High Holy Days Journey with Amichai Lau-Lavie: 40 ways in 40 days to find your focus

 

 

DIP

 

 

‘The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.’ (Emreson)

 

Nobody knows why we begin the year with honey. Where does the custom of dipping apples in Honey on the first night of the New Year originate? Who knows? Who cares?

It’s one of those rare Gastro Judaic moments of meaning, with no prior knowledge required: just dip and drip.

Apples are dipped, and fresh challah, and food is cooked with it and we dip and drip and sweeten the occasion.

It’s the marking of a honeymoon: the month that just passed – 30 days or preparing for this door to open, 30 days that begin today.

 

Many years ago on this night I found new love and we found new ways of dipping honey.

 

Find new love tonight, in the eyes of those you love around you, in the moment of celebration, of brief pause from the hustle and bustle to dip something, anything in honey, and pause to taste, and let it linger, and start again.

 

Here’s to a sweet year.