We run through Rosh Hashanah food traditions from “world famous” pineapple-shaped chopped liver sculptures to the purveyors of a plant-based oyster and shiitake mushroom brisket). Chag Sameach!
Is this the one where you don’t eat bread? No, that’s Passover. This harvest festival celebrates the beginning of the Jewish New Year, marked by spending time with family and eating sweet things to ensure a happy and abundant new year. But there is matzo ball soup. There’s always matzo ball soup.
When is it exactly? It starts this year at sundown Wed October 2, and lasts until sundown on Friday October 4.
Editor's note: We enjoyed the story so much last year we've updated it for this year. Enjoy!
For me, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which starts this year at sundown on Wed October 2, is all about traditions — creating them and recalling them. And for my family, 85% of our traditions happen around the dinner table.
So yes, of course you’ve got to listen to someone blow the Shofar 100 times. AND, yes, you’ve got to throw bread, or nowadays pebbles or seaweed, into a flowing body of water to symbolize the things you wish you hadn’t done this year (a ceremony known as tashlich). But mostly, you spend a lot of time eating, especially sweet things like dipping apples in honey, because the major underlying theme for this celebration is to ensure that you enter the new year with sweetness and hope.
(Eat your apples and honey now as things only get sweeter as we head into fall, eating dozens of 100 Grand bars as I’m passing out candy to trick-or-treaters or overdoing it with Thanksgiving yams that have been sufficiently marshmallowed).
Here are some of my family’s traditions — and some new ones that are evolving in L.A. as modern chefs take on ancient customs.
Mom’s traditions
My mom was born in Newark, but raised in Pico-Robertson. Her parents, Selma and Vic, moved to the neighborhood less for the synagogues and more for the delis — and the ritzy proximity to Beverly Hills.
Josh's Grandpa Vic with his sister Sylvia and Grandma Selma
(
Courtesy of
/
The Heller Family
)
My mom’s fondest memories of Rosh Hashanah were at the kid’s table in the early 70s, over the hill in Canoga Park at her Nana and Auntie Jan’s house.
She remembers walking into the smell of Nana’s homemade potato knishes — “like the ones you’d get at Label’s Table — but Nana’s were better.” Once seated, there’d always be mixed nuts on the table — so you could nibble your day's worth of calories before the meal even appeared.
They’d always have sliced apples dipped into a ramekin of honey, tzimmis(carrots, sweet potatoes, and prunes), noodle kugel and brisket, and my mom remembers her older family members vying for the pupik, the gizzards in the chicken fricassee.
Chopped liver pineapple sculpture from the 1953 Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook
Grandma Selma was “world famous” for making sculptures out of chopped liver. In those days, most Ashkenazi liver dishes came from chicken, but Selma’s recipe called for calves liver, and “everyone would go crazy for it,” according to my mom.
Selma molded her chopped liver into the shape of a pineapple, adding cross hatches and a crown of real fruit fronds, adding pimento green olives to make it look like a real pineapple.
Meanwhile, my mom’s Aunt Jackie was the Queen of the Jello Mold — she’d put fruit cocktails inside of wiggly Jello. My mom remembers telling her sister, “Jello is the only food you can’t spit out if you don’t like.”
Interweaving traditions
Chef Rebecca King is a private chef who owns and operates a culinary concierge business and is the purveyor of a "a very unkosher deli" known as The Bad Jew.
King trained in the kitchen at deli-inspired fine-dining establishment Birdie Gs and learned to use the smoker at Texas-style Flatpoint Barbecue. Over the past seven years at pop-ups around LA, The Bad Jew has developed her treyf take on pastrami with her signature Porkstrami.
Chef Rebecca King
Her family told her, “Rebecca, you’re gonna get us in trouble” with the branding for The Bad Jew, but she says it really resonates with people.
As a private chef, King has cooked High Holiday meals for a wide range of family traditions.
“I have clients who keep kosher, who are secular. Some want a traditional Ashkenazi meal, others want more adventure, maybe a Mediterranean or Asian twist,” she said.
Her own family background is Ashkenazi — she grew up in Shaker Heights in Cleveland, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood — and her most potent Rosh Hashanah memories are of her grandma’s matzo ball soup and all of the kids wildly running around her grandparent’s penthouse.
But she says she also enjoys cooking in the Sephardic tradition — “I like flavor, really spicy foods, the herbaceousness — just intense flavors that I love.”
“I’ve done it all... 15 million Rosh Hashanah classics,” she smiles, quoting from Aleeza Ben Shalom in the Netflix series Jewish Matchmaking: "There's 15 million Jews in the world, and there's about 15 million ways to be Jewish."
“There’s no way to do it wrong.”
Roasted lamb with pomegranate seeds
(
Courtesy of
/
Chef Rebecca King
)
Rosh Hashanah meals have ranged from roasted chicken and carrots tzimmis to her signature oak-smoked lamb peppered with baharat seasoning topped with coriander leaves, with pomegranate molasses and arils, those juicy pomegranate seeds.
King uses pomegranates because they’re another symbolic fruit for Rosh Hashanah, representing fertility and abundance. (I remember learning that there are supposed to be 613 arils in each fruit, and that’s how many commandments there are in the Torah. Though it’s not an exact science.)
Growing a plant-based tradition
Megan Tucker is the Culinary Institute of America-trained chef behind pop-up Mort & Bettys, a Philly-style plant-based Jewish deli. “Everything is made from scratch — and there’s no fake meat here, it’s all seasonal produce," Tucker said.
The deli is named after Tucker’s grandparents, Mort and Betty. They were both born to New York City Lithuanian-Jewish families in 1912 — and met at a Borscht Belt summer resort, “like Dirty Dancing but without all the drama,” Tucker said as she laughed.
Mort was an engineer and owned a piano factory that was converted to a wartime airplane factory during the war. Betty had a degree in accounting and worked for the city — and even ran for local city council.
Matzo ball soup from Mort and Betty's
(
Courtesy of
/
Mort and Betty's
)
Tucker has infused that old-school Jewish tradition into a modern, vegan approach to Rosh Hashanah dishes.
This year's menu includes matzo ball soup, a symbolically round challah (representing the continuity of the seasons) and matzo ball soup. "The standout," she says, "is probably the harvest vegetable kugel or the apple honey cake (with house made vegan honey)." The cake is inspired partly by Amish farm stands in central Pennsylvania.
You can do pre-order pickups from their location at Crafted Kitchen in the DTLA Arts District, and their weekly pop-up still happens every Sunday at the Atwater Village Farmer's market.
More retail locations are also selling Mort & Betty's products, like Maciel's Plant Butcher in Highland Park, Maury's Bagel in Silverlake, and Love.Life.Cafe in El Segundo.
Traditions for the cooking-avoidant, time-pressed wage slave
I know some of us don’t have family in town — which might make it difficult to access traditional holiday feasts. But it is possible to assemble a quick and easy Rosh Hashanah meal.
(Shoutout to my editor, Gab Chabrán, who knows I’m the King Of The Family Meal Deal.)
Listen, I regularly serve dinner to 4-12 at my dining room table, and I’m always on the lookout for great value take-out offers. So, if you just wanted me to drop an instant Traditional Ashkenazi Rosh Hashanah dinner, I suggest you order a Gelson’s High Holiday Meal package. There are many other places you can order this kind of meal, like smaller delis, but what’s convenient (if you live near a Gelson’s) is that since they are doing supermarket-sized volumes, your food will be ready when you need it.
The Heller Family: Josh, bottom left, his father Kenn, upper left. Sister Ally, upper right and his mother Babette, lower right
(
Courtesy of
/
The Heller Family
)
Nothing beats home-cooked — but sometimes you may have a cadre of tiny cousins running around your home demanding food, and you just need something to give them.
The reason you’re feeding people is to facilitate them to go on with their evenings without thinking about hunger. Well-fed people can laugh and be silly with their families, like bootleg retellings of The Wise Men of Chelm (a Yiddish folk tale) or impromptu vaudeville performances from the kids’ table or dishing out gossip from someone your grandma knew in the old country — all of these happy activities require that we not be starving.
So, for me, my point is: WHAT YOU EAT AT THE ROSH HASHANAH MEAL DOESN’T REALLY MATTER — as long as you can keep your guests happy and well-fed so they can postulate on a sweet new year.
Mix and matching old and new traditions
When I asked my mom what to expect on our 2024 menu she texted that she was still "workin' on it."
Then a minute later she wrote "first course" and sent a picture of gefilte fish, two jars of Bubbie's brand horseradish, one red, one white, frozen potato bourekas, vegetarian kibbeh, and a vegan "parve kishke."
Since last year my dad has enthusiastically adopted a plant-based diet (in part from reading my trio of Vegan In The Valley Stories) so my mom's menu has more vegetarian/vegan options than usual.
Josh's son Hank enjoying his couscous
(
Courtesy of
/
The Heller Family
)
But we can also expect: "Matzo ball soup with chicken ; tzimmes ; noodle kugel ; brisket and of course apples and honey and honey cake ... am i forgetting anything ?" Oh yeah, she forgot the salads "carrot , beet, and shreeded cabbage."
Manny Valladares
is an associate producer for LAist's flagship live news show AirTalk, booking guests and researching stories.
Published May 21, 2026 10:50 AM
Crews began installing more than 90 solar streetlights in Lincoln Heights and Cypress Park in February.
(
Kavish Harjai
/
LAist
)
The topic:
Los Angeles city property owners should have received a ballot for voting on whether to pay more for street light repairs — an area of funding that has been frozen since the 1990s. An increased budget could mean faster repair times and more efficient maintenance. But — why is voting on this issue set up this way? Why vote now now? And what will your vote mean?
When is the final day to vote? Coincidentally the same day as the primary — June 2. But remember, this is completely separate from your primary election ballot.
The background: The city's budget for repairing streetlights has been frozen since the 1990s. In 1996, a statewide ballot proposition made it a requirement for municipalities to seek voter approval for general taxes and fees, such as increasing streetlight funding.
Read on ... to learn about the state of the Bureau of Street Lighting and what your vote means.
Los Angeles city property owners should have received a ballot for voting on whether to pay more for streetlight repairs — an area of funding that has been frozen since the 1990s. An increased budget could mean faster repair times and more efficient maintenance.
But — why is voting on this issue set up this way? Why vote now now? And what will your vote mean?
Why the vote?
L.A. established the Bureau of Street Lighting in 1925 — when the city was much smaller. In partnership with property developers, the bureau helped build a patchwork of streetlights.
In 1996, Proposition 218 required municipalities to seek voter approval for general taxes and fees, such as increasing streetlight funding. Since then, assessment funds, which account for 90% of the bureau's revenue, have been frozen, leaving the bureau chronically underfunded, according to Miguel Sangalang, the executive director and general manager for the Bureau of Street Lighting.
The city's Bureau of Street Lighting says that it takes one year on average to complete repairs due to budgetary constraints.
Last year, the bureau had a third party verify and assess the funding it needed to operate — an estimated $125 million.
Every property gets one vote, though each ballot is weighted based on how much a property owner is expected to pay.
Approval of the new assessment would also institute a three-year audit, meaning a third party would account for how the Bureau of Street Lighting spends the money.
Can't vote but want to participate?
Funding doesn't need to come purely from assessments.
The L.A. City Council could also supplement the bureau's budget, which it has done in the past, according to Sangalang.
City Council offices can assist with repairs in their districts through discretionary funds. The mayor also has the ability to fund such projects through an executive order.
Calling your local council member's office and asking for more funds to go to local street light improvements could help expedite the repair completion process.
How to keep tabs on LA city government
The City Council meets at 10 a.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Agendas are posted here.
A detail of the illustrated mural inside Yi Cha, a Korean eatery on Figueroa Street in Highland Park, bursts with colorful hand-drawn characters, Korean text, and neighborhood references.
(
Courtesy of Stan Lee
)
Topline:
Best known for creating the eerie child’s painting in Bong Joon Ho’s masterpiece, visual artist ZiBeZi brings his vibrant, boundary-free style to Chef Debbie Lee’s Yi-Cha.
More details: If you’ve ever dined at Chef Debbie Lee’s restaurant Yi-Cha, you’ve likely noticed the colorful, cartoon-style mural at the entrance. The vibrant painting features food, animals, nature and bold Korean words such as “Awesome” and “Let’s Eat.” It also captures the lively spirit of Highland Park in Northeast Los Angeles.
About ZiBeZi: His work has traveled farther beyond Highland Park. In Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning film “Parasite,” one of ZiBeZi’s abstract paintings appears as a prop — a child’s drawing that seems innocent but quietly signals something more unsettling. The placement introduced his work to a global audience, a moment that helped shift the trajectory of his career.
Read on... for more on how ZiBeZi brought his whimsical world to the Highland Park restaurant.
If you’ve ever dined at Chef Debbie Lee’s restaurant Yi-Cha, you’ve likely noticed the colorful, cartoon-style mural at the entrance. The vibrant painting features food, animals, nature and bold Korean words such as “Awesome” and “Let’s Eat.” It also captures the lively spirit of Highland Park in Northeast Los Angeles.
Last week, in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander History Month, Lee hosted a meet-and-greet with the mural’s artist, Korean visual artist ZiBeZi.
“This event [was] our way of saying thank you to him, and to our guests who have fallen in love with his work,” Chef Lee told The LA Local. She commissioned ZiBeZi to paint the mural last fall when she opened her restaurant.
ZiBeZi, whose given name is Jung Jae-hoon, did not begin as a visual artist. For more than a decade, he worked as a rapper, shaping stories through rhythm and lyrics. Painting came later, after what he describes as a difficult period in his life, when drawing became a form of recovery — a way, he said, “to breathe and heal.”
That origin still lingers beneath the surface of his work. His paintings, at first glance, lean whimsical: rounded forms, bright palettes, a sense of motion that feels almost childlike. But look longer and the compositions begin to open up into something more layered and introspective.
“I enjoy creating scenes where humans, nature, animals and the universe coexist without boundaries,” ZiBeZi told The LA Local. “On the surface, the work may feel playful or cartoon-like, but underneath, there are emotions, memories and questions about life.”
Artist ZiBeZi poses with acclaimed Parasite director Bong Joon-ho alongside ZiBeZi’s painting that was featured in the film.
(
Couresty of ZiBeZi
)
His work has traveled farther beyond Highland Park. In Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning film “Parasite,” one of ZiBeZi’s abstract paintings appears as a prop — a child’s drawing that seems innocent but quietly signals something more unsettling. The placement introduced his work to a global audience, a moment that helped shift the trajectory of his career.
By 2024, the Grammy Museum had commissioned him to create a mural for its K-pop exhibition, another sign of his growing visibility. Still, he describes these milestones less as turning points than as affirmations.
“Those experiences gave me confidence to continue creating,” he said, “while also reminding me to stay true to my own voice and artistic identity.”
At Yi-Cha, that voice takes on a distinctly local resonance. Lee said ZiBeZi approached the mural less as a commission and more as a process of immersion. “He didn’t just paint a mural he spent time in Highland Park, walked Figueroa, felt the neighborhood. That kind of intention shows in every inch of the wall.”
The result is a piece that bursts with joy. An alien figure hovers near the words “Highland Park,” rendered in Hangul, the Korean alphabet. There are subtle nods to Yi-Cha’s menu and broader references to Los Angeles, woven together in a way that resists a single interpretation.
It is, above all, a mural meant to be lived with and experienced over meals.
“Painting for a restaurant feels very different from exhibiting in a gallery,” ZiBeZi said. “Here, art becomes part of people’s everyday experience — it lives with their laughter, their meals and their memories.”
The mural wall at Yi Cha, a Korean restaurant on Figueroa Street in Highland Park, fills floor to ceiling with whimsical illustrations celebrating the neighborhood and Korean culture.
(
Courtesy of Stan Lee
)
Keep up with LAist.
If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.
New TSA program looks to increase private security
By Bill Chappell | NPR
Published May 21, 2026 9:30 AM
(
Scott Olson
/
Getty Images
)
Topline:
Under the Transportation Security Administration's new program called TSA Gold+, private companies would play a much larger role in airport security than they have in decades.
More details: The agency is billing the program as an update to the Screening Partnership Program, or SPP, in which 20 U.S. airports currently use private security screeners rather than federal workers.
Why now: The agency says airports that opt into the program would be able to tailor security systems for their facility — and avoid the TSA staffing shortages that became a very public headache at airports during the recent government shutdown over Homeland Security funding.
Read on... for more on the program.
Federal officers handle security screening at all but a small fraction of U.S. airports, but the Trump administration is hoping to change that. Under the Transportation Security Administration's new program called TSA Gold+, private companies would play a much larger role in airport security than they have in decades.
The TSA is set to host officials from airports and security contractors to an "industry day" at its Springfield, Va., headquarters on Thursday, as it looks to develop TSA Gold+, a public-private program that the agency calls "transformative."
The agency is billing the program as an update to the Screening Partnership Program, or SPP, in which 20 U.S. airports currently use private security screeners rather than federal workers.
"TSA Gold+ marks a significant evolution in the agency's approach to aviation security," a TSA spokesperson told NPR via an emailed statement.
The agency says airports that opt into the program would be able to tailor security systems for their facility — and avoid the TSA staffing shortages that became a very public headache at airports during the recent government shutdown over Homeland Security funding.
It also says the program would bring "the latest technology" such as AI tools to airport screening operations, to increase capacity and cut wait times, although the agency did not specify how those gains would be achieved. From the details shared so far, the equipment would be the contractors' responsibility — a departure from the current SPP system, in which TSA controls the equipment and oversees the security contract. The TSA says it would perform the oversight role it currently does.
"Industry partners can manage equipment and introduce innovations, while travelers enjoy a smooth, predictable, and bespoke experience," the TSA said as it unveiled TSA Gold+.
Airports currently using the private Screening Partnership Program range from San Francisco and Kansas City to Sarasota, Fla., and Atlantic City, N.J., along with smaller facilities in Montana, Wyoming and other states.
Calls for privatizing airport security screening have come from President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress, echoing a recommendation in the conservatives' Project 2025 handbook for a second Trump term. But there are also signs of bipartisan interest in some level of private control over airport security, as seen in Atlanta, where city leaders recently voted to explore joining the Screening Partnership Program.
Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, touted that bipartisan interest on Wednesday during a hearing on TSA Modernization. But Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees union, which represents TSA officers, said he opposes further privatization — including the TSA Gold+ program, warning that it would hamper accountability and transparency.
Under the new program, Kelley said, contract workers would earn less than TSA officers. He added that while many transportation security officers hold security clearances, under the new plan, the government "would be ceding direct operational control of the most sensitive technology in the aviation security enterprise to private vendors."
The White House budget released last month promises to save some $52 million by privatizing airport screeners and requiring small airports to enroll in the SPP.
But officials at the hearing urged lawmakers to preserve airports' ability to choose.
Chris McLaughlin, CEO of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, noted that the SPP has been in place since aviation security underwent drastic changes following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which led to the creation of the TSA and the SPP system.
"We've had federalized screening for 25 years, almost," McLaughlin said. "Large airports like San Francisco have had an SPP program for 25 years."
Both airports' arrangements work well for them, he told Garbarino.
"The system has been safe for 25 years," he said. "It's important that airports have options."
The new "Gold+" program echoes the Trump administration's promise to bring a "golden age of travel" to the American public. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy touted those plans earlier this week, as he unveiled $970 million in funding to improve passengers' experiences at airports, from adding family-friendly security screening lanes to improving restrooms and children's play areas.
The money for those projects comes from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a Biden-era law aiming to update airports' aging infrastructure.
Copyright 2026 NPR
May gray skies return this morning for coasts and some valleys.
(
Mel Melcon
/
Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
)
QUICK FACTS
Today’s weather: Cloudy beaches sunny elsewhere
Beaches: Mid-70s
Mountains: Mid-70s to 80s
Inland: 83 to 91 degrees
Warnings and advisories: None today
What to expect: A marine layer will cover SoCal coasts today, bringing some cooling to the region. Elsewhere expect mostly sunny skies and highs around the mid 80s.
Read on ... to learn more.
QUICK FACTS
Today’s weather: Partly cloudy then sunny
Beaches: lower 70s degrees
Mountains: Mid-70s to 80s
Inland: 83 to 91 degrees
Warnings and advisories: None today
A marine layer will cover mostly the coastal areas today, lowering temperatures a degree or two. Otherwise expect a sunny afternoon elsewhere across SoCal.
L.A. County beaches will see temperatures in the lower 70s today, whereas Orange County could reach up to 79 degrees along the coast.
More inland, the valleys will see highs in the mid 80s. The Inland Empire will see highs from 83 to 91 degrees. In Coachella Valley, temperatures are expected to reach up to 100 degrees.
