FOOD AND FAITH

When Mendl Osherowitch visited a Ukrainian shtetl in 1932, he la­mented that the Sabbath was barely distinguishable from any other day:

In the street... it does not feel like Sabbath.

The synagogue, the old synagogue, which is locked for almost the en­tire week, is opened on this day. It is opened by the caretaker, an elderly, beaten-down Jew, in whose heart beats not a single shard of hope. And people say that every time he takes down the lock of the synagogue, tears flow. When he closes the synagogue up again, he cries even more.

Jews come into the synagogue, they pray quickly and leave for home quietly. And at home they catch a little rest from their hard work—and in the shtetl it is hard to find a Jew who doesn't have to work hard: either they are in a kolkhoz [collective farm] or in an artel, and if they are not in an artel, they work so hard in order to earn a piece of bread. They rest a little from their hard work, and this they call observing the Sabbath.¹

But many of the residents we interviewed a decade or more after the collapse of the Soviet Union remembered the Sabbaths of the 1930s dif-

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ferently: they visualized a pious life full of Jewish ritual. They themselves were often unable to articulate the precise meaning of the rituals they recalled, but these acts continued to inform their identity in important ways. Osherowitch was searching for “The Great Tradition” of religious observance as expressed publicly in a formal institutional setting.² But Soviet restrictions on the public expression of religious faith had, in many cases, forced religious ritual into the domestic sphere, where it continued to be recognized as a family affair.

Maria Yakuta, who was born into a family she described as very pious, told us that on Sabbath “My mother would light candles and my father wouldn't let us go to the movies or anywhere like that. We had to sit there and listen to him make the seder or the Sabbath, and we'd finish our food and take a nap. No movies or anything like that.” Sime Geller remembered, “My father was a wagon driver, a serious workhorse. My mother was a typical Jewess. She raised the children, she stayed at home. Every Sabbath she made the blessing over the candles. On Rosh Hasha- nah and on every holiday she would observe the holidays, because that's the way it was with yidishkayt [Jewishness].” Moyshe Kupershmidt, born in Bratslav in 1914, told us, “My mother would light candles.... The older women made the benediction over the candles and everyone kept the Sabbath.” Nisen Kiselman said of Tomashpil, “The old times were so interesting. There was Sabbath. There were prayer houses. People prayed, they would lay out the Torah on the table and people would kiss it. If someone had a yortsayt they would bring a bottle of beer and they would bake ginger cakes and distribute them. And the cantor sang so well the entire town would hear.” Pesia Kolodenker, born in Tulchyn in 1927, remembered how her family would welcome the Sabbath by smearing clay over the dirt floor in order to beautify the house. “Even the poorest believed in God and celebrated the Sabbath,” she insisted.

Etia Shvartzbroit remembered that she would put on a beautiful ker­chief on Sabbath to cover her head, and that her mother would wear a kerchief over her wig. “Every Friday she would light the candles. Every Friday. And on Sabbath one didn't work.” But, Shvartzbroit continued, “During the Soviet times they didn't teach this to children.” Her mother never taught her to pray. By the mid 1930s, when Shvartzbroit was be­coming old enough to perform religious rituals on her own, it was al­ready too dangerous for children to be seen performing them.

Many of those who were born in the 1920s and 1930s recall their parents attending synagogue over Sabbath as part of a regular routine. “When we came to Bershad, my father would go to synagogue. He would go there all the time. Every Sabbath and every holiday. And my mother went too. The synagogue was still there,” recalled Elizaveta Bershads­kaia, who arrived there from the village of Chernyatka in 1938. In the 1930s, she continued, the few Jews in Chernyatka practiced their religion without a synagogue or religious functionaries: they prayed together in a private home “just like a synagogue.” They read from a communal Torah scroll, lit Sabbath candles, cooked cholent for the Sabbath, and imported kosher meat from Bershad. Grigorii Shor, born in Kopayhorod in 1925, implied that religious life for his parents' generation continued much as it had in pre-Soviet times: “On Friday evening, my father would go to synagogue and my mother would stay at home, where she would get candles and bless them When my father came home from syna­

gogue, he would greet us and tell us about the good angel that will come to us so that we will have a good Sabbath.”

“gefilte fish, cholent and latkes”

Minutes after we first met her on the streets of Bershad in 2002, Khayke Gvinter told us about the gefilte fish her mother had taught her to make. It was so tasty, she crooned, as she abandoned us on the street, rushed across the yard into her kitchen, and brought us some of her fish, wrapped in paper. She made gefilte fish just like her mother did, even pulling up carrots from the very same garden.

Many Jewish homemakers in Ukraine today emphasize in particular that they learned their recipes from their mothers, and that they make their dishes—gefilte fish or challah—exactly as their mothers made it. During the interwar period in Soviet Ukraine, so much of the old world that the elder generation knew was rendered unrecognizable.

Yet Soviet ideologues not only tolerated ethnic food customs, but even encouraged them as part of the ethnic kaleidoscope that constituted the Soviet Union. National minorities were encouraged to retain visible markers of ethnic difference, such as dress and food, provided that they were emptied of any national sentiment. The Soviet government often showcased the colorful peasant dresses and exotic spices of its national minorities as a means of asserting the ethnic diversity of the Soviet Union. Foodways, along with language, were the most tangible tradi­tions that could safely be passed from generation to generation. Food came to represent the last link with the older generation. A gefilte fish recipe could become a cherished family heirloom. Private remembrance was the predominant means of evoking the past, and the kitchen was as close to the private sphere as was possible. The eating of a gefilte fish made in accordance with a traditional recipe was a literal imbibing of the past and a means of merging with one's ancestors by sharing a meal with them across time.

In the Soviet Union, where public expressions of faith were taboo, piety and religious expression were relegated to the domestic sphere, and to the kitchen in particular. For a population whose everyday meals varied little from day to day, the sudden change in cuisine for a festival meal left an indelible mark in memory. Prior to the advent of refrigera­tion, supermarkets, and takeout items, the preparation of food was a time-consuming activity for everyone the world over, and even more so for those not living in urban centers and with little disposable income for delicacies.

Food is also a major stimulant to memory. Taste and smell can work synesthetically, evoking seemingly unrelated memories. Indeed, urban Russian Jews have also looked toward food in an effort to reclaim their Jewish identities.³ In immigrant communities, food often becomes a metonym for a wider cultural context, for the lost world of the Old Country.⁴ Much of the scholarship that has been conducted on foodways focuses on immigrants and diasporic nostalgia, a longing for the tastes and smells of a world that immigrants can no longer access, where cook­ing is part of an attempt to reconstruct and remember another world.⁵ Numerous immigrant memoirs speak of a single dish that is unavailable in the new country as a symbol for all that has been lost of the aban­doned cultural world. Elements of this nostalgia can certainly be found today in Ukraine. In fact, this diasporic evocation was exacerbated in the Soviet Union, where foodways provided one of the few means of expressing ethnic identity and memory. The example of Jews in the small towns of Ukraine demonstrates that this same phenomenon can be observed in communities that remained in place, but had their old customs torn asunder in political violence. For them, food provided a means of memorializing and commemorating a past that could not be publicly expressed.

Food was also strongly associated with religious festivals and practice, a phenomenon by no means unique to Soviet Jewry.⁶ Sabbath foods— challah, gefilte fish, cholent, and latkes—feature prominently in memo­ries of the Sabbath. Cholent, in particular, a slow-cooked stew, usually consisting of meat, barley, beans, potato, and whatever else could be found around the house, symbolizes the Sabbath for many.

Elizaveta Bershadskaia remembered sealing the oven with clay in order to prevent heat from escaping (and to stop anybody from violat­ing the Sabbath by rekindling the oven) as the cholent cooked overnight: “Well, we would cook everything inside and afterwards knead some clay, and you would go like this with the clay [she demonstrates “smearing” with her hands].... We would put in a pot of cholent and then afterwards we would smear it with clay. I still remember that.” On Saturdays, she continued, they would open the oven and take out the cholent. Using the term cholent to refer to the oven itself, Etia Shvartzbroit also remem­bered that “On Friday they would smear the cholen t, the oven [with clay], and on Saturday they would open it up and take it out.”

Donia Presler of Tulchyn described how her family would shield the oven door with a tin cover to prevent heat from escaping after putting in the cholent on Friday afternoon. Sometimes, she continued, the non- Jewish neighbors, who were not bound by the religious strictures of the Jews, would bring over some hot tea for them to drink on Saturday afternoon. For Moyshe Kupershmidt, the cholent was also an important part of the Sabbath meal: “What can I tell you? Piety was everywhere. My mother would kasher [make kosher] the chicken. We had an oven... on Sabbath we had cholent.”

Evgeniia Kozak, who was born in Bershad in 1926 and continued to live in the town her entire life, told us in detail about her family's weekly Sabbath preparation:

Well, there would be a cholent in our oven that was prepared in ad­vance. Everything would be cooked already. 'The cholent was so delicious, goodness me! And everything was prepared, cooked and baked with a cooking board. Oy, what more was there? There was a tasty soup, good chopped fish, a stew made of beans and ground chickpeas.

At the mention of chopped fish, her thoughts became nostalgic, “It's been a long time since I've eaten chopped fish,” she mused.

Beyle Vaisman of Berdichev told us about Sabbath in her relatively wealthy family's home:

There was an oven. There was no gas. There was a [wood burning] oven in the kitchen. On Friday we would bake latkes and challah on the oven.... We would make cholent for Sabbath. My mother would throw wood into the oven. When the oven was lit, we would cook for Sabbath. We did not have gas, it was a [wood-burning] oven.... In front of the oven there was apripetshek [stove]. It would stand on three feet. It was called a trinotshke. We would bake latkes until the wood burned. And we would be standing and running around: “Yay, yay, latkes, latkes.”... Everything was delicious. Everything. Since it was for Sabbath, whatever we cooked was good.... I remember that after the wood burned, coal would remain left over from the wood. My mother, may she rest in peace, would put pots on it. She would make a cholent from meat and potatoes. She would shut the oven, and on Sabbath take it out.... My mother was such a great homemaker.... Sabbath was Sabbath. But my father, may he rest in peace, he would work on Sabbath. In those days, he had to.

In Vaisman's recollection, the memory of food evokes visceral emotions that beautify the moment: “Since it was Sabbath everything was good.” Sabbath time was sacred, rendering even the profane good. For those who formally welcomed the Sabbath with prayer on Friday evenings, lighting Sabbath candles and eating traditional challah bread was an im­portant part of the custom. Asya Barshteyn recalled her family's Sabbath preparation in Sharhorod, emphasizing that her family did everything “like you were supposed to do:”

At home, on Sabbath. We had an oven. You could bake bread, you could bake challah. During the week, you would eat bread, but on Sabbath it was challah, as though God had baked it, like you were supposed to. Cooked and baked with all types of cookies and baked goods that my mother cooked. Everything like you were supposed to do. And on Sabbath we would light candles. I light candles. Every Sabbath I light candles.

Barshteyn's insistence that she did everything “like you were supposed to do” was echoed by many of those we interviewed, who insisted that they followed religious strictures “just as they were supposed to,” or occasionally described how they performed a custom even though “you are supposed to do it differently.”⁷ These phrases indicate the people's strong sense that the performance of religious ritual was a requirement that they had agreed to fulfill in accordance with established guidelines and customs. In their narratives, religious obligations trumped the ex­pected behavior of a Soviet citizen, for whom religious performance was not an obligation, but rather an infringement. In Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s, one was certainly not “supposed to” light Sabbath candles and bake challah bread.⁸

Another popular Sabbath dish was gefilte fish, which could be served either Friday evening during the welcoming of the Sabbath, or con­sumed cold on Saturday afternoon. Naftoli Shor's family would cook gefilte fish, meat, a broth, and bean tsimes on Sabbath. Sofia Palatnikova of Teplyk also remembered the Sabbath gefilte fish, which she continued to cook from the recipe her mother taught her:

I take off the skin. That's right, and I take out the bones. And then I put the fillet through a meat grinder. My mother did it with a chopping knife. She used to say that when you use the grinder it doesn't taste as good. But I use the meat grinder. Then I add raw grated onion, then fried on­ion—just fried a little. Pepper. Salt to taste. Eggs.... And if there's matzo meal—I have matzo meal almost all year round. I take matzo—it's good for fish. I also sometimes use little biscuits, nonsweet ones, “croquettes.” I had taken off the skin, so the place where I had cut it, that's where I stuff it. Then I set it out on a plate, with the head, the tails and then the middle part, you get a whole fish. And after that I stuff it, I put it in a pan and fry it a little. And to the bottom of the pan I add carrots and raw onions and fried onions and a bay leaf and pepper and salt and let it cook over a low flame for two hours. And it comes out just right.... My mother made it like that. They say my fish is good. I give some to the non-Jews... they don't know how to make fish.

In this description, Palatnikova subtly turned what seemed to be a straightforward recipe for gefilte fish into a value-laden identity marker. She concluded her recipe by vouching for its authenticity—“my mother made it like that.” She established the recipe as esoteric knowledge, avail­able only to her exclusive group—“they [non-Jews] don't know how to make it like that.” The use of matzo in the recipe further marked it as Jewish. On the other hand, she also asserted the universal appeal of the dish by insisting that the non-Jews, although they were incapable of making it, still acknowledged its supremacy. In some respects, the gefilte fish recipe Palatnikova shared is reminiscent of kabbalistic knowledge— it is esoteric and can only be created by the initiated, but has a potency recognizable to all. A good gefilte fish transcends ethnic boundaries.

Evgeniia Kozak also marked gefilte fish as distinctly Jewish. Her recipe had been passed down from generation to generation, but was modernized through the use of a meat grinder. Indeed, whether or not one uses a meat grinder or a cutting board was often represented as an integral marker of modernization, or alternatively as a corruption of an ancestral heritage, or even as blasphemy. Donia Presler exhorted: “Some people make the fish with a meat grinder. No, no, no. Only with a chopping knife!”

Grigorii Shor remembered the food items associated with the Sab­bath: “And then we would pray and eat a chicken noodle soup with man- dlen [soup nuts].... There was a challah. We would pray over the challah. And there was wine.... The Jews didn't make the wine in the shtetl. The wine was from the vineyards in Yaruga, near Mohyliv-Podilskyy, and from there they would bring big barrels of wine. There were collective farms there that made wine and sold it. They had special wine cellars and they sold wine from there.” The image of Soviet workers in collective farms producing wine from the vineyards of Yaruga that was blessed and served with challah over Sabbath dinner in nearby Kopayhorod provides a perfect example of the ways in which Soviet products could be retooled and appropriated for spiritual purposes.

In addition to the role that special dishes and food preparation play in the annual holiday cycle, food practices, particularly observance of the laws of kashrut, have traditionally served as a major boundary marker for Jews. Whereas kosher meat remained readily available in the 1920s, its acquisition became increasingly difficult throughout the Soviet Union during the 1930s. It was almost impossible to obtain kosher beef, as cows were confiscated by the state and the slaughter of cows was heav­ily regulated. Chickens, however, were more easily obtained, and legal kosher butchers continued to exist in certain locales; in 1935 there were twenty-one kosher butchers in the city of Kiev alone. Kosher butchers were targeted during the Great Terror of 1937, but in small towns some continued to practice clandestinely through the war.⁹ In her book, So­viet and Kosher, Anna Shternshis notes that while retaining the idea of kashrut as an ethnic marker, Soviet Jews largely eschewed halakhic (legal) dietary requirements.¹⁰ While most of the people we spoke to had also overcome Jewish taboos against mixing milk and meat and eating pork products, many continued to associate their Jewish identity with specific food customs. In her recollections of Sharhorod, Asya Barstheyn told us that “they sold only kosher meat—no lard at all. All the Jews bought only kosher meat. My mother only went to the kosher butcher shop to get meat.” Sofia Palatnikovas father, who owned a butcher shop in Teplyk until 1930, also remembered that if the meat was not kosher, nobody would buy it. The Jews ate only kosher meat, and the non-Jews, she explained, did not eat meat at all. When we asked why, she ventured, “Why? I should know? They didn't have anything to buy it with. My father explained that there were a lot of fast days... for a month and a half they don't eat meat.”

But such stark divisions between kosher and nonkosher meat were rare. More commonly, kashrut, when it was thought about at all, was considered an ideal rather than a reality. Evgeniia Kozak was familiar with the custom of separating milk and meat, but saw this particular practice as a local custom that she observed when visiting relatives who lived in Khust, a town in the Carpathian Mountains that had been a part of Czechoslovakia and Hungary before its occupation by the Soviet Union in 1944. Since Khust was only subjected to Soviet antireligious campaigns in the postwar period, the surviving Jewish population re­tained Jewish traditions for a longer period of time. “In the Carpathians, for example,” she told us, “if you would cook a soup in a pot, you then couldn't put any dairy in it. You are not permitted to mix milk and meat. That's how it is for the Jews.” She recognized this custom as a Jewish practice, but despite her own strong sense of Jewish identity, excluded herself from this stricter community of observers.

Others saw kashrut not as a principle ordering and regulating daily life, but rather as an extraordinary activity, performed only periodically and typically during the week of Passover. Elizaveta Bershadskaia, for instance, told of her house and her father's role in rendering it Jewish: “Yes, it was a Jewish home. He taught us everything Jewish that one must know.” When asked if it was possible to keep kosher in her home, she insisted that everybody owned kosher dishes; her family would bring these down from the attic for Passover, implying that it was only during the week of Passover that kashrut was observed. Similarly, Chaim Rubin remembered Passovers in Buki: “They would make it kosher, they would bring down the Passover dishes from the attic.” When it became difficult to observe the dietary restrictions year round, many Soviet Jews made do with observing them at specific appointed periods of time. Jewish dietary restrictions were turned into an extraordinary ritual observed only during the week of Passover, rather than as a daily routine.