72 | SEPTEMBER 26 • 2024 
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t’s time for apples and honey, friends and family, 
and a whole new Jewish year. Rosh Hashanah 
begins Oct. 2 this year, and kids across the 
community are getting ready. 
For Rosh Hashanah this year, Lilly 
Berg is starting a new tradition. The 
11-year-old from Bloomfield Hills will 
be running her first honey competition, 
where the guests around the table for 
the holiday meal will try different 
types of honey and rate them. 
“I thought it would be a cool idea,” 
she says, explaining that her family is 
collecting honey sourced from places 
as far away as Africa and Australia. 
“If it’s the best one, we’re going to 
have the same honey next year, and 
new competitors to compete with it to 
see if there’s a new winner.”
She came up with the idea as a fun way 
to celebrate the holiday and points out 
that there’s both a tasty element and some 
symbolism involved. “The honeys represent 
different kinds of sweetness,” she says. “In a year, 
there’s different kinds of good things that happen.”
It’s a new tradition she says she’s eager to add to 
longtime holiday favorites, such as tashlich, which, since she 
was a baby, has been a time to gather with others to cast off sins, writing 
down mistakes from the past year and throwing them into the water on 
pieces of biodegradable paper to let them go. 
Her aunt, Megan Brudney, senior associate rabbi at Temple Beth El, leads 
the ritual. 
“When I do that, it makes me feel like I’m talking to nature,” Lilly says. 

“You write down something you’ve 
been worrying about, and it goes 
away. It’s very comforting to get 
stuff off of my chest.” 
There’s guitar music, lunch — 
and it’s beautiful, she says. 
After all, the High Holidays 
are about forgiveness and 
hope, she explains. “This is 
about letting yourself forgive 
yourself, and knowing that 
even though things are hard 
sometimes, there’s always a new year, 
and always a chance for good things 
to happen.”
The High Holidays are a good 
time for self-reflection, says Debbie 
Morosohk, director of education for 
Temple Beth El. It’s a time for thinking 
about what kind of friend, child or 
sibling you’ve been in the past year, and 
how you’d like the year ahead to be. 
“Just think about what you can do and 
goal setting,” she says. 
She often talks to kids around the High 
Holidays about how, in the liturgy, the Hebrew word 
for sin, chet, means something like missing the mark, as 
you would on a dart board. It’s not always possible to hit the 
bullseye, she says, “So, that’s what Judaism is teaching us,” she explains. 
“When we’re messing up, it’s giving us the benefit of the doubt, saying 
‘you’re always trying to do the right thing.’ It’s assuming we’re always trying 
to do the right thing, but we can’t always make it.”
The new year, however, represents a chance to start over again, Morosohk 
says. “You get a fresh, new start, and that’s something to celebrate.” 

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5785!

KAREN SCHWARTZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Say Hello To

ROSH HASHANAH
KIDS SECTION

Lilly 
Berg

