Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Shabbos

Nationality: American
Age: 85
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Palm Beach, Florida
Performance Date: 4/24/16
Primary Language: English

 

TK: What did you do every Friday night?

GK: We had Shabbos dinner, I lit the candles, with a table cloth. My mother always had food for us; she was such a wonderful cook. Your daddy would go to synagogue with my father and he would walk 8 or 9 blocks. And in schul he was the most behaved boy you had ever seen. Everyone giving him candy. He loved afterward when they had the drinks and food. Ross was my father’s only grandson. He had 6 granddaughters. We went to synagogue in the morning–

TK: Saturday morning?

GK: Yes, Ross, my parents and me. After we came home all the nieces came over for lunch because they all loved my mother’s cooking.

TK: So lunch was a big thing?

GK: Very special because my mother made the chicken well done and everybody was fighting for it. But Ross got service first, your dad, because he was the only boy. They were fun times; we always had big dinners.

TK: Was there a certain dish or food that was at every dinner?

GK: My mother made white fish that was delicious. We never bought fish from a store. She was also a very good cook because my grandfather was in the baking business. Strudel, everything the kids loved. She loved the kitchen. Everything was spotless, all white. And the kids loved her food and she made everything the way the children liked it. Then we moved to Florida.

TK: So in Florida you started hosting dinners?

GK: Yes, I started making dinners. We went to a congregation and the rabbi had married me. He was from Michigan which was very weird.

TK: Who used to come to dinners in Miami?

GK: My children. My husband’s brother and his wife. And my aunt used to come from the winter with her husband. We always had relatives and friends come in. We were always very busy. And then six years later we moved back to Michigan and did the same thing. It was joyous, a very joyous time.

TK: Were you orthodox?

GK: We were very orthodox. My father was ultra religious. We couldn’t eat meat out or anything. Papa’s family was religious but not as quite as religious. I used to change all the dishes and everything because I had lunch at my house after services. But you know you don’t stay as religious.

TK: When daddy was growing up were you conservative?

GK: Yes, we went to a congregation that was conservative. The men and women sit together. In Orthodox the men and women don’t sit together.

 

THE INFORMANT: The informant is my dad’s mother, who grew up in Michigan, where she lived until she moved to Florida. She came from a family of immigrant Russian Jews and maintained the Jewish religion in her own life, which has evolved through living in America.

ANALYSIS: The tradition of Friday night shabbat dinner is still very intact in modern Jewish homes. The dinners my grandmother is referencing from fifty years ago are still quite similar in their existence in today’s world; those more religious families go to synagogue, but even those without this weekly tradition often still maintain a culinary tradition. It is very family-oriented, showing the emphasis on family, tradition, and memories.

Moment of silence before a trip (Russian Jewish superstition)

Nationality: American
Age: 25
Occupation: Graduate student
Residence: Washington, D.C.
Performance Date: 4/26/16
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian

Before leaving the house on a long journey, the entire present family must sit in silence for a period of time (which varies by family and local custom) in silence. This is often considered a useful custom because in the frenzy of preparing for a trip, this time allows for people to think carefully about whether they have forgotten to pack a useful item, but it is also considered good luck to sit with the departing family in order to protect them on their upcoming journey or, if they die during the trip, to attain closure so that one does not retroactively regret not taking time with this person before they leave.

THE INFORMANT: Mid-twenties woman who has studied Russian and Georgian culture for many years, despite not having grown up in either cultural group. She currently works in diplomacy and is researching Russian Jewish superstitions for an unrelated project and out of intellectual curiosity. She says this is also put into practice in Georgian communities in which she has lived and it is mostly considered a time of meditation and respect for the traveler putting themselves in the risky situation of long travel.

ANALYSIS: Due to the anxiety that the prospect of a long trip can often induce, it is unsurprising that so many superstitions have developed as pre-travel rituals. Furthermore, the focus on familial relationships that pervades Jewish culture, as well as the many folktales and superstitions from Russian culture, have combined here to create a more or less secular experience that is still retained in many families (both in Russia/Eastern Europe and in immigrant homes) as a way to protect the departing travelers. Many cultures have similar customs, such as the Christian blessing or prayer to be said before a journey, asking for protection. In the Catholic tradition, this idea of protection is translated into a physical emblem, as the St. Christopher medal is used to protect weary travelers from potential harm.

Peppermint Patty (child’s song)

Nationality: American
Age: 14
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beverly Hills, CA
Performance Date: 4/24/16
Primary Language: English
Language: French

TK: What are you singing?

JK: A song from when I was in 4th grade.

TK: And?

JK: It goes:

My name is Peppermint Patty
I come from Cincinnati
I have 24 toes and a finger up my nose
And this is how my story goes:

I was walking to my boyfriend’s house
He was talking to another girl
He said I L-O-V-E love you
I’d K-I-S-S kiss you
I’d D-A-T-E date you at 11 o’clock tonight.

I kicked him into Paris,
I kicked him into France,
I kicked him into Disneyland and saw his underpants

TK: What did people say this for?

JK: It was like a hand game (starts motioning)

TK: Did you used to play this?

JK: Mmm… (shaking his head no). Well I played it sometimes, but it was a thing everyone in the grade knew how to do.

TK: Did you play it with your friends?

JK: Ya a couple times (laughing/shameful).

 

THE INFORMANT: Julian is 14 and was enthusiastic to remember this information, he was laughing at the recollection of it.


ANALYSIS: This chant and accompanying hand gesture game spread throughout the class when Julian learned it in 4th grade from a friend, Sophia. He was always more into sports, kind of a boys’ boy, so it’s funny that he can remember this chant (with a hand game that was more of a girl’s thing) from years ago. Although for Julian it originated with a girl who told him the chant, it quickly became something that, as he says, “everyone in the grade knew how to do,” bringing to mind the pervasiveness of elementary school culture, in which trends like this appear and are spread rapidly. Both I and those I have talked to who are older than Julian don’t know this particular chant, and neither does my little sister, indicating that it might have been an anomaly for his year. However, we do remember the classic chant “I see London, I see France, I see _____’s underpants,” which seems to be referenced in the last part of this song.

The Leper Tree

Nationality: Irish
Age: 57
Occupation: Artist
Residence: Malibu, CA
Performance Date: 4/26/16
Primary Language: English

PP: There’s the Leper Tree in Malawi, we used to go there when I was younger. Well we went to the park it was in– I have to look it up, what it was called–

TK: Liwonde? I just googled it.

PP: That sounds right. It was this big tree with human skulls, skeletons in a kind of pit at the base of the roots, and we would have to look at them. If I remember right it was because one of the tribes that was living in the area had an outbreak of leprosy and they would put them in the tree, tie them up and make them stay there until they died.

TK: When was this?

PP: Honestly I think it was pretty recent, definitely in the last century. Maybe the 1930s? The worst part was they had a justification for doing it, they didn’t have the medicine or healthcare available to treat the disease and it was very contagious, so it was like this horrible quarantine where they said they were protecting the healthy people. It was for the sake of everyone else. But it was still a terrible thing to do.

THE INFORMANT: The informant is a woman who lives in America now, although she grew up in Africa and Ireland. While growing up in Africa with her family in the 1960s, because her father was a missionary doctor, they were often exposed to subpar living conditions, local legends and true stories like the one about the Leper Tree.

ANALYSIS: The Leper Tree is a very real place, not a legend, but has become part of the folklore of the country due to the gruesome nature of its existence. Visitors to the park who come for the wildlife and beautiful natural settings are often brought to the tree and asked to look down upon the skeletons of those who were trapped in it as recently as the 1950s. It is commemorated by a plaque on the trunk that says simply, “The Grave For People Who Suffered From Leprosy in the Past.” Burial and the proper disposal of bodies has always been a cultural hallmark– many cultures develop incredibly specific rituals around burial rites, which makes things like the Leper Tree stand out and be recalled even now for how barbaric and unrelated to traditional notions of respect for the dead it is.

Lechuza (Mexican folklore)

Nationality: American
Age: 26
Occupation: Student
Residence: Missoula, MT
Performance Date: 4/27/16
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

TK: What did you learn growing up in New Mexico? Any good folk tales or proverbs?

TB: My aunt used to tell us about the Lechuza. She was an old woman who could turn into an owl. I guess she was a witch.

TK: What did she do?

TB: I’d have to check for all of it. I remember she was supposed to have stolen babies, and would sometimes fly over your house at night. You could tell if she was around when you heard an owl. My aunt told us we were supposed to whistle at the owls and they would leave, it was like scaring her off. Except those normal sized ones were harmless, but they were like her messengers or something. The lechuza was supposed to be a lot bigger, like human sized. Sometimes people would shoot …. or try to injure the owl if they thought it might be a lechuza and then they would find a body the next morning of an old woman, but I never heard about that being for real.

THE INFORMANT: Male, mid-twenties, who grew up in a second-generation Mexican family in Santa Fe, NM. He was reluctant to recall the details of the story, but grew more enthusiastic after he recalled certain elements. He also recalled that his aunt was very spiritual and would often tell stories of this type to him and his brother and sisters while they were growing up, although now he does not put much stock in them, but still finds them interesting.