On this hallow’s eve I find old writings about one of my dearest ancestors, my grandmother.
Getting ready to light the Friday night candles with my mom’s candles and my grandmom’s candlesticks I am swept into the tide of memories of days past.
Grandmom covered her head with a scarf and ‘Ben shlecked’ the candles. She’d light each one singing the ancient blessing, “baruch ata Adonai…”words carried through our genes and generations. After she lit and blessed the candles, she closed her eyes and in silence made three embracing circles over the burning candles bringing the light in, her candle-lit face shining every Friday night.
I loved watching her and hadn’t recalled it as such an emotional touchstone in my life until I inherited those candlesticks when my mom died. Handed down from mother to daughter I wondered if these brass candlesticks belonged to my great-grandmother or were they a wedding gift when my grandmother married in 1904.
My Grandmom was a loving part of my every day life growing up. She lived with us a number of times. The first time I remember living with her I was about 4 years old. My mom and I moved into Grandmom’s large apartment above a card shop on Elmwood Avenue in Philadelphia. My mom and I moved there when my father got drafted into WWII. We had to move back to Philadelphia from Chicago where my dad had taken on a non-exempt job managing a jazz club. Moving back and forth, back and forth was a family pattern.
Living in grandma’s place for a few years, I slept in a cot at the foot of the bed my mom slept in.The trolley clanked down the street all hours of the day and we could here the train whistling a few blocks away. Was this the wrong side of the tracks? It was the only side of the tracks.
My dad came home when I was six and we left grandma’s moving back again to Chicago. Then she would visit us coming by the long train ride and stay for a month or two. Not long after my brother was born we moved back to Philly and grandma moved in with us to our new house. Typical for Philadelphia, this was a row house attached to houses on both sides with a front porch and 8-foot square cement back yard. Not a tree on the street or any other Jews. I was about 9 when grandma and I shared a bed and bedroom. I don’t remember for how many years but I always wondered why my brother got a whole room to himself and me and gram had to share, but I think I got the better deal. I loved my Grandmom.
She smelled good, she laughed at herself in a good way, and never seemed to be unhappy or ashamed or judging, all the things I perceived my mother felt. My grandmother lit the candles and she cooked Jewish delicacies like babka (coffee cake) and gefilte fish from scratch. I’d sit in the kitchen with her writing down the ingredients and recipes only to be dismayed when she kept of ‘shitting’ (‘shitting’ in Yiddish = pouring) in a bissell of this and a bissell of that. How do you measure a sprinkle or a pour? Her sweet rolls were to die for and the aromas that filled the kitchen delighted all of my senses.
But oh my gramma, she couldn’t read a word of English yet spoke clearly without a hint of an accent. She came to America when she was a young girl immigrating from Latvia. She carried the Jewish thread strongly in my home. My dad rebelled against his father’s orthodoxy and my mother did Judaism her way, praying to herself and on the high holidays, but not a whole lot more except her dedication to Jewish women’s groups and charities as long as I can remember. In Chicago she was active in HIAS, then B’nai Brith
My Grandmom showed me humor even in the face of adversity; guess that’s how my mother learned that. She was beautiful inside and out. My Grandmom shared a love of making food and experimenting with cooking – after all she couldn’t read a cookbook, she had to improvise or remember her families recipes. She loved us well.
A recipe for cooking up a loving family comes from the heart and hearth of our grandmothers