It is sundown on a Friday night and your great-grandmother is preparing to light the Sabbath candles. Your great-grandfather is at his little 18th century wooden shul reciting the evening service. He is wearing a black skullcap and a tattered prayer book is held in his wrinkled hands.
As the service concludes he leaves the minyan and walks home through the freshly fallen snow. It is another cold night in Eastern Europe.
One hundred years later, their great-granddaughter is lighting the same two candlesticks with her youngest daughter watching attentively. The mother recently found these silver candlesticks in the attic of her grandmother’s home.
They were wrapped in a wine stained tablecloth and found in an old blanket box. They had not been used in many years. There was still old wax on the base of both candlesticks.
Now the tradition has been successfully passed to another generation. The little girl wonders how many times these candles have been lit over the years and waits for her turn to light them.
Little does she know that these candlesticks traveled many miles from Eastern Europe at the turn of the century in the belly of a steamship that landed at Ellis Island and then found their way to Chicago and finally to Milwaukee.
As Jews we cherish our history and traditions. This is just one example of the treasures that await us when we explore the dark corners of our parents’ homes after they have completed the journey from this world to life everlasting.
After many years of their marriage, it is the children’s duty to sift through the memories, the papers, the photos, and the many religious articles stored in the china cabinet.
Having done this twice already, we can attest to the fact that you are guaranteed to find more than one surprise waiting for you in the back of a closet, under a bed, or in the attic.
Many questions
We have found candle sticks, menorahs, prayer books stained with Chanukah candle wax, and more than one tallis and set of tefillin in their blue velvet, monogrammed drawstring bags.
We have found old pictures of elderly couples with the wife sitting while the husband with his gray beard proudly standing behind her in a pressed dark suit with a white collared shirt and a black tie. We turned over the picture, only to find there is no notation of whom it is, or when and where the picture was taken.
There are also pictures of little children with long skirts, knickers and button front shoes. Whose child is this, in fact whose mother or father will they become? These are questions that have no answers and are just subject to speculation.
You continue to sift and sift, and you find a tattered marriage document that shows when and where your grandparents were married. There are citizenship papers and old passports that will never be used again. You dig deeper and find more pictures of relatives without names.
There is an old station watch that does not run any longer and has stopped at six o’clock, and a tarnished watch fob with someone’s initials, both possibly your grandfather’s.
Hanging in an upstairs closet are dinner napkins and a large tablecloth with multiple wine stains. Was this the Passover tablecloth used by your grandparents for the annual seder your parents attended as children? These fine linen cloths have no embroidered initials, but they have been repaired many times as evidenced by the many holes that have been sewn.
As you proceed to the china cabinet, you come upon many cloth bags, each protecting another treasure. There are serving platters, Kiddush cups, tea and coffee sets.
Again your mind wonders: Who drank from these cups, what was served on these trays and to whom? Did these silver pieces rest on the line tablecloths during a dinner party or a seder? Whose initials are on the silverware?
Then there is the hand carved antique chair in the garden room. Who sat in it? What was their name? Many of these questions will never be answered, but the memories need to be preserved for the next generation.
How do we proceed, who should be the keeper of these treasures? Should each child take a piece of the family history, or should it be maintained in its entirety by one family member?
Should the prayer books be given to a local congregation for inclusion in their collection of artifacts or should they be donated to a museum? Maybe they should be given to the eldest grandchild to be used in his or her bar or bat mitzvah ceremony. Again, this is a decision that the family as a whole needs to make.
We as the current generation need to make every effort to catalogue and identify our treasures so our children and grandchildren won’t have to guess who is in what picture and who read from this prayer book each Sabbath.
We wish that we had sat down with our parents before they left this world and identified that gentleman in the picture, sitting next to the women with the funny hats, or the couple having a picnic in the park. Now they will remain the anonymous relatives from another generation.
Each week as we light the Sabbath candles, the tradition continues as we remember our past and we light the way for the future generations of Jews.
Susan and Cary Silverstein both retired and reside in Fox Point and are members of Congregation Emanu-el B’ne Jeshurun. In recent years Susan has lost both her parents and Cary his mother. The article describes the similar journey they took after the deaths of their parents.
Loading ...