Adjusting to Jewish life in 1930s America

Posted by Cynthia Blair Kane

This entry is the third in a series of an oral history I did with my grandmother before her passing. In her stories, she speaks of her parents' immigration to America from Russia, growing up Jewish in a German neighborhood and simply being a Jewish girl in the Midwest. For the first entry, Midwest Judaism in the 1920s, click here, for the second entry, click here.

Food in our house served many functions, but it was especially a way for Mama to express her religious and cultural identity. In Russia, Mama's identity came from the food, and when she came to the states, it was a way for her to hold on to herself.

Because we are Ashkenazi our meals were different from Sephardic Jews. Although our practices were different, we still incorporated their style with ours. The most important food is fish because it is the oldest Jewish dish mentioned in the Torah. Another extremely important food in the Jewish cuisine is bread. We learned in Sunday school that bread was the basic food in Eretz Yisrael, and that it accompanied sacrifices and offerings in Biblical times. Well Mama's challah was made out of five grains wheat, barley, spelt, oats and rye. On Shabbat we would recite Ha-Motsi over the two-challah loaves and my father would tear off a piece of bread and pass it around the table. Each one of us would tear off a piece until everyone at the table had a bit of bread on his or her plate. On Rosh Hashanah, my mother made the two loaves of bread into different shapes.

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Wednesday May 14, 2008

'Different' is good

Posted by Cynthia Blair Kane

For me, tradition has always been attached to Judaism. The way we set the table during holidays or Shabbat dinner, the plates we use, the food we cook, the way we are supposed to dress for synagogue, all of these things we do because of tradition. We do them because my grandmother's mother did them, and her mother before, and so on. Sure it's strange when you meet another Jewish family who has different traditions than your own, but just because their traditions may seem strange, it doesn't make them less Jewish, it just means they have different traditions.

Whether we keep these traditions alive today because we believe in them, or because it's what we've always done, and what we know, I'm not sure. But I do know that traditions do change. Think about what happens when people get married? How do you decide what traditions to keep and which to set aside?

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