My mother and grandmother always made some dish of black-eyed peas for New Year’s eve and New Year’s Day. We were supposed to eat them for good luck in the coming year. I gradually dropped the tradition, then picked it up again later. The secular New Year, like all changing times, is filled with traditions to ensure prosperity, health, and more. Why black-eyed peas?
Given that this website is founded on different cultures coming together in our little Gwynallen family I thought the black-eyed pea tradition would be an interesting story. My family being rooted mostly in North Carolina in recent generations I always accepted the eating of black-eyed peas at the New Year as a Southern custom. I never really thought about the roots of the tradition.
It was years after I found my way to Judaism that I ran across a mention that Sephardic Jews brought the tradition of eating black-eyed peas at Rosh Hashanah with them when they settled in the American South, particularly Georgia, in the 18th century, possibly as early as 1733. This 2009 article in the Jewish Forward offers a good summary: At Rosh Hashanah, Black-eyed Peas for Good Fortune.
However, several sources root the practice in “the Babylonian Talmud, which states, “Abaye said, ‘Now that you have said that an omen is significant, at the beginning of each year, each person should accustom himself to eat gourds, fenugreek, leeks, beets and dates…….” (Kerisus 6a). Each of the ritual foods listed represents something different for the year ahead.
In The Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, Gil Marks writes that while black-eyed peas are not in the list of foods in this Talmud reference, fenugreek seeds are included. The term for fenugreek is rubia (or rubiyah), which sounds like yirbu, meaning “to increase.” In a discussion of the Rosh Hashana symbolic foods in the Talmud reference, an article on Torah.org says that “We therefore say a Yehi Ratzon that contains the request “may…our merits increase.” For a deeper discussion of this Talmud reference and the eating of symbolic foods see Rosh HaShana: The Custom of Eating Symbolic Foods.
Marks says that Sephardim confused that rubia with lubia, the word for black-eyed peas, and they began incorporating black-eyed peas into their Rosh Hashanah foods.
Black-eyed peas were first domesticated in Africa 5,000 years ago. Some believe they made their way to Judea 500 years before the Common Era, and thus were part of the Jewish diet very early on.
Black-eyed peas are also thought to have arrived in North America though slave ships, predating the arrival of Jews in the colonies. They were observed growing in the Carolina colonies at the beginning of the 1700s.
The humble black-eyed pea is also called field pea and cowpea. As in Africa, they were often planted at the borders of the fields to help keep down weeds and enrich the soil, and cattle grazed on the stems and vines. While they didn’t grace many upper class tables, they were one of the Carolina’s cash crops, exported to the Caribbean colonies before the Revolutionary War. In the colonies they had long been a staple of slaves and poor whites as the plant grew quickly, was plentiful, and was highly nutritious. The black-eyed peas and rice combination forms a complete protein, offering all of the essential amino acids.
The interaction of Jews and the Southern Black population also created an environment where black-eyed pea dishes could be influenced across the cultures.
After the Civil War, when crops were destroyed, the black-eyed pea, as well as other easy to grow plants, became important to southerners of all classes. Black-eyed peas, greens, and cornbread became staples of all hard-working households that were not flush with income, and the three form the basis of secular New Year’s meals for good fortune.
So, what about the black-eyed pea might symbolize good fortune?
- For one, dried black-eyed peas can be germinated. Beyond the symbology of new life, for the slave or poor Southerner, having some extra black-eyed peas on hand at the New Year guaranteed sustenance provided by a new crop of the fast-growing vines.
- Also, when cooked they expand.
- Finally, they are so small that a serving of them contains a large number of the peas.
May we all be grateful for the most humble of things,
and all have a year of increase, of prosperity.