I like my apple and honey in a two to one ratio: two parts apple to one part honey; not too much to only taste the honey, but just enough to pack an extra sweet punch.

It’s Jewish year 5786, and to celebrate the new year, Jews on Whidbey resurfaced on Tuesday after a long hiatus, to listen to the blowing of the shofar, a ram’s horn, and feast on apples and honey and other Jewish staples.

This Rosh Hashana, I was far from family. When I saw a post inviting Jews to celebrate the New Year together, I decided it’s a Rosh-Hashana-on-the-island kind of year.

We met at a beach in Clinton, some of us strangers, still we all felt uncannily familiar. We broke the ice with some cheerful salutations of “shana tova,” or good year.

In a typical service, the shofar is blown 100 times, according to Chabad.org, but for the sake of our makeshift beach service, we heard it for about 10 blows. A fellow Jew, Susan Bennett, read out the order of the shofar blasts, as another Jew, John Garber, blew the shofar.

The shofar makes four different sounds, according to PJ Library. Tekiah is a single long, loud blast. Shevarim consists of three broken blows. Truah makes nine or more staccato blows. Finally, Tekiah gedolah is the very long blast that concludes the sequence.

With the final sound of the shofar, we grabbed some of the sweet round challah bread that symbolizes the cyclical-ness of a year and walked to the water’s edge. We threw pieces of bread into Possession Sound, casting out our sins, a custom called tashlich, which must be fulfilled anytime during the 10 days of repentance between Rosh Hashana and the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur.

We ended the afternoon schmoozing over customary foods – a pomegranate, so we can be as full of commandments as the pomegranate is full of seeds — round challah and apples with honey, for a sweet new year.

The taste of apples and honey reminds me of my childhood. In a bite, I’m transported into the kids’ play area of my childhood synagogue in Bellevue. I’m surrounded by snotty kids singing songs about the new year as sticky honey drips from our lips and fingers. We are gross, but content.

Joe Greenheron, who also serves on the South Whidbey School Board, is an admin of a Jewish Discord — an online group chat platform — on the island, and he helped spread news of the meet-up. Though to his knowledge there used to be a bit more of Jewish involvement on the island, he says it seems to have fizzled out.

“My understanding is there are quite a number of Jewish people, but there’s just sort of a lack of leadership and organization,” Greenheron said. “Folks who are now like in their 70s and and older, and they, from my understanding, just kinda don’t have that energy to keep it up.”

This year, Rosh Hashana looked a little different than I’m used to, but, after hearing others express interest in meeting again, I hope I won’t have to be alone for the next Jewish holiday.

(Photos by David Welton) Father and son, Aaron and Hillel Coates, peer over Susan Bennet’s shoulder as she recites the order of the shofar’s blasts from the Siddur, a Jewish prayer book.

We ended the afternoon schmoozing over customary foods – a pomegranate, so we can be as full of commandments as the pomegranate is full of seeds — round challah and apples dipped in honey, for a sweet new year.