Well, for one thing, it means that I never have to come back from a fishing trip with no fish. The weather can be foul, ice can clog the line guides on my fly rod, every trout in the stream can be involved in a hunger strike, or they can just be laughing their fins off at my attempts to fool them into striking at a fly I've tied and presented. As long as there is a major chain supermarket open, I can have fish for breakfast, dinner, and hold up fish as I walk through the door. No, not the fish I had hoped to catch and release, or catch and invite home for a meal; but still there is fish of some sort in gefilte fish.
"What does it mean?"
It means that a woman, living in the Pale of Settlement, had to find a way to feed ten people or so fish for dinner on Erev Shabbat. It means that she found a way to make a carp, or a piece of carp, a few potatoes, some onion, some carrot, and little else enter a grinder and exit ready to become a boiled, or simmered, or poached, fish croquette that she could point to and be proud of when the Shabbat Candles flaired to life. Every home in the shtetl could be having fish for Shabbat dinner, even if it didn't look as much like a fish as the fish on the tables of the better off.
"What does it mean?'
It means that like all immigrants, those who left the Pale for the Golden Land, Die goldene medina, they often left everything they owned behind, sold for money to make the voyage, or just lost for lack of cargo capacity; except for tradition and comfort foods. Those little croquettes of fish and potato, made the trip across the ocean in the memories of the women who found the courage or the need to leave the old world for the new. They showed up on Shabbat and holiday tables to appease tradition, to make the older generation, the "alter kockers" happy to find food from their old lives, and; even in the new world, to stretch that bit of fish into feeding two or three or however many more showed up for dinner than it rightfully could be expected to feed. Life in the Golden Land was not necessarily any easier, the work was just different. But once here few went back. For us, the "Old Country" was the land of pogroms, of 20 year forced enlistments in the Tzarist army, the land of persecution and no future.
"What does it mean?"
It meant that the women, who had not worked outside the home in the stetls now had the privilege of working 10-12 hours/day in a sweat shop before going home to grind the fish and vegetables, form and cook, and place on the table the little croquettes that used the fish no one else wanted. It meant that the women suffered injuries or died working in poorly lighted, poorly ventilated, sweat shops, developed TB, died too young, and still kept the house Kosher, still instilled their
faith and their wisdom into the next generation. The next generation, all too eager to assimilate when possible, like all first generation Americans kept a bit of the old languages, and clung to the traditional holiday comfort foods that the older generation women still made faithfully. But the first generation - our parents - learned to fish for different fish, to cook them in different ways, and to enjoy the old comfort foods but find it easier- particularly if they worked or volunteered with charitable foundations, fixing that bit of the world that they could reach- to buy their gefilte fish in the grocery.
"What does it mean?"
It means that the 2nd generation, mine, grew up eating the traditonal foods, knowing next to nothing of the old language that our parent used only to keep secrets from us. It means that at 20 or 30 or 50 we've discovered that we would really like to know the old language, the old music, the old history. It is hard to recover that old history for some of us. The shtetls of the Pale are largely gone, vanished in the scorched earth policies of the Soviets and the systematic implementation of the Holocaust by Nazi Germany. It means that the names and family connections are lost. The land has no memory of the buildings they came from, just mass graves still visible in the excellent over head imagry system built to find hidden missile silos. It means that we collectively have a social conscience, a bit of tikun olam that binds us to Tzedakah ( charity) a tradition of education. Everyone should be able to read theTorah, not just listen to the words spoken by someone else.
It means that we join genealogic societies and try to find those family links. At 53, encouraged and supported by Gloria, I found a half-sister, a half-brother, a host of cousins from three different branches of the family. It came as a welcome discovery to me, a shock to my siblings, and all the cousins were incredibly welcoming as we all inked in new branches on family trees.
"What does it mean?"
It means that it is now harder for me to obtain gefilte fish than it is to obtain trout. We have wild trout in our backyard, We went grocery shopping today. Krogers is the only national chain grocery store in the area, the only one with a Kosher food section. The entire Kosher food display took up less room than the impulse candy/mag rack in a checkout line.
Granted, there is not a huge demand for Kosher food in North East TN. But there are lots of people who fish and surely I'm not the only one who, once in a great while, fails to fool a trout or two,
"What does it mean?"
It means that most people who see the little fish, tongue lolling out, eyes X'd out, signifying that it will never spawn again, don't really see it. They see the "fish" symbol adopted by Christians from Jews - fish was a holiday custom long before chicken or brisket - and their busy brains associate what they almost see with what they expect to see. It means I have an outward expression of an in-joke on my vehicle. It means that about 16,000 people in TN can see it and grin with me.
And it means I never come home empty-handed from a fishing trip.
Tonight's dinner is raspberry flavored salmon baked and served with tabooli and a marinated vegetable slaw.
Tonight, as the sun sets, the new year begins. On the kitchen calendar, the year will be 5770.
As we drove into town today we listened to Peter, Paul, & Mary, both of us singing along at the upper level of comfort and with some fair harmony. As I wrote yesterday, they aren't far from us. On the way back Leonard Cohen was the music of choice. Later tonight, Grateful Dead.
There's a political battle heating up here between the current freshman congressman - reactionary, anti-abortion, anti- public option, generally right in line with the Limbaugh Beck axis- and the former congressman whom he defeated last year. The former makes Limbaugh look reasonable. He campaigns in churches to make sure everyone knows how pious and anti-progressive he is. He once wrote me in a response to something I wrote him that it didn't matter what I wanted or believed, he would vote as he and Jesus thought best. I wish I had saved that e-mail. I'd publish it and hope that there were actually some voters who thought about how they should vote rather than accepting that sort of stolen vote.
שנה טובה (ברכה לראש-השנה)
L'Shannah Tovah (happy new year from right to left.
Many of our extended family are on FB. We take it for granted that they are there. My family is German on both sides for who knows how far back. All of them immigrated to the US in the late 1800's, but who knows how many were left behind in the old country? I shudder to think sometimes who they were and what they became during the war.
ReplyDeleteThanks for bringing up the issues of extended family non-existence. It is obviously an issue that I never have thought about. We tend to take so many things for granted.
Well done, my love. Now if only I could find out about my family genealogy. And now if you would only let me make gefilte fish! Shana Tova, my dearest and Gut Shabbos!
ReplyDeleteAs I said, Judy, I only found my father's family after he had died. And without Gloria's encouragement and support, I might never have managed that.
ReplyDeleteMy newly discovered siblings were seriously upset and want nothing to do with me. My sister will respond to holiday greetins, my brother, no response at all. Since I have buried another half-brother, I'd like to meet them before it is too late.
The thought that daddy had a girl friend before mommy is just too much. And the thought that two grandmothers were both so opposed to my parents marriage and my existance that I missed knowing people I should have known is just truly sad.
So pursue those records and welcome whom ever turns up. They may be idiots or real pricks, but they're also family.