Homemade gravlax for Yom Kippur break-fast

This story originally appeared in The Nosher.

In “Full Moon Feast,” Jessica Prentice guides us through 13 lunar months and the foods grown and prepared within them in traditional cultures. At its core is the idea that food connects people to one another, to themselves and to the natural world. Prentice describes the lifecycle of Pacific salmon, who in early autumn are born in freshwater streams, spend their lives in the ocean and then journey back upstream to their birthplace to spawn the next generation.

The salmon’s natural life cycle provides a metaphor for this time of year, when we are en...