Sweetness

There are very few other Jews where I am from and in my family we are both literal-minded and secular, and “happy Rosh Hashanah” or even “happy new year” works just fine for us. We generally observed the holiday with honey and apples in my childhood, if we observed at all, and wishing each other “sweetness in the new year” is another thing you could say. On the rare occasions I saw my parents encounter other Jews around the holidays, they would say, “gut yontif,” which is “[have a] good holiday” in Yiddish (or Yid-ish—I just googled and I’m actually a bit unclear, but tonight’s not the night). Good any holiday—you can use it for all of them, as far as I know. Well, probably not, like, Easter.

I had never heard anyone say “Shana tova” before I moved to Toronto and for sometime after, I heard it but I didn’t know what people were saying. I couldn’t make out the syllables even well enough to look anything up. I was embarrassed to ask—everyone always seems to think that being a Jew is somehow different from how I do it, and it’s exciting to me to be acknowledged with some kind of Jewish greeting (I worked out pretty quickly that that’s what this was, since it always came up around the High Holidays). Eventually someone gave me a printed card with the words on it and I was able to work it out—aha, Hebrew, mystery language that no one in my family speaks!

After all that, I actually gave up on both gut yontif and shana tova and now I just wish people sweetness at this time of year, going for comprehension over coolness—I do think the other languages are cooler. But everyone understands my greeting, and who doesn’t want sweetness, even if they are a gentile or a secular Jew like me who doesn’t actually know what year is ending or starting now. There, I confessed it to you instead of sneakily googling. Now we are truly honest with each other, you and I, Rose-coloured readers.

I wish you sweetness in these difficult days and comprehension wherever you may find it. Sweetness in the new year, and all the years.

<3

RR