Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

German Fermented Vegetables

Nationality: German-American
Performance Date: February 2007

An interesting tradition my mother recalls from growing up is that when she and her family visited the (paternal) grandparents, the Rahenkamps, her grandmother would always serve some kind of relish or pickled item along with the evening meal.  Since the Rahenkamp family is of German descent, this is not surprising – one can hardly imagine German food without thinking of sauerkraut and pickled cucumbers.  However, Germany is only one of many countries where these types of foods exist.  In fact, most if not all cultures prepared and ate at least one of these items at one time or another.  Unlike the prosperous free world today where we think of these items as condiments that we add to our food because they are tasty, past cultures kept these foods, which were originally fermented, out of necessity.  Fermentation was a way to preserve foods for months without refrigeration, and to make foods that are hard on the bowels (like raw cabbage) more digestible.  Adding salt to vegetables to prevent mold growth, and allowing the bacteria and yeast in the local environment to take over, our ancestors could preserve items for long trips and cold winters.  The friendly microbes in the vegetables (or fruits or milk or other foods) break down the sugars and convert them to acids as a defense mechanism, producing a complex, sour flavor.  Eating such foods fortifies the immune system and gastrointestinal tract with beneficial bacteria, and the acid and enzymes released during fermentation aid in the digestion of the rest of the meal.  My informant, my mother, believes that her grandmother served these relishes as part of the tradition of using them for good digestion.  Unfortunately, most pickled items seen today are not fermented, but merely canned in vinegar (including those my great grandmother used).  They carry none of the health benefits and are sterile instead of crawling with friendly microbes.  The real fermentation process actually increases nutrients – sauerkraut, in fact, was used to prevent scurvy on long voyages across the Atlantic, due to its high vitamin C content and its ability to keep for months without spoiling.

Annotation
  The Great Physician’s Rx for Health and Wellness, by Jordan S. Rubin, page 10, concurs that “Every sauce and condiment has its beginnings as a fermented food and throughout history has always been healthy.”  Several fermented foods are mentioned, including ketchup, which is credited to the Chinese, who began it as a fermented fish brine.

Hypnotizing Chickens

Nationality: American
Age: 49
Occupation: Consultant
Residence: Carlsbad, California
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: None

“You like grab a chicken, lay it on the ground, hold it, so the chicken lays with its head on the ground. Chickens don’t have binocular vision so they can only see with one eye at a time. So one eye is down and one eye is up. You hold the chicken calmly, not in a mean way, and it lays there calmly and you wave your hand down and over it… round and round, up and down, over the eye… it’s like snake charming. You release. And the chicken will just lie there for minutes. It’s totally mesmerized. Someone showed me how to do this on a farm in eastern Oregon. And then I showed my sons when we were children. We went to an apple farm and I captured a loose chicken. People just do it for fun.”

 

The more I asked the informant about this practice, the more insistent he was that it was magic, but then his wife jumped in and said that the practice was not magical and it just disorients the chicken. She said it must have to do with biology. The informant was still insistent that it was magic.

At first glance, this seems like just a fun activity or a way to pretend to have magical powers. On the other hand, it is easy to see how it could serve a practical purpose, or maybe once served a purpose in the past. After all, the “hypnosis” calms down the animals, which might help a farmer round up some loose chickens or calm down a bunch of chickens who are running around and giving him or her trouble.

 

Jewish Saying Summing Up Every Holiday

Nationality: American
Age: 56
Occupation: Attorney
Residence: Oceanside, New York
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: None

“The way you can sum up every Jewish holiday, for the most part, is: they tried to kill us, we survived, now let’s eat. It means to me two different things. One is very serious… for some reason, so many other cultures have decided that the Jews should be annihilated. The other thing it means to me, that bothers me, is that many of our uh… that Jews tend to dwell on these negative events to define who they are and what they are about.”

 

The informant told me that she doesn’t know where she first heard this phrase, but that “probably some other Jew said it to me.” I have heard this phrase and similar phrases throughout my entire life, and I have often used a variation of this phrase to try to explain my religion or the holidays we engage in to people who are unfamiliar with Judaism.

The thing that interests me the most is this informant’s take on the phrase. I have usually heard this phrase used in a way that is dismissive (oh, all of our holidays are just like this…) or, more often, in a way that is humorous. It’s almost comical to think that most Jewish holidays follow this pattern and that they usually involve the consumption of a lot of food, which seemingly, on the surface, has little relevance to the heavier, darker fact that Jews have been persecuted and have had to escape death time and time again.

For instance, Sean Altman is a singer-songwriter who performs under the band name Jewmongous. He has a comedic song called “They Tried to Kill Us (We Survived, Let’s Eat)” that supposedly explains the story of Pesach. It contains a ton of pop culture references and factual inaccuracies, which is supposed to prove that all of the details of the holiday are basically irrelevant, because all you need to do is boil down the holiday to this one simple phrase, which is contained in the chorus. The song is available as an MP3 and on a CD, which you can purchase on his website at http://www.jewmongous.com/. You can also watch a live performance of the song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34atu3WGUgc).

Despite the fact that this phrase is typically repeated for its humor, I have always heard this informant use the phrase in a sort of melancholy way. To her, the phrase represents a long and depressing history of the Jewish people, and she believes that the use of this phrase, combined with the practice of Jewish holidays, tends to perpetuate a tendency to dwell on the negative. While I see her point and definitely agree that Jews tend to have a martyr complex, I strongly believe that this phrase is a way for Jewish people to reclaim their history and bring joy by making light of very serious problems. Rather than dwell on the negative, we look forward to the positive— in this case, a large feast.

 

Slap in the Face

Nationality: American
Age: 56
Occupation: Attorney
Residence: Oceanside, New York
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: None

 

“In my Jewish family, and I’m sure in many other Jewish families, when the girl got her period, the mother would slap the girl across the face, very hard, and leave an imprint. I’m not sure what the reason was… something about warding off evil spirits, I think. To keep the devil away from you.”

 

When a girl begins to menstruate, she is able to get pregnant. This can be a great worry for many mothers who are trying to keep their children pure for marriage, or, at least, keep their children from becoming mothers before they are ready. The slap is supposed to be painful so that it warns you against becoming pregnant; the pain of the slap is symbolical of the pain of pregnancy and the difficulty of raising a child. Furthermore, being pregnant at a young age is like a slap in the face to your family. An unwed, pregnant girl would bring great shame to a traditional Jewish family. The sting of the slap, on one level, represents that sting of shame that the family would feel. The slap is supposed to leave an imprint for a while so that it serves as a lasting reminder not to get pregnant.

Judaism in its institutional form does not tend to deal with spirits or concepts such as the devil, so it is interesting that this Jewish folk practice invokes those ideas. This practice is an example of how folk traditions can deviate from a religion’s scripture or institutionalized forms.

Jewish Saying About Opinions

Nationality: American
Age: 56
Occupation: Attorney
Residence: Oceanside, New York
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: None

“You put three Jews in a room you get four opinions.”

 

I have heard this phrase, or a variation of the phrase, used many times before. Sometimes the number of Jews in the figurative room varies, and sometimes you can get many more opinions (for example, sometimes it’s two Jews in a room and three opinions; sometimes it’s four Jews in a room and six or seven opinions.)

The joke relies on the stereotype that Jews are very opinionated people and suggests that if you have a certain amount of Jewish people in one room, you will get even more opinions than people that are in the room. I’ve only ever heard this joke told by Jewish people. The telling of this joke seems to be a way for Jews to reclaim a stereotype. There are a lot of less-than-positive stereotypes about Jewish people, some of which Jews spend a lot of time and energy actively refuting. Thus, the telling of this joke seems to be a way for Jews to acknowledge this particular stereotype and make fun of it, as if to say that it is all right to hold this belief because it is somewhat grounded in truth.