The Red Apple Shortage— A Sign for Rosh Hashana
Aug 30th, 2010 | By admin | Category: 2010-2011, Archives, Jewish Holidays, Rosh Hashana
By Rabbi Yisrael Rutman
We’ve been “dying” from the record-breaking heat in Israel this summer. Fortunately, for us, it’s just a figure of speech. But for the apples it’s not; they really have been dying.
The Jerusalem Post reported that some 70 percent of the red apple crop grown in the north of the country has been wiped out, “baked” on the trees by the intense heat. Farmers are asking the Agriculture Ministry for compensation for this “natural disaster.”
It’s not a good sign for the first night of Rosh Hashana, either, because this is the variety of apple that most people in Israel use for the simanim, the symbolic foods of the festival meal. The tradition is to dip a slice of apple into honey as a sign of our hopes and prayers for a sweet year.
To be sure, the agricultural damage will be far more than the spiritual damage. Israelis can make do with other types of apples, which didn’t suffer so much from the heat wave; Golden Delicious or Granny Smith instead of the Red Tops.
After all, Jewish law does not stipulate the variety of your honey-dipped apple. Even if we had no apples at all, Rosh Hashana would go on. The simanim are a custom, a symbolic act which grew organically (pardon the pun) among the Jewish people; not a Torah requirement like shofar.
The red apple shortage itself illustrates an important principle of Rosh Hashana. For tradition teaches that on Rosh Hashana everything pertaining to our physical sustenance is held up before God in judgment. As we say in the prayers of the day, God decides “Who shall live and who shall die; who shall be poor and who shall be rich, who shall be brought down and who shall be raised up.”
That there would be a heat wave like this, and that it would devastate the apple crop, and in particular the popular red ones, was decreed a year ago, on Rosh Hashana. It is not a “natural disaster,” in the sense of an accident of nature.
But how, then, is the Agriculture Ministry to judge the farmers’ petition for compensation? The farmers are entitled to the government’s financial help for crop losses beyond their control. But if the success or failure of the harvest is a matter of Divine judgement, which is dependent on one’s good or bad deeds during the year, it is their own fault, and why should the taxpayers bear the burden?
But we cannot know what the Divine calculation was that resulted in this year’s “baked apples.” We cannot assume that the apples died for the farmers’ sins. The farmers of the Galil and Golan may, in fact, be tzadikkim, righteous people deserving of the best Red Tops ever.
On the contrary, it may be that the red apples died for our sins—that for whatever reason we are not deserving to have our favorites at our festive tables this year. If that is the case, then we, the taxpayers, should compensate the farmers for their loss.
On second thought, even if we could know the reason, and the farmers would in fact be culpable, it would not justify withholding government compensation. There is such a thing as forgiveness, after all, and we shouldn’t want the farmers to suffer if we can help them.
And by helping them, whether they are “deserving” or not, we demonstrate our compassion for our fellow Jews. Thus, the red apple shortage is not a disaster, but a golden (delicious) opportunity to help others. Not a bad sign, but a good one. And that, no doubt, will be credited to our account when we are judged this Rosh Hashana concerning next summer’s apple harvest, among other things.
Let that be our kavannah, our intention, when we dip the apple in honey this year: That as God judges the farmers and their apples, so too He judges us, and that He should be as compassionate towards us as we are toward others. And if we should fall short in our fellow-feeling, that He not judge us harshly, that He should forgive us.
Next year in Jerusalem—with Red Tops!
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