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Friday March 6, 1998

In first person... Holidays, havdallah provide connections with precious past

ESTHER MARCUS
Special to the Bulletin

The Jewish holidays to me are a tradition that I observe to honor a memory. Both my parents weren't very religious. My father's family was, but he shook all that off when he left home. Only when he married my mother did he come back to the old customs, because that was what my mother wanted. She wanted a traditional Jewish home for her children -- not Orthodox, but what she had enjoyed in her mother's home she wanted to give her children. So the memory I honor is not only for my parents but for us as a family, and how we celebrated the holidays.

There was always the round challah for Rosh Hashanah representing the circle of life and the circle of the year, the beginning and the end coming together. I loved the apple dipped in honey and the Polish carp that my father had taught my mother to cook the way his mother did. Before we went to the synagogue on Kol Nidre, my father would put his hands on our heads and bless us. It is strange, I haven't thought about that for years. It is possible that because of that ceremony Kol Nidre always seemed so important to me -- to be on time and stay till the end.

Another thing that had to be done before we left for the service was to light the memorial candles. Today I plug in my memorial lamp or buy a candle in a glass, but in the 1930s in Germany there were only very thick candles about 2 inches in diameter and 12 inches long that burned 24 hours. My mother, always worried about accidents in the home, insisted these tall candles be planted in a pot of soil. So when we returned from the synagogue, the first thing we would see was this almost ghostly sight of long white candles in black potting soil.

At the synagogue I'm attending now, the rabbi insists on everybody staying for the havdallah when we all would really like to go home already. He collects all the children up on the bimah, each one is given a candle and the lights are turned down. The rabbi considers this ceremony very important and he wants to impress that on the children.

My father had his own way of doing the havdallah, which not only signifies the end of Shabbat but also the end of the holiday. He didn't use the twisted candle, the spice box or wine. He would just march us around our very large dining room table and we would sing the prayers together. I have forgotten some of the words, but at 74 I still remember the melody.

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