Shanah tovah umetukah – may the New Year be sweet.

Given the current state of the world I even settle for tolerable. Ardently hoping for peace.

I usually send out a photomontage containing apples on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. It is the traditional food, combined with sweet honey, to greet the Jewish New Year. This year, one of my favorite art websites – Yoyo Maeght, owner of a contemporary art gallery in France – had a series of paintings of apples just in time, one more beautiful than the next. So I went and looked for some more – you have to provide your own honey, while we marvel at centuries of perceptively detailed, enticing depictions of my favorite fruit.

Peter Claesz Still Life with Fruit and Roemer (1644)

Gustave Courbet Still Life with Apples (1872) These look the ones on my tree….. the worms, meanwhile, have moved over to politics.

Paul Cezanne still Life with 7 apples and tube of paint (1879)

Vincent van Gogh Still Life with Basket of Apples (1887)

Aleksej von Jawlensky Still Life with apples and blue cup (1904)

Pablo Picasso Apple (1914)

Henri Matisse Apples on a Table (1916)

Alberto Giacometti Apple on the Sideboard (1937)

Raoul Martinez Still Life with Apples and Pears in front of a Window (1944)

Henk Bos Still Life with Apple and Walnut (Date unknown, 20th Century)

Henk Pander The Light (2017) Apples central and yet almost disappearing in this riotous accumulation of props.

Looking at apples led to thoughts of apple pie, conjuring thoughts of kitchen romance, making me want us all to read this essay on why strongmen rely on women at home (thank you, Leila F., for sending this on!). Let us enter the New Year open-eyed to snake-oil vendors and false promises.

Music today is the Prayer by Ernest Bloch, from a 2023 Berlin Philharmonic benefit concert for Israeli and Palestinian peace organizations: “Woman Wage Peace” and “Women of the Sun.”