The thing about honey is, it isn’t simple like sugar. Cultivating sugar cane requires a great deal of effort, tending to the fields in blazing heat, processing and extracting the final sweet result. But there’s no risk.
Getting honey is risky.
The beekeeper has to dress in a special suit, covered from head to toe. Mesh screening surrounds the face. All openings on the suit are sealed with velcro or elastic. Yet even with these precautionary features, one prominent online shop notes that “making a suit that’s 100% stingproof is not completely possible”.
In the days before the modern bee-keeping gear, getting honey was even more perilous.
We might wonder why it is, that the practice on Rosh Hashana is specifically to eat honey, rather than something reliable like dried fruit. Something sweet but “safe.” Throughout the holiday, prayer after prayer reminds us that not only life and death hang in the balance, but what kind of life, and even what kind of death. One would think it’s appropriate to have foods that internalize security, helping us to feel calm and trusting about the looming Heavenly decree.
The risky aspect of honey might just be the key to understanding our role in G-d’s plan. While we may not always have control over events, we have control over our perspective; we have control over how we view those events and in turn how they impact us. When asked for his insights around a month or so into the Covid lockdowns, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks said that in whatever situation we find ourselves, we “must extract the blessing.” The premise of course is that there is a blessing to be extracted.
Honey conveys this idea implicitly. We have the chance to decide every New Year and every single day of the year, are we going to focus on the swarming dangers we see, and the possibility of pain? Or are we going to direct our energy to the sweetness that’s waiting just beyond?
Delving deeper, honey is made by bees. The word in Hebrew for bee – devora – has the same root/shoresh as dibbur – speech. Just as our free will allows us to choose where we direct our focus, we also are free to decide what we will do with our words. Do we speak in a way that stings or do our words bring sweetness to the world?
Our traditional Rosh Hashana menu is helping us internalize good intentions for the coming year. By itself, it’s not a magic potion, but with understanding and purpose, this kavana can supplement our willpower and be enjoyable in the process.
