Does the word “Tradition” make anyone else think first of this unforgettable scene from Fiddler on the Roof?

Actually, the story of this Broadway-musical-turned-film is a pretty accurate representation of what Alef writers are talking about in this issue: Changing Traditions. Just as each of the daughters of the Old Country grappled with Jewish traditions in their lives, so did each of the generations that followed.

When we first started putting this issue together, we thought that maybe it was a generational phenomenon – that the Birthright Generation is reinventing older traditions to fit a more modern life. Boy, were we surprised to find the story of a 105 year-old Jewish woman whose remains had been held onto since September because she wanted to be cremated instead of (more traditionally) buried. It seems that even our grandparents were making waves when it came to maintaining age-old Jewish cultural practices.

With so many laws, rules, and rituals to be evaluated and either kept or challenged, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Be a part of this conversation for the next few weeks and share with us the traditions that you’re grappling with as well.

Photo by Jemsweb, licensed under Creative Commons.

Changing Traditions Posts:
Cross to Bear
The First Cut is Always the Deepest
A Not-So-Dangerous Tradition
My Journey in Judaism
Punk Rock Prayer Space

By Rafi Samuels-Schwartz

We’re standing in the back of a small New York establishment, learning the finer points of how to eat Herring, when Niki Russ Federman looks up at the portrait of her great-grandfather, Joel Russ, hanging on the wall of her shop, Russ & Daughters.

In a sense, this is true.  Today both a pastrami-on-rye as well as bagels-and-lox are celebrated, if not revered, by American Jews trying to connect with the tastes of Eastern Europe’s “Old World” Jewish communities by eating what they call “deli” food.  And, while ordering a brisket sandwich can be a delicious way to commune with the past, you simply can’t appreciate “Old World” food without understanding the distinct “appetizing” history, and terminology, of  bagels and lox, smoked salmon, herring, and fancy cream cheeses; the food Niki’s great-grandfather Joel sold from his pushcart 95 years ago, and the food that she still sells today, in the store that bears her family name.

In some ways Russ & Daughters, one of the last of New York’s “appetizing stores” is an anomaly: an American store devoted to the particularly Old World specialty of forshpayz, the cold appetizers many Jews ate before their full meals. That Russ & Daughters exists today is both a testament to the quality of their lox, and the dedication of their many fans, both young and old.  Niki tells a story of hiking a trail in California, only to be stopped, chatted, and ultimately thanked by fellow hikers who noticed her Russ & Daughters t-shirt.

“It’s not just about the food,” she explains. “There are all these stories wrapped up,” She notes that most encounters, like the one on the California hiking trail, follow the same pattern: “[people say] ‘Oh, I love that place. And then they tell a story.’” It’s these stories that makes Russ &  Daughters so special,  infusing the shop with an air of authenticity and Old World street-cred, and earning Russ & Daughters’ blog, Lox Populi, a webby award this past year.

As we browse toward the back of the shop a customer turns, and without prompting, remarks that he comes to Russ & Daughters because it represents a “living food tradition” in a way that grocery stores can’t. Introducing himself as Mark, he goes on to order pickled herring, mustard dill herring, and a little bit of bright yellow curry herring as well. We chat for several minutes, and Mark explains that he sees the food at Russ & Daughters as a form of soul (sole?) food.

As I turn to examine the jars of jams and jellies lining the back wall Mark begins to leave, but is caught by Niki who gives him a big hug. While the the name of the shop refers to Joel Russ’ children, it’s clear that in Russ & Daughters everyone feels like family. We ask Niki about her own familial connection to the Old Country. She explains that she has “herring in her blood” and that working in the shop, surrounded by the food eaten by Jews for centuries, “reinforces who we are in the most primal way.” And, how does Niki feel about the portrait of her great-grandfather Joel looking down over the counter?

“I like that I have to think about him all the time.”

Before we leave, Niki gives us a Holland Herring to sample. Almost entirely uncooked, and covered with diced onions, this is forshpayz “in the raw.” As we sit together eating the fish, I hear other customers toward the front of store laugh, and wish us L’chiam, “to life!” It may be 2009, and we may be on New York’s Lower East Side, but it’s clear that the spirit of the Old Country is alive and well. We can practically taste it.

Thumbnail photo by J_bary, licensed under Creative Commons.

By Richard Skeen
This piece originally appeared on Alef in Issue #1: Old Country.

Unlike most of my Jewish friends, I didn’t have a Bubbe who regaled me with stories of the “Old Country.” I loved my grandmothers, but they were modern and American (one was actually a part-time rancher!) and simply didn’t fulfill my longing for Jewish tales of sad, forbidding places that, in my mind, represented the soul of the Jewish people. I wanted a personal history full of daring escapes from menacing Cossacks, of warm borscht soup and klezmer tunes, wise old Rabbis and alien-sounding names. I wanted Russian roots to enhance my Jewishness and figured a Bubbe was the ticket.

Soon after arriving to New York City from Oregon, I found a Jewish girlfriend with Old Country Russian roots, at least on paper. While I imagined that her deep brown eyes carried generations of Lithuanian Shtetl wisdom, and her brooding moods were by-products of oppression and pogroms, the truth was a little tamer. And her mother, the Bubbe I’d hoped to score in the match, was anything but: an Upper East Side contemporary art dealer, she had little interest in things Jewish or Perestroika.

With time, my Bubbe-longing faded. But it all came back in a flash when I discovered my perfect woman – Regina Spektor. In a faux KGB hat and a wicked smile – compelling if not quite beautiful on the cover of her Soviet Kitsch album – it was love at first sight. And her music – brilliant, quirky, funny, and wise – immediately struck me as, well, as something that could only come from a Russia-to-the Bronx (with a couple of years in a New Jersey Yeshiva) soul who had serious “Old Country” cred. Part of the anti-folk scene, Spektor’s songs are full of funny language and Jewish references. She uses a heavy New York accent on some words as an ode to the City, and her lyrics on songs like Samson and Laughing With are almost Dylan-esque in their biblical knowing. I was smitten, Spektor was part Russian-Jewish temptress and part Old Country Bubbe, always easily available on my iPhone. My desires were fulfilled.

Fortunately, Spektor’s talent justifies my crush, including the frequent Facebook uploads and disproportionate presence on my play lists. And truthfully, my wife may even understand, because listening to my former-Soviet crush while I prepare Shabbas cholent is almost as good as having my very own Bubbe.

Photo by jmtimages, licensed under Creative Commons.

But, is it “Jewish” humor?

What about this:  A well known Jewish comedian hamming it up (yes, pun intended) at the Last Supper:

The comic is Jewish, but the context?  Not so much.  So, is it “Jewish” comedy?  You tell us…

Alef wants to know “What’s so funny?”   For the next few weeks, we’ll be featuring stories about comedy, humor, and the things that make us laugh as Jews.   Think we missed something?  Are we not nearly as funny as our grandmothers always told us we were?  Post your favorite examples of “Jewish” humor in the comments section, or email them to Alef@birthrightisraelnext.org.

Happy Laughing! 

-Alef

Photo by Procsilas, licensed under Creative Commons.

…

What’s So Funny Posts

Falling for Funny Guys
The Set Up
My Father’s Name was Lewis Lander
If You Ask Me…
Make ‘em Laugh

Scientists?  Sure.  Noble laureates?  Easy.  Writers, business men, film makers, and revolutionaries, those lists are long. But athletes? It’s tough, I know; Judaism and sports are not exactly in concert. Trying to find my identifications as a Jew I’ve been exploring this peculiarity of mine over the last three years by learning about the Torah and about Jewish traditions, culture, and history.  I’ve even traveled to Israel twice, yet I learned just recently that over 7000 Jewish athletes gather every four years in Israel. The existence of the Maccabi Games, the “Jewish Olympics,” came as a complete surprise to me. I’m competitive, I like sports, so why have the rabbis kept this from me? I even have a sport I can play.

When I was 10 years old, it was decided for me that tennis was the sport I needed to pick up. Asking my mother and father why they decided to send me to tennis I only get vague non-answers:

“Hard to remember why we sent you there,” my father explains. “Maybe it was convenient, maybe we thought you were short and didn’t have a basketball future, maybe we thought we didn’t want your long nose broken in boxing and the few brain cells you have damaged.” He paused, “Hard to remember now.”

Typical protective Jewish parents.

I think back to the first day, when my father took me up the street, and up the hill to the bus station. We hopped on the bus which wound its way through town, to parts not clearly recognizable to me. Within 20 minutes we were there, walking off the bus and into a building made of heavy stone or cement. As we walked in, I remember thinking the building was a fortress and found it fascinating that a tennis court was set up inside. There was a wooden floor, and the ceilings were extremely high, with the windows above our heads covered in a rusty metal mesh. After a quick introduction my father left me with the instructions that I was to come home right after my tennis lesson.

I was left, deserted, with the instructor, and given a tennis racket. I had played table tennis many times and was part of a table tennis training group.  Badminton was a family tradition played on all of our vacations as well as in front of our nine story residential building.  But tennis was something completely new. The trainer was a middle-aged man with a mustache and socks rolled up over his calves. This being my first lesson, he pointed out the proper way to hold the racket and explained the point of the game: “the ball flies over the net to the other side of the court and the other person hits it back to you.”

The learning ended there.  Practice consisted of people hitting balls back and forth, chasing the balls down and then doing it over and over. At one point, a ball came zooming at me with incredible speed.  I hit it with the racket facing up, and watched the ball fly high up in the air, and into the window, its progression stopped only by the rusty protective metal. The impact made a loud CLING that reverberated through the high empty space.  The game stopped. Everyone was looking at me.

The trainer decidedly took this interruption as an opportunity to teach and proceeded to yell at me for a few minutes about how “the ball should land on the other side of the court, that the game was played with the other opponent not with the window and why the hell was I aiming for the window in the first place if my goal was not to break it?” The lesson was over but my anguish was not soon forgotten, and I vowed not to be part of this dumb sport, with balls that have a mind of their own, flying wherever they want, and I’m the one who gets yelled at in the end.

In true family disposition I came home and said nothing to my parents. Next week, as it would be for many following weeks, it was time for another lesson. Either my mother or my father would take the bus down with me to the fortress of tennis. I would waive goodbye to my parents and walk into the building, only to immediately turn around and walk right out. I would spend the next hour walking the streets, kicking rocks, and sitting around.  I would not hold the tennis racket in my hands ever again.

By end of the summer of that year, the Jewish Federation finalized our papers and the “Union,” which by now was quickly falling apart, allowed our family to make our exit to America. Our emigration put a stop to this farce and saved me from explaining why my tennis skills are what they are today. Had I know about the Maccabi Games I might have chosen to pursue tennis, to become like a Maccabee, a winner, successful in my pursuit of victory and showing courage in the face of adversity. Maybe not.

Anyway, the way I see it, if you want to get ahead in this world, you have to play golf.

Photo provided by StuSeeger, licensed under Creative Commons

I love a New Years Tree.  No, not the Christmas fir tree. The New Years fir tree.

What is a New Years Tree you may be wondering?  One of my favorite memories from my childhood is that every year, around the middle of December, my parents would get our family a yolka that would be in our living room, adorned with festive lights, decorations, and presents underneath to be opened by my family on the morning of the New Year.

WAIT A SECOND!  My family is Jewish, why on earth are we celebrating a holiday that sounds identical to Christmas?

I should clarify. When I was four years old, my family emigrated to the U.S from the former Soviet Union.  When I was in the first grade, in an effort to illustrate religious diversity, our teacher split the class up according to which religion was celebrated in the home.  Trying to determine where I fit, I explained to the class that my parents were Jewish but that we put up a decorated tree for the holidays.  My fellow first graders assured me I must be half Jewish and half Christian because a tree in my house must have meant that I celebrated Christmas.

That day I came home very confused – were my parents keeping something from me?  Not according to my mother.   She explained to me that because religious observance was discouraged under communism in the Soviet Union, people didn’t celebrate Hanukkah or Christmas.  The New Year was the holiday celebrated by all Soviets and at the heart of the celebration was the decorated yolka, which was introduced to imperial Russia by Peter the Great in the late 17th century.  To offer a little history — in 1916 the yolka was first banned by the state church council and thereafter by the Soviet officials, but in 1935 the ban was lifted and New Years became an official state-recognized holiday.  From 1935 until 1991, when the Soviet Union crumbled, New Years was one of the most beloved holidays in the land.

My parents stopped putting up a real New Years tree in our house around the time I was eight, when they figured out that, in America, Jews don’t have fir trees in their homes.  When I begged really hard, I managed to convince them to assemble a fake tree, but only succeeded in that a few times.  These days, the aroma of pine needles coming off of a Christmas tree makes me nostalgic and giddy.  If my apartment were big enough, I would probably get a New Years tree this holiday season.  It would be lovely right next to my menorah.

Photo by Ed Bierman, licensed under Creative Commons.

The first day of my first Hebrew class on my first semester of college, I figured out that Russian and Hebrew were exactly the same when I saw that the letter “shin” (ש ) looked exactly like the letter “sheh” (Ш) in my first language – Russian. I was tremendously relieved knowing I’d be able to slack the whole semester with Hebrew and Russian much closer than I’d first believed.

I’d spent the summer feverishly, hungrily trying to learn Hebrew with the zeal of the members of the first aliyah. I went on my second emotion-filled leadership trip to Israel in the August before I started school. On the trip, I decided it was embarrassing that I didn’t know any Hebrew beyond b’seder (”Alright”), sababa (”cool”), and the urgent eifo sherutim (”where are the bathrooms”).  I was also sure that Israelis were constantly talking about me. Why else would they be laughing?

I zealously self-administered the alef-bet that summer, watching the way the unfamiliar, uncomfortable letters moved in the wrong direction on my laptop screen and trying to memorize ways to write them. It never occurred to me that this was the same path my fellow Russian Zionists had taken a hundred years earlier: going from Russian, and sometimes Yiddish, to Hebrew. In their wake, and in the wake of the early 1990s post-Soviet aliyah to Israel, they had left imprints of Russian on the Hebrew that I had also hoped to make my own.

On my first day in Hebrew class, watching the teacher, Ruti, scrawl curly-scary cursive across the board, I didn’t expect that in a few short months she would use the word balagan in a sentence and I would snap to attention. Balagan means mess in Russian, a pandemonium. In Hebrew, I would find out, it meant the same thing, and was used to describe messy situations, from the Middle East peace process to a traffic jam in Jerusalem.

During those first couple weeks, we ventured beyond shalom. This was when we paddled into those uncharted territories of kal, pa’al, and piel- the phantasmagorical verb structures. But then, jobnik, nudnik, and other –niks would somehow pop up, from the Russian ending “nik” which means doer of whatever the “nik “is attached to. Shkolnik (the last name of Levi Eshkol before he went Sabra) means schoolboy in Russian.

We crept deeper and deeper into the jungle of Hebrew verbs and everyday objects I didn’t know -kiseh, ofanayim, miklat- and I without latching them on to any other European languages I knew, I felt small and completely detached from a connection to the Hebrew language and to my own Hebrew culture.

But every now and again, a small beacon of Russian would light my way. Every time my Israeli friend said, “Nu,” I would be reminded of the same Russian word, what my parents said when they were impatient with me. After I procured a mangal during my internship in Tel Aviv, I was happy that I was able to do so with the knowledge that mangal in Russian, just as in Hebrew, means a small portable grill.

At the end of my formal learning of Hebrew in college, I finally became comfortable using the language, speaking it out loud to myself. I’d even begun to dream in Hebrew (dreams that, for some reason, included Moshe Dayan 90% of the time.) As I was penetrated this strange and wonderful language-my peoples’ language, I finally realized that Russian-my other peoples’ language- already had. As I wandered into shin, I wasn’t alone, because sheh was there right along with me.

Thumbnail photo by davidden, licensed under Creative Commons.

I’m only half-joking when I say that sometimes it feels like I’m acquiring the Russian accent that I never had. I was born in freaking Queens, and while Russian did end up being my first language (I was raised by my great-grandmother), I don’t think I’ve ever actually had any sort of foreign accent. But these days, for whatever reason, I’ve been slipping into a Russian accent whenever I hit certain letter combinations:

1. The “ace” in a word like “place” becomes “ess.” So “place” becomes “pless,” and “space” becomes “spess.”

2. The “tion” in a word like “situation” becomes “shun,” but I end up putting a lot more stress at the end of the word and it comes out ethnic-sounding.

3. The “ease” in a word like “please” becomes “ez.” “Please” becomes “plez.”

4. The “teen” in numbers like “sixteen” becomes “tien.” “Sixteen” becomes “sixtien.”

I’m getting frustrated just thinking about it. I admit that in the last year or two, I’ve used a forced Russian accent just to sound funny because I still find that imitating Borat at certain opportune moments is incredibly entertaining. Perhaps, as punishment, this has contributed to the slip into foreign-accent mode even when I’m not playing it up. Part of me also blames getting older as well as the effects of  some genes I think I inherited from my dad. These genes not only make me sound like him, but also result in me making the same sorts of mistakes when it comes to remembering a word or a name as just slightly off from what it actually is. For instance, my dad always calls Natalie Portman “Natalie Portnoy.” You can see how he’s kind of remembering the right thing, but not exactly.

I’ve been thinking about what’s happening to me, and I’m beginning to see my life as a slow but steady path towards a total Russian accent, sort of like a march towards senility. I have, however, come across another explanation – a condition known as “Foreign Accent Syndrome” which causes people who have experienced certain brain traumas to develop random foreign accents. Check out this clip from ABC News about a woman they interviewed who developed the condition. It’s wild.

I don’t really remember experiencing any sort of particular brain trauma, but considering that I spent most of the last 3 years working at a corporate law firm, perhaps that has something to do with it.

Photo by prodman, licensed under Creative Commons.

By Rita Kreynin

One recent Friday afternoon, I headed south on the Q train to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, the Mecca of life for immigrants from the “old country.” The trip was inspired by a desire to speak with some old Russian people and collect their stories about moving to America. My own family is from Minsk (now a part of Belarus, but formerly a part of the Soviet Union), and I only moved to Chicago at the age of four, so I thought of it as a nice little project – a chance for me to flex some of my Russian-speaking skills, take a few photos of classic babushka-types, and answer the call of the hunger pangs that had me aching for some old-fashioned borscht.

Walking down Ocean Avenue I found myself immediately immersed in what felt like a town from the Eastern bloc – Russian deli‘s and restaurants lined the streets in this neighborhood dubbed “Little Odessa,” full of Ukrainian transplants. As I strolled along the Brighton Boardwalk, I thought it would be easy to strike up conversations with a handful of Russians. Questions and camera in hand, I was ready to ask them about where they were from, whether they were nostalgic for their former country, and if they missed the cold winters and the endless nights from back home? Since I had the Russian on my side (albeit somewhat “broken” in the delivery) and I’m friendly, polite, and pretty harmless looking, I figure this would be a cinch. Russian people love me, especially old ones, so how hard could it be?

Apparently, incredibly difficult. What I failed to realize is that a lot of these people came from oppressive societies, worlds run by Communist stooges, secret police, and spies, where neighbors rated out neighbors for the promise of a better job or apartment or just an opportunity to get a personal obstacle out of their way. It seemed that a lot of them still house discomfort and distrust for people who try to get information from them and then try to take their picture to go along with this information. The startled reactions I got when questioning the people I met made me feel like I was a spy myself, sent directly by Stalin’s ghost. It’s as if they feared that anything they said to me would get entered into some KGB database in Moscow. Or, worse yet, as my boyfriend ruefully joked, that one slip-up would get them deported back to the old country.

After explaining that I was merely writing a story on varying immigrant experiences and wished to include them, a few people candidly (and grudgingly) opened up to me, but were still vehemently against having their photos taken. The following are their stories:

Alexander V.

I met Alexander as he walked down the Brighton Beach Boardwalk gleefully handing out brochures for a get-out-the-vote rally to reelect Mayor Bloomberg. Alexander is an outgoing and animated man in his early 70’s, politically active, and very well traveled. He moved to Brighton Beach roughly ten years ago to be with his daughter and grandson who settled in Brooklyn in the 1980s. Since then he has been back to Moscow about a dozen times to visit his son who still lives there. A dual citizen, Alexander thinks of himself as Russian but is very invested in American politics. He could not believe that I was Jewish, arguing that I did not look Jewish at all! I proceeded to speak to him in a Hebrew intermixed with Yiddish and that convinced him.

Faina G.

Born in Kyrgyzstan, Faina moved to Nikolaev, Ukraine for school in her late teens. After forty years of living in Ukraine with her husband, she moved to Brighton Beach in 1999 when her son won a green card. She admits that she was not too keen on leaving all her family and friends in Ukraine, but decided that her son and his family would have more economic opportunities in the U.S. While Brighton Beach is the eminent Russian neighborhood in the U.S., Fayina kept repeating that it is simply just not the same as her homeland.

Inna K.

Inna K. is a lovely, energetic woman in her mid 60’s who I met in line buying chicken cutlets at a butcher shop. She told me how much she loves Brighton Beach, how she has made many wonderful friends here, and how her relationship to Judaism has flourished since moving to the United States. Inna left Minsk with her husband and two teenage children in 1987. In Minsk, Inna worked as a nurse but constantly faced hostility for being Jewish. When her family received exit visas to leave Minsk for Israel, they first went through Italy where they obtained visas to move to the U.S. Inna could not stop raving about how fortunate she is to live in the U.S. (her son is a doctor!).

Walking around Brighton Beach and meeting Alexander, Faina, and Inna gave me a clearer sense of the complexities of the immigrant story. It was striking to see just how much distrust a lot of these people had even though the negative experiences from back home were now decades behind them. I guess the past sticks with us whether we want it to or not, and as different as things might be in an adoptive country, the memories of the motherland are never too far from the heart.

With my work done as best as I could manage, I found myself incredibly hungry and was off to chow down some borscht as originally planned. Nothing seems to warm the soul more than a nice bowl of cold borscht. Oh the irony.

Thumbnail photo from homepage by genial23, licensed under Creative Commons. All photos on this page used with the permission of Rita Kreynin.