Rosh Hashanah Sermon 2010

"The only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey....and the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it."  (Winnie the Pooh in 'The House at Pooh Corner')

Honey is perhaps the original superfood. Mesolithic rock paintings in Spain that are thought to be over 10,000 years old show women collecting honey from a wild bee nest. Since then, in every part of the world, people have kept bees, collecting their honey and using its delicious natural sweetness in baking and cooking, in drinks and deserts and, of course, drizzled on apples.


For nearly 3,000 years, honey has been used for its medicinal qualities; as an antiseptic for cuts and burns; as an antibiotic for infections and sore throats; as an antiallergenic for pollen-related hayfever; and more recently, as an antioxidant for boosting the body's defenses against serious illness. Certain varieties, like New Zealand Manuka Honey, have become incredibly popular in recent years as an all-round healing miracle food.


But honey doesn't just grow on trees – at least not in its final form. Up to 40,000 worker bees in each colony are busy collecting flower nectar which they process in special honey stomachs into a sticky substance that they deposit into a wax comb. Before the honey comb is sealed, the bees fan it with their wings to reduce the water content of the substance, making a final product that will literally last for thousands of years.


Knowing its quality as a natural preservative, the ancient Egyptians used honey to embalm their dead and as a gift for the long journey into the afterlife. And the Romans valued honey so highly that it was possible to use it to pay one's taxes instead of gold. Archaeologists found sealed pots of honey in the pyramids that are still perfectly edible.
The importance of honey does not stop with the product itself. The pollination that is carried out by bees as they fly from plant to plant in search of nectar is a vital part of almost every ecosystem on the planet. Einstein once said:


"If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination … no more man."


Honey is a delicious by-product of the daily miracle that is the natural world in which we live and on which we depend. Honey is a natural reminder of the fragility of that world and our responsibility to look after it.


Honey is certainly a remarkable substance but that is not why I decided to wax lyrical about it this evening. Honey is also the food of Rosh Hashanah!


The symbolic use of food is a particular Jewish forte. You may have noticed the New Year banner that the cheder made on Sunday but did you look closely? The letters are made from symbolic foods; sweet cakes for a sweet new year, seeds and eggs for new beginnings and fish heads, which are a Sephardi tradition on Rosh Hashanah – which literally means the Head of the Year.


But the symbolic use of honey in religious ritual is not actually unique to Judaism. In Hindusim, honey is one of the five elixirs of immortality and is poured over temple deities. In the New Testament, John the Baptist is said to survive in the wilderness on a diet of locusts and honey and on the festival of Madhu Purnima, Buddhists remember how Buddha also survived in the wilderness on honey brought to him by monkeys. An entire Surah of the Quran is about the Honey Bee and promotes honey as a nutritious and healing food.
 
Honey is also mentioned many times in the Hebrew Bible, although some of these citations may actually refer to honey-like date syrup rather than bee's honey. Jacob's sons take honey as a precious gift when they go down to Egypt during the great famine (Genesis 43:11). At the Burning Bush, God promises Moses to rescue the Israelites and bring them to a "land flowing with milk and honey" (Exodus 3:8).


The manna that the Israelites eat in the wilderness is described as tasting like "a cake fried on honey" (Exodus 16:31) and Samson finds a swarm of bees with honey inside the carcass of a lion (Judges 14:8). There is even a cautionary proverb that can be understood both literally and metaphorically: "When you find honey, eat just enough – too much of it and you will vomit" (Proverbs 25:16).


With its Biblical heritage, honey was a very special substance but it posed a problem. Foodstuffs produced by non-kosher animals are not considered kosher and bees are definitely not kosher. The Rabbis had to find a way round this and eventually concluded that honey is only produced externally on the bees' legs. This is not actually true but by the time scientists found this out, honey played too important a role in Judaism for its kosher status to be revoked.


Its most important role, of course, is on Rosh Hashanah, when we eat it with apples or baked in a cake or drizzled over challah or sweet dumplings as we hope for a sweet new year.


In a recent article entitled, 'Why Apples and Honey?', Rabbi Aron Moss suggests that these Rosh Hashanah foods may have a deeper symbolism than just their sweet flavours. He compares apples that are fresh and new but will become rotten very quickly to honey that is ancient and unchanging and can last in a usable form for thousands of years.
 
"Apples", he writes, ”represent the modern world, the here and now, that fleeting moment in time we call the present… Honey, on the other hand, represents tradition, a force that is unchanging and constant, timeless and stable… Jewish spirituality is a delicate marriage of these two forces"


Inspired by all this amazing information about honey, I too am convinced that we could rethink its symbolism on Rosh Hashanah. In that moment before we eat our apples and honey this evening when we pause between the blessing and the bite, there is so much for us to consider.


May the sweet and sticky flavour bring us a sweet and happy new year.
May the industriousness of the worker bees bring us a successful new year.
May its remarkable healing qualities bring us a healthy and protected new year.
May its strong and ancient heritage bring us a meaningful and grounded new year.
May the essential role of bees in the ecosystem bring us a balanced, thoughtful new year.
And may its role in so many religious traditions bring us a spiritually fulfilling new year.

"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best…" and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.  (Winnie the Pooh in 'The House at Pooh Corner')