Holiday memory
Rosh Hashana honey cakes help Inland Jews mark the new year
10:00 PM PDT on Friday, September 18, 2009
Whenever Rita Lang makes traditional Rosh Hashana honey cakes, images of the holiday kitchen from her New Jersey childhood pop into her mind.
"There was the wonderful smell, the warmth, the togetherness of family," Lang said as she poured flour into a stainless-steel bowl at Chabad Jewish Community Center of Riverside while preparing the cakes.
Jewish families throughout the Inland area are preparing honey cakes for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, which began Friday night. This year is 5770. The name means "the head of the year" and is considered one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar. It is considered a day of rememberance. It is the beginning of 10 "days of awe" that culminate Sept. 28 with Yom Kippur, the solemn day of atonement.
Honey cakes symbolize the hope for a sweet new year. Honey-dipped apples and challah bread are also customary.
The cakes are not easy to find in the Inland area, with its relatively small Jewish population.
Chabad sold about three dozen of Lang's cakes to area Jews this year.
On Friday afternoon, Vickie Pancer was at Chabad to pick up three for her family. Pancer, 58, doesn't have the same childhood memories of honey cakes that Lang does. She grew up in a non-observant Jewish family in Chino and didn't taste a honey cake until she was in her 40s.
The cakes and other holiday traditions now hold great meaning for Pancer and her husband.
"It's almost like a renewal at this time of our lives," Pancer said. "All these traditions were missed out on, and we've come to appreciate them a whole lot more as adults."
All the food at the traditional Rosh Hashanah table has some sort of symbolism, said Tzipora Fuss, co-director of Chabad in Riverside.
Fuss pointed at a salmon head sitting in water in a pot. Boiled fish heads are customary because at the beginning of the new year "we want to be controlling and leading, not at the end and left behind," Fuss said.
Fuss, 26, made the honey cakes for Chabad's Friday night holiday dinner. She's been baking the cakes since her mother taught her how to make them when she was growing up in Chicago.
"Every Rosh Hashanah since I was a baby, there have been fish heads, apples dripped in honey, honey cake," Fuss said. "All these things together are part of the experience of Rosh Hashanah. If you take one of these things out, it would still be Rosh Hashanah. But it wouldn't be the same."
Reach David Olson at 951-368-9462 or dolson@PE.com