blessing over the fruit, then add the line asking for a good and sweet year.

Children usually take over from there. The honey ends up everywhere. That is part of it.

Shana Tova u'Metuka - a good and sweet year.