10 little known Rosh Hashanah customs from around the world

In Djerba, an island off the coast of Tunisia, which still has an active Jewish community, it is customary for children to comb the olive orchards in the days before Rosh Hashanah. They collect as many fallen olives as they can, which are then pickled in salt.

On the morning before Rosh Hashanah, they carry the olives through the streets calling, zeitun yehi ratzon, announcing that they have olives with which people can recite the traditional yehi ratzon blessing, asking that our merits multiply like olive saplings.2

On the night before Rosh Hashanah, every Jewish home was visited by the shochet (kosher slaughterer) who would slaughter the ram they had cared for at home for the past few weeks. (If the ram was found to be unkosher, the family would see this as an ill omen and reason to increase their repentance.)

The ram would be prepared in melon rinds, and its head served separately. Before partaking of the head, the diners would express the wish “that we be a head and not a tail.”

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Ten Rosh Hashanah Customs from around the world (Chabad.com)