Fish Heads and Rosh Hashana

It is a tradition on Rosh Hashana to have a fish head on the table during the Rosh Hashana meal. Now, on first inspection, this seems odd, unnerving even. Why do we want a creepy, slimy, fishy eye staring at us throughout the meal, making us feel guilty and uncomfortable about our food?

The simple reason is that we want the new year to be “like a head and not like a tail,” the ‘head’ representing good things. Hence the head. This doesn’t explain, however, why fish in particular, as opposed to a sheep’s head– which is also a Rosh Hashana tradition, for that very reason.

Fish, you see, multiply. They lay lots and lots and lots of eggs (which, collectively, become caviar, not a Rosh Hashana tradition and therefore not further discussed here). In fact, fish are sometimes referred to in the Tanach to imply multitudes. We have a special bracha to say on Rosh Hashana hoping that we “multiply like fish”.

While we don’t actually want to have babies by the hundreds (an idea explored more in Parshat Shmot, and with reference to insects; while there are four kosher insects, they are far less appetizing than fish), we do mean to stick around for years to come, and to do that, we need to procreate.

Another explanation, which has absolutely no basis in halacha or Tanach, is the fact that if one reverses the letters in the Hebrew word for fish, דג, the resultant word is גד, luck. And if there’s anything we want during the new year enough to resort to absurd and off-putting centrepieces in order to get, it’s luck.

May we all be like fish in the year 5770.