The Candle's Tears
Tech Tribe Dispatch 165
💡 Think:
Bella Chagall, wife of painter Marc Chagall, and an accomplished Yiddish writer, was born as Bashe Rosenfeld to Shmuel Noach and Alta Rosenfeld, Chabad Chasidim in Vitebsk. In her memoir, Brenendik Licht - Burning Flames, she recalls her childhood in the Russian empire.
This excerpt has been taken from the chapter on Shabbat. It has been lightly edited from the English edition, correcting for lack of nuance in the translation from the original Yiddish.
The last to leave the shop is mother. She tries all the doors once more to see that they are locked. Now I hear her paltering steps. Now she shuts the metal door of the rear shop. Now her dress rustles. Now her soft shoes slip into the dining room. In the door way she halts for a moment: the white table with the silver candlesticks dazzles her eyes. At once she begins to hurry. She quickly washes her face and hands, puts on a clean lace collar that she always wears on this night, and approaches the candlesticks like a new mother.
With a match in her hand she lights one candle after another. All the seven candles begin to quiver. The flames blaze into mother's face. As though an enchantment were falling upon her, she lowers her eyes. Slowly, three times in succession, she encircles the candles with both her arms; she seems to be taking them into her heart.
And with the candles her weekday worries melt away.
She blesses the candles. She whispers quiet blessings through her fingers and they add heat to the flames. Mother's hands over the candles shine like the tablets of the decalogue over the holy ark.
I push closer to her. I want to get behind her blessing hands myself.
I seek her face. I want to look into her eyes. They are concealed behind her spread-out fingers.
I light my little candle by mother's candle.
Like her, I raise my hands and through them, as through a gate, I murmur into my little candle flame the words of benediction that I catch from my mother.
My candle, just lighted, is already dripping. My hands circle it to stop its tears.
I hear mother in her benedictions mention now one name, now another. She names father, the children, her own father and mother.
Now my name too has fallen into the flame of the candles.
My throat becomes hot.
"May the Aibershter, the Highest One, give them his blessing!" concludes mother, dropping her hands at last.
"Amen," I say in a choking voice, behind my fingers.
"Good Shabbos!" mother calls out loudly.
Her face, all opened, looks purified,
I think that it has absorbed the illumination of the Shabbos candles.
"Good Shabbos!" answers father from the other end of the table and rises to go to shul.
"Good Shabbos!" cries the cook from the kitchen.
The well-used table is covered with a small white tablecloth the toilworn kitchen is unrecognizable. The white tablecloth and the two white candles have given it rest.
Every kitchen object is put away or hung up In its place. Even the stove has been sealed with a black sheet of metal. The front part of the stove is cleared of pots and pans. The walls are whiter, they have dried of their sweat. Every corner is swept clean, scrubbed. It is Shabbos.
🏃 DO:
📅 Pre-register for TWELVEX:The Soul of Soviet Jewry with former Vanity Fair Hive executive editor Miriam Elder and Rabbi Dovid Margolin this September.
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💬 Saying:
There is nothing more complete than a broken heart, and there is nothing more upright than a crooked ladder.
— Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk
🕯️Comfort
Condolences to Leslie Katz, a friend of Tech Tribe, on the passing of her mother Janice Katz. May her memory be a blessing.
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📚 Read:
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🔥 Lit:
This week, light Shabbat candles in NYC at 7:40pm
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