Apples and honey
Apples and honey is a traditional dish served by Ashkenazi Jews on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year's Day and the beginning of the High Holidays.
History
Ancient Israelites likely did not eat apples and honey, since apples were not cultivated in the Levant at the time. Honey from wild bees is attested in the Bible and archaeologists have discovered an apiary from the 10th century BCE in Israel. However, boiled fruit syrups, such as date honey, were the more common form of honey at the time.The first known connection between apples and Rosh Hashanah is in the prayer book Machzor Vitry, written in 11th-century CE France. The first known mention of apples and honey being eaten on Rosh Hashanah comes from the 14th-century legal work Arba'ah Turim, which states that German Jews ate apples and honey in order to bring sweetness into the New Year. A contemporary of the author of Arba'ah Turim, Alexander Suslin, in his book Sefer Ha'agudah, attributes the custom to the Geonim.