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Sept. 14, 2012
A potent vessel of memory
Rosh Hashanah is a vehicle for transmitting family traditions.
LAUREN KRAMER
W hen it comes to Rosh Hashanah, I’m a big fan. It’s hard not to love a Jewish holiday that’s all about spiritual renewal, deep reflection and heartfelt promises to work harder, to work towards becoming our “better selves.” As I enter my 40s, however, I’m realizing there’s more than that to the Jewish New Year – more than the deep-brown challah filled with sweet raisins, more than the annual novelty of dipping apples in honey, drizzling a golden mess all over the tablecloth before a great meal. Rosh Hashanah is also a profound vessel of memory and, as I defrost my brisket, hunt for the best-yet new quinoa recipe and knead and shape my challah, I’ll be thinking of the past.
I don’t realize, typically until Rosh Hashanah rolls around, how vividly that past is available, even as it sits tucked away in a corner of my mind. I yank those memories from the recesses and daydream my way back to my 14-year-old self, growing up in Cape Town, South Africa. Back then, Rosh Hashanah meant receiving a batch of my grandmother’s taiglach, a recipe I’m still determined to tackle. The memory takes me, in spirit, immediately and joyfully back into her tiny kitchen. Rosh Hashanah as a young girl also meant hours in synagogue, listening to the deep baritone voices of the Rondebosch Shul choir and the wonderful melodies of the cantor, who we imported from Israel each year.
Rosh Hashanah in Cape Town meant having family discussions on who to invite to our holiday table, and long debates about whether we could tolerate, for another year, the uncle who arrived in his farm-stained overalls and fell asleep on the sofa before the meal was over, or the aunt who was always asking for recipes (never using them), and using her fingers, rather than the salad servers, to select the leafy greens she wanted on her plate. There were wild cousins whose antics my parents weren’t certain they wanted unleashed in the house, and family friends whose children my sister and I wanted nothing to do with, campaigning loudly for their removal from the guest list.
With hours before the festival’s arrival, as my mother’s culinary activities sent rich aromas wafting around the house, we kids were in charge of setting the table and removing from the dusty cabinet the exquisite glasses my parents had bought while on a Venice honeymoon 15 years earlier. We’d craft nametags and carefully position them around the table, ensuring we occupied the best seats in the house. We’d decant the wine an elderly relative had made, pouring it carefully into the crystal carafe only used on such occasions.
At the time, I rolled my eyes at the list of chores, grateful for the reprieve from school but unappreciative, as only a teenager can be, of the treasures at that table, particularly the family members we’d lose as age and cancer robbed us of more time together. There were also the recipes I’d never have the foresight to record, and the hugs and kisses I never cherished long enough.
What I did bring with me over the decades that would follow, into married life with children, is an unbridled love for Rosh Hashanah and a determination to make it as memory-laden, meaningful and delicious as possible in my home. It’s why, this year and in the years ahead, I’ll spend hours on dishes I’d never normally prepare: sodium-filled chicken soup with kneidlach, tender brisket that should tempt even the avowed vegetarians among my kids, wafer-thin kichel biscuits perfect with chopped herring and sweet, sticky taiglach that will require oodles of syrup and hours of careful babysitting.
I’ll do all this and more in the name of memory, because it will vividly conjure my own past a continent and lifetime away. I’ll hug my kids extra tight, subdued in the knowledge that, one day, they too will celebrate this holiday with their own families for many years to come, hopefully cherishing the food and love-laden Rosh Hashanah memories of their own long-gone childhoods.
Lauren Kramer is an award-winning writer in Richmond. Read her work at laurenblogshere.com.
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