Embracing complexity at our Rosh Hashanah table

It has become trendy of late to add new and bizarre foods to the Rosh Hashanah table. Gone are the days of the fish or lamb’s heads and just typical apples in honey; instead, some add peaches for a “peachy year”; others, raisins and celery for a “raise in salary,” or bananas — “May our enemies slip on the ground, like a banana that’s been split.” A different approach is to keep the traditional foods, like a pomegranate, but to jazz it up as a fancy dish like “Flame-fired Eggplant with Tahini and Pomegranate Nectar Glaze.” The simanim are elevated commensurate to our greater needs during this dramatic and intensified year.

Every synagogue, yeshiva and seminary is having urgent meetings to discuss how to celebrate the upcoming festivals: is it business as usual, or should they temper the celebratory manner of the days in light of the national tragedies? Organizations are sending out content to account for these unprecedented months, and we? We are confused. Is it indeed a “new era of Jewish history,” as some have opined? Or do we invoke the proverbial “ein chadash tachat hashemesh” (there is nothing new under the sun) and see our past year as just another trial that the Jews have faced in their storied history?

My answer to this query comes in the form of my own addition to the Rosh Hashanah table, a group of foods that symbolize the very idea we must come to internalize in our lives in general and in the present discussion in particular: complex carbohydrates!

I like this because instead of choosing a food and then finding some oblique way to connect it with a positive sign based on some tenuous wordplay, the complex carbohydrate is the message itself – its complexity is gastronomically better for us, teaching us the important value of accepting complexity in our lives.

Carbohydrates are fibers, starches and sugars – essential food nutrients – which our body turns into glucose (blood sugar) giving us energy to function. When the carbs are converted into glucose, entering the bloodstream, our body releases insulin which directs the glucose into our cells for energy. The amount of carbs we consume affects our blood sugar and if we exceed, we raise them to levels that might be dangerous to our health, turning a person hyperglycemic (high blood sugar), putting them at risk for diabetes and other issues.

There are two types of carbohydrates – simple and complex. Simple carbs come in the form of candy, table sugar, syrups, soft drinks, cake, cookies, fries, etc. Due to their chemical composition, they enter the bloodstream quickly and provide fast/short-term energy. But they also spike the blood sugar and can lead to unhealthy results.

Complex carbohydrates, on the other hand, including sweet potatoes, brown rice, quinoa, whole grains and oats (my forthcoming Rosh Hashanah simanim plate), enter the bloodstream slowly, providing long-term energy and no spiking of blood sugar.

In sum, simple sugars, like simple solutions and attitudes, provide short-term pleasure but may lead to long-term danger; complex foods, which include a myriad of ingredients, representing a myriad of views and perspectives, do not give a quick fix, do not taste as sweet, but ultimately give us a long term, healthy, future.

Rosh Hashanah is a complex holiday; it asks from us to divide our day into fervent and passionate devotion, together with joyous, social and culinary celebration. It asks us to revel in being the nation of God coronating the King once again, while at the same time to quake and shudder at the responsibility of being God’s messengers in the world. If we are looking for simplicity we will not find it on Rosh Hashanah; instead, we will immerse ourselves in complexity and ultimately we will thrive.

This year has been complex.

It is filled with sadness at the horrifying attack on October 7^th, combined with anger at how such a tragedy was allowed to take place. But we also took great pride in our sons and daughters who fought and fight valiantly protecting our home, defending our borders. This year, personally, I became a grandfather with all the joy that it entails, and celebrated weddings of close family and friends, but at the same time I attended far too many funerals and cried more than I ever have.

We have suffered the greatest single defeat in all our history as a modern nation, but at the same time we have accomplished amazing strides in destroying the infrastructure of terror in the north and south and beyond – eliminating almost every enemy leader.

And we have fought against each other (especially at the beginning of the year) tooth and nail, pledging eternal enmity, but then, in our darkest hour we joined hands, prayed together, cried together and fought on the battlefield arm in arm, exemplifying ahavat Yisrael (love of one another). How do all these opposing feelings coexist?

Complexity.

As we sit down this Rosh Hashanah and eat our complex carbs, we will all share the ups and downs, highs and lows, best and worst, we have seen over the year, and then we will pray with all our might that with the closing of 5784, all the negative feelings ebb away and we usher in an era of victory, return, recuperation, rededication and ultimately, peace.