Yahrzeit glasses, a kitchen mystery and a recipe for generations

(RNS and NPR) — In Jewish tradition, after somebody dies, the anniversary of their death is marked by lighting a yahrzeit candle. Taking their name from the Yiddish note for “year-time,” yahrzeit candles approach in a stubby glass holder a couple of inches excessive. They burn for 24 hours, to be aware and honor the individual lost. After the candle has burned, the little glass is left at the back of. And in some families that customary glass is achieve to a unusual exhaust.

Ruth Lebed’s grandmother came from Eastern Europe, a location that was typically Russia, typically Poland. She never learned English thoroughly, however she was an amazing baker. Increasing up, Lebed lived fair next to her grandparents and remembers her grandmother’s baking.

“She would make rugelach, and she would make strudel,” said Lebed. “And all of these little delicacies that you really didn’t note in bakeries.” 

After her grandmother died, Lebed and her mother tried to re-create her recipes — specifically the dough she veteran for rugelach, which also made improbable hamantaschen — and the recipe called for a glass of juice. Which left the family questioning: What’s a glass?

So, they tried a cup — didn’t work. One in all their everyday juice glasses — also nasty. 

“And then finally,” Lebed remembered, “my mother said, ‘You know what? Grandma veteran to maintain all of her yahrzeit glasses.’” 

And that was it. 

Others share similar tales. Judy Bart Kancigor, author of “Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes From the Rabinowitz Family,” came across several mentions of “a glass of flour” when gathering her family’s recipes. Based on a achieve a query to about yahrzeit glass recipes on an on-line Yiddish forum, one respondent talked about a family sage of somebody who thought the “1 gl of rice” measurement referred to a gallon, leading to a rather inedible stuffed cabbage.

Utilizing candles on the occasion of a death goes back as far as there are candles. And the exhaust of candles to mark the yahrzeit, the anniversary of a death, is talked about in Jewish tradition as far back as the Middle Ages. However the mass-produced glass holders came later. It’s unclear exactly when production started, however advertisements for yarhzeit candles from Standard Oil Co. started displaying up in the Jewish press as early as 1914. 

The glasses of a hundred years ago had been a bit bigger than today’s — appreciate a small juice glass, thick and beveled, sturdy adequate to maintain a candle that burns a total day (Kancigor measured her family’s glasses as conserving a cup plus 2 tablespoons). Many American Jews grew up with the memory of Eastern European grandparents cleaning customary yahrzeit candle glasses and the exhaust of them as measuring cups, as everyday juice glasses or (since they had been thick adequate) to maintain a cup of hot tea, to be sipped Russian-fashion, thru a sugar dice held between one’s teeth.

This repurposing may seem a little questionable. Perhaps even sacrilege? However the yahrzeit glass shouldn’t be officially a sacred object, with no mention in the Talmud or the Torah.

“Right here’s custom, or minhag, as we would call it,” explained Sarit Wishnevski. Wishnevski leads Kavod v’Nichum, a Jewish staff that helps chevra kadisha, the volunteer teams that prepare bodies for burial in the Jewish tradition and care for of us that are grieving. 

“There is rarely any such thing as a ritual obligation to mark the anniversary of a death. I contemplate we enact it because it connects us with our ancestors. It connects us with memory. It helps us to mark time.”

Wishnevski says the yahrzeit candle is a mechanism — it’s not sacred in and of itself, however serves as a way to bring of us into a sacred moment. And because there’s no official liturgy, of us can light the yahrzeit candle and resolve out what it has to say to their contain personal mourning.

“We don’t glean over of us, fair?” said Wishnevski. “We carry them with us forever, and it’s a really beautiful way to be aware these of us, and to dedicate time to the these that are with us.”

However not everybody has that reaction to the yahrzeit candle. 

Hasia Diner taught Jewish history at Recent York College. When she was growing up, her father and stepmother lit a lot of yahrzeit candles — for all of the relatives who had been lost to the Holocaust. And after the candles had burned down, her stepmother would gouge out any remaining wax and exhaust the glasses on their breakfast table. Or to cut out poppyseed cookies or little blueberry-stuffed varenyky. However for a little one, it was a bit scary.

“It was lawful traumatic to survey these items,” remembered Diner. “I didn’t want to survey these glasses. I didn’t want to survey them with the flame in them, and I didn’t want to survey them with orange juice in them.”

However it absolutely made her realize death is a part of lifestyles. And taking a survey back now, Diner sees it as more or less beautiful.

“Accurate to contemplate that that cookie that I am biting into came from the glass to be aware my mother … that’s more or less really extremely effective.”

Erin Fortuna’s grandmother also reused yahrzeit glasses for her baking — and also came to this country as a Jewish immigrant with a legacy of loss. 

“She brought the memory of these that came before her. She brought the memory of her mother who couldn’t make it here. She brought the memory of her sister and her nieces and nephews who died.” 

Fortuna, who has dedicated herself to preserving these family recipes, says they’re all the more meaningful because of the usage of this glass.

“She brought the memory of everybody each time she made a recipe, because there’s so remarkable more than lawful a glass candle.”

To a few extent, the generations who came before are always in the room in case you make an customary family recipe. However the exhaust of a yahrzeit glass, this physical reminder of loss, makes that presence even more concrete — in a way that’s candy, and sad, and meaningful. And maybe even appetizing.

This sage was produced thru a collaboration between NPR and RNS. Take heed to the radio model of the sage.