The meaning of honey 

Honey. A sweet, sticky, yellow substance made by bees, most commonly used as food. Also, a name that you call someone you love or like very much. Also, the centrepiece of Jewish New Year.

Honey is simple. Honey is connection. Honey is the heart, the soul, the stomach. Honey is sticky fingers and aching cheeks. Honey is new, sweet, untainted beginnings.

Rosh Hashanah is a time for family, connection, new chapters and shared joy. It is knowing your family is right beside you through it all, laughing and smiling with bellies full of chicken noodle soup.

So why, as I sit alone on the floor of my apartment on Rosh Hashanah with a plate of apples and simple honey, do I feel the weight of the world on my mind? Why do I feel so much sorrow? So much loss for people I don't know? Why do I sit and mourn thousands of years' worth of mourning?

Why does the honey enter my soul and cling to it? I hear names of people I have never met, and feel my connection with them run so deeply it is as if I have known them my entire life, as if they have been right by my side for more years than I can count. And maybe they have, in a spiritual sense, maybe they are the honey that coats our hearts. It is them, the people we have lost and never known, that cling to us.  

Honey is my people. 

Honey is thousands of years of hatred and horrors undocumented and other horrors that are too well documented. Honey is looking around the synagogue and knowing that we all mourn, we all feel our souls weep. We know the names, we know the dates, we know the numbers, but we don't have closure. Maybe we never will. How could we?