By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

I’ve always loved apples. My current favorite are Granny Smith apples, a bag of which I keep in the house all year-round. They are long lasting, and stay fresh even cut, so I can bring them along with me for a snack. Not everyone likes them because they are tart, but they also have an underlying sweetness. One of my favorite yogurt mixtures is chopped-up Granny Smith apples, raisins, walnuts and cinnamon mixed in unsweetened yogurt. 
On the other hand, I was not a fan of honey when I was growing up, which is kind of ironic in that Honey was my mother’s name. (Well, not her birth name, but many people didn’t realize that she had any other name.) I’ve grown to tolerate honey and now don’t mind eating it. But there are plenty of other sweet foods I like better, which led me to ponder something I never really thought about before: why were apples and honey picked as the foods we use to wish ourselves a sweet new year? 
Let’s be honest: chocolate cake or a cookie of one’s choice (I’m a big fan of oatmeal raisin), a candy bar, or a bowl of your favorite flavor of ice cream would make more sense as something to use to bring you a sweet new year. This, of course, led me to search for the history of this food choice. A few things quickly popped up: I did know that the ancient Israelites could not have eaten apples and honey for Rosh Hashanah because apples are not native to the Middle East. While we’re discussing ancient times, it should be noted the honey written about in the Bible was probably date honey, which was far more common than bee honey. 
A reference led me to the Tur, Orach Chayim 583, which I found on Sefaria. That text notes that in Germany, apples and honey were eaten during a meal, with those eating them saying, “Let this new year be a sweet year for us.” Some of the customs for the new year may be less appealing: one in the same section suggests that if you want to know if you will live through the year, you should light a candle and place it in a room that doesn’t have a draft. If it lasts from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, you’ll live. If the flame goes out, you will not “continue.” (That is the translation on Safaria. I guess that’s more pleasant than saying if the light goes out, you’ll die.)
But back to food: something must have happened at some point for the custom to develop, but the only way we’ll know for certain would be to use a time machine. After all, I’m not sure the claim on several websites that the use of apples comes from a quote in Song of Songs, comparing people to apples, is accurate. (Had apples traveled from Asia to the Middle East by that time? Where is that time machine?) For those thinking about the Garden of Eden, the name of the fruit is never mentioned and as for what particular fruit it was, that’s up for debate. (Books have been written about the topic: I know because I read one. You can find the review at Celebrating Jewish Literature: The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.)
What is interesting is how widespread – at least for Ashkenazic Jews – this one custom has become. There are a variety of other food related customs, some of which I’ve written about before that most Western Jews have no idea exist. (You can find the one about fish heads at On the Jewish food scene: Fish heads and the New Year.) 
This year, feel free to use apples and honey. Or you could go wild and try one of my other suggestions, or pick out one of your own. The idea is to have a sweet new year. I don’t think it matters what food we eat since I don’t really believe eating a sweet will change our destiny. However, I am all for celebrating and praying for a good new year. May yours be filled with joy and good health.