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Geordie,
I started the Europe Thread May 1st as promised
Neville,
Our daughter does’t look typical Chinese. She is 5’9″ tall with a body that developed based on American Jewish diet, not a Chinese diet. She was always well bronzed from the sun and before marriage long wavy black hair. If you saw her in a Chanel or Dior Power Suit and pumps, walking into court you’d not think of her as anything but American, only Chinese usually pick her out by birth nationality/race
Joesph….
She considers herself White/Jewish American because she was raised in that type of family since before she could talk or walk.
There were many American Jews adopting baby girls in China when we did. The China 1 child policy led to many women giving up female babies for adoption hoping to have a male they’d keep.
Daughter had rejected Chinese language lessons as a child (commonly taken by adoptees in America), and until last year never expressed interest in a visit to the land of her birth. I’ve been to China about 20 times on business in the past 35 years.
She did not befriend other Jewish Chinese here in school or summer camp and just considered herself one of the family.
We always joked that when we went to fancy Kosher Chinese restaurants that had Chinese waitstaff that daughter was the one who needed a fork, while parents used chop sticks and mother could order in Chinese.
It’s all about Nature vs. Nuture.
BTW>>>we also have a domestic white adopted daughter who did seek out her birth parents at age 19 and was rejected by them. The Chinese born daughter will never have the opportunity as there were no records kept of these births. They usually took place at home and the babies were left on the step of the orphanage during the night sop the birth mother could not be arrested for violating the one child birth laws.
Our Rav suggested that we never consider a Jewish baby when adopting so the child need not worry about Mamzerus when shidduch time came. Having a child of another race lessens the problem further.
My daughter was married the beginning of April. She was born in China and adopted there by Mrs. CTL and I 25 years ago. We live OOT. She attended day school, seminary, College, Law School and is now along with her new husband working in my firm.
She had many shidduch inquiries and race was not an issue. In fact she does not consider herself Asian, but Jewish/White/American. Her husband was not a traditional shidduch date. He was a fellow law student and a non-frum female law professor suggested he ask my daughter out. She chose him over potential matches who wanted a kollel life, but whose families did not object to her race/color.
Goldilocks…………………..
You can ask and ask and ask that guest not bring any food or gift, BUT people who were brought up properly do not arrive empty handed.
Thus, we tell them the menu is set, the cooking is done, but it would be very helpful if you could pick up a bag of ice. They feel they are both bringing something, helping us out, in that we don’t have to leave preparations and go shop erev Yuntif/Shabbos.
And we never have to explain that we eat this hecksher and not that, or from this bakery and not that. Or even worse, the home you think is kosher isn’t up to our standards.
ZD……………
The grandchildren are up and I asked them what they wanted for breakfast today. I expected they’d want pancakes, toast, bagels, cereal.
NO, the overwhelming request was for matzo meal pancakes, and matzo brei made with egg matzo.
A long Pesach at the grandparents and they were missing those foods they consider a Pesach treat. I grew up in a home where these items were served. We eat gebrokhts, but somehow each year serve less and less as new members join the family and come from homes that don’t eat them.
Just because it’s fallen out of favor, or those who don’t eat gebrokts are growing to be a larger part of the community doesn’t mean I’ll abandon our family minhag.
Dov……….
Our standard reply when someone asks what they can bring to a Shabbos, Yuntif or other dinner invitation:
Please stop and pickup a bag of ice on your way, somehow even with built in ice makers there’s never enough.
Golfer,
No the two young sons did not grow up/end up as Frum Yidden. However, they have remained Jewish and married Jewish women. They and their still widowed mother and the boys’ children were all guests at our Seder Table. They arrived dressed for Yuntif and looking forward to their yearly dose of Yiddishkeit and mixing with the remnants of their late fathers’ family. They also brought lots of bananas.
As a segue, there had been a thread about family minhagim at the seder table. Traditionally, on the first night we host our immediate family and my wife’s relatives. The second night we have relatives from my side of the family. We cook recipes and special dishes that have come down on the particular side of the family for each night. In the drawer where we keep the guest Haggadot we have a collection of yarmulkes for the non-frum guests. They are from weddings and B’nai Mitzvah going back more than 50 years. We match guests with yarmulkes from their weddings, Bar Mitzvah or those of their deceased parents and grandparents. These two boys got a thrill when they were first given a chance to wear a yarmulke from their late father’s Bar Mitzvah or parents’ wedding, now each has a young son who proudly wears those yarmulkes at our seder and talks how they can’t wait to come back and be connected with their ancestors again.
We also use kiddush cups and other items that go back as many as 7 generations, and all the charoset is ground by hand in a brass mortar and pestle that my Great-Great grandmother bought when she arrived in America back in 1872 and had to make Pesach in a new land.
Happened to us 20 years ago. My late cousin’s wife came with her sons for the seder. She walks in and places a ‘Passover cake’ on the sideboard in the dining room. My wife took a quick look and saw that it was from a non-kosher bakery. She quickly thanked our guest, explained that tonight’s menu was already set and instructed the eldest daughter to place the cake in the garage where it would stay cool. Daughter picked up the cake in its box along with the cloth that was on the sideboard and walked to the garage. Somehow the cake managed to end up in the compost heap behind the garage.
After Yuntif, we sent a lovely note thanking cousin in law for the cake.
We couldn’t get upset with her. She was not brought up with any religious knowledge. Her husband passed away leaving two young sons and the annual sedarim at our home were their only connection to their Jewish heritage and our side of the family. Wife explained that we eat so much rich food for the holidays that we only serve fresh fruit for dessert. The following year she brought a bunch of bananas.
Pesach Break……………….
Thread resumes Sunday May 1.
Golfer…………
Peanut oil for Pesach seemed to disappear from the US kosher grocers’ shelves in the early 1970s. The same time as the major shift to Glatt meat from ‘regular’ kosher meat.
Ij, Iran
Gotta scratch that Ij
Geordie613>>>Maybe South America??? Depends on the Queen
Geordie613>>>>I spent many an evening at friends’ home in Yeoville in the mid 1970s. They lived in Yeoville, but davened in Berea.
Queen……….
I don’t care for the taste of walnut oil. Our Rav also says Canola is Kitnios.
I grew up with Peanut oil or schmaltz.
I still use schmaltz for many things, olive for non-cooked foods (salads, etc.) and succumb to cottonseed for most frying.
It’s only 8 days, we manage to not ruin our collective health because of Pesach.
Geordie 613
My pleasure
On a sad note, looking in the mirror and feeling old this Pesach will be 40 years since I last spent Pesach in southern Africa.
I am B”H thrilled to be old enough to have experienced what once was
As the message says on the Crisco Vegetable Oil description page. Ingredients may change.
Mainline companies may print hundreds of thousands of labels at one time. Changes in the price/availability of a particular oil may cause the substitution of another. No need to discard all the labels.
Most ‘Vegetable Oil’ sold under that name in the USA is soybean, but Canola is gaining ground. Pesach Time we see Wesson Cottonseed Oil in the Veg-oil section of the supermarket…yukkkk
The Cohanim will be the ones with sacks of Silver Dollars hidden in the closet
Dimona…………
They got quite a reaction there…it went nuclear
yehudayona….
see, a wall mounted pushke by the entry solves the gabbai shake and shuffle problem
DY….a place where government segregates women from men when the women must conduct official business……………….
after seeing the signs requesting women to walk on certian sides of the street or where to sit on a public bus..I think this might appeal to some of their prim senses
English Bazar, India
No it’s not a marketplace it’s a city in West Bengal
Hareidim will approve because it was the first place in India to establish a women’court……
DY…Mashed Potatoes and Turkey sounds like Thanksgiving and there’s another thread about that controversy
Little Froggie
Many shuls have coat rooms or coat racks to hang outer garments before entering the davening room.
Mammele………
Thanks for your concern.
Neither my wife or I are superstitious.
B”H her surgery was successful. She attended our daughter’s chasunah and all the accompanying festivities and participated fully.
Catch………..
we generally don’t have latecomers to the daily minyan as 3 of us usually are the drivers who pick up the others making a 6:15 AM minyan and then many rush for the train to Manhattan.
I don’t know if the 7:30 minyan (which the shul rabbi attends) is composed of on time attendees.
I remember my grandfather saying: when I want your opinion I’ll tell you what it is.
Catch yourself………….
My use of the word class has nothing to do with social status. It was short for classification.
There is a big difference from a minyan held in a shtiebel or beis medrash with tables than one held in a formal suburban synagogue with fixed pews, etc. It is not as free wheeling, everyone is expected to arrive on time. You won’t find latecomers giving a klop at the end of the service trying to get an extra Kaddish in.
It’s certainly different from a Yeshiva minyan with no women in the room.
I’ve attend all of these over the years and the expected behaviors and occurrences are different>no right or wrong, just different.
Golfer………
My post was about a Shevah Brochos, not a Chasunah. It was in a small hall, not a wedding palace. People mostly came straight from work in business clothing. I didn’t see a limo anywhere.
The hosts (not me) did not want crashers of any type. They planned food and drink for those invitees who responded they would attend. It was a private, invitation only event. Certainly a host is entitled to restrict entrance to invitees.
The host could have sent all potential crashers away empty handed, the fact that he gave the employees working the door a stack of $5 bills to distrubute was nice.
I don’t think I’ve seen a collector at our shul minyan in at least 3 years.
Collectors seem to prefer cities where they can hit multiple places in a day.
Takes too long to reach the hinterlands to collect from a small minyan.
Once a quarter, our pushke committee takes the funds and distributes them to reply to the assorted request letters received as well as the regulars.
Twenty years ago when I was still living in a Connecticut city with about 6 orthodox morning Minyanim visiting collectors were on the wane, maybe one every 8-10 weeks.
Stayed overnight in Brooklyn this week (Shevah Brochos for my daughter) and was besieged by collectors at both minyan and trying to ‘crash’ the Shevah Brochos at a hall. I had prepared for minyan and had 25 singles in my pants pocket (after what the chasunah cost me, big deal). The hosts of the Shevah Brochos arranged to have personnel at the entry to the hall who admitted only those on the invitations list. No ‘crashers’ of any type entered. The collectors were each sent away with a $5 bill.
Joseph……..
The dollar coin in the USA was a flop, be it The Eisenhower or Sacajawea.
It has been years since I’ve seen any adult in our minyan place coins in the pushke on the wall. Occasionally a child will do so. When a cup of coffee or a soda is typically $2 it would be an insult to put a quarter in the pushke, then drive off in your multi-thousand dollar car.
I live in Fairfield County, CT. This is a land of single family homes. There are no working class people in our town or attending our minyan who use public transit as in the city. In fact there is no public transit.
It’s just facts of life that life here is different than in the city or Monsey, Lakewood, etc. Not about superiority.
You make the case for a fixed pushke on the wall that is locked.
I must attend a different class of minyan. Paper money isn’t noisy.
I’m with the Wolf.
Also, I live out of town. Our children went to day schools, not yeshivos, even if the school had the word yeshiva in the name.
The School libraries were sorely lacking.
They had full secular curiricula and from grade 3 the public library was a necessary place to research and do homework and projects.
Many books were put on reserve by the library matching the teachers’ reading lists. They could only be checked out with a child’s card. Children have a 4 book maximum check out limit in this area. This method kept unscrupulous parents from checking out all the books on a list to the detriment of other students.
Our town’s library has computers available for research use. The ones in the children’s section, accessible only by scanning the bar-code on the child’s library card have internet access that if highly filtered by age level.
Since Geordie613 can’t stand Os
Ob River, Siberia
empties into the Gulf of Ob
Doha…capital of Qatar
They don’t want us there, either
Ankara, Turkey
Bombers delight
“Why do bakeries bake chametz till the last minute. “
1. Because most people have stopped baking at home days (or even weeks) before Pesach and there is a demand for the product.
2. Why should their parnasah be cut? It’s tough enough that they will be shut for a minimum of 8 days with no sales, but fixed expenses such as rent, insurance continue.
3. As Queen Marie Antoinette said: “Let them eat cake.” Some customers want more than bread.
4. Why should employees have their hours cut and lose wages because you have decided no cakes and pastries should be baked?
5. Mrs. CTL’s family owned a kosher bakery, I worked as the purchasing agent for another kosher bakery more than 40 years ago. Neither establishment cut production before Pesach. There were retail and wholesale trade to be serviced. Nothing was ever put out on the street Erev Pesach…it was all given to local goyische institutions for distribution to the poor in our towns.
Are they (bochrim) falling over while they sleep?
Agra, India
Take your choice, they both end with an A
Home of the Taj Mahal
Ulan Bator, Capital of Mongolia
a childhood friend was posted to the US Embassy there.
Okinawa…………….
Postiong my own follow up so Geordie613 won’t be frustrated
Tokyo, Japan
Too many business trips there in the 80s
Queen……….
I didn’t know my great grandmothers, but certainly knew my grandmothers who were both alive until I was about 40. They both had a knippel…one was Litvak and the other Yekkeh. Neither used the term Knippel as neither spoke Yiddish.
My paternal grandmother had only sons so they were not taught about it. My maternal grandmother had only daughters and they were taught the importance of a knippel.
In the Great Depression of the 1930s when both grandfathers’ businesses went under it was the knippel that kept the family going. In the late 1930s my Oma’s knippel was instrumental in buying the freedom of the last 3 of her extended family still in Germany.
My father’s business partners put his business into bankruptcy in 1962 while my parents were in EY for 2 months. We survived on mom’s knippel while dad rebuilt his livelihood.
I have one sister, I remember my mother teaching her “if your husband gives you $100 per week to run the house, you take 10% off the top for the knippel, and 10% off the bottom for tzedaka, you can shop and cook wisely on 80% of what he thinks you need.’
I have one sister,when she married back in 1970, my brother and I gave her $1,000 to start her knippel. We told her that we never wanted her to be in the position of asking her husband for money to buy home a birthday gift, and that she must always have some money of her own.
We also told her that if it ever ran out, to come to us for a replenishment. Unfortunately, she has a sick husband (he has needed multiple transplants over the years) and a son whose expensive hearing aids were never covered by insurance. We B”H have been able to replenish the knippel over the years without my BIL knowing.
My wife’s family also has the tradition of the knippel, they are Litvaks from Vilna (her grandparents were born there). She taught our daughter’s take 10% off the top of all the wife’s personal income for the knippel.
A good husband knows that if you give your wife cash to buy something, don’t expect change…it goes in the knippel.
Geordie………
My wife and the girls were in one limousine, newlyweds ion a second and I was in a 3rd with male immediate family members, thus I had access to my laptop while being driven about 2 hours to NYC for the evening affair. I am just finishing up and am do in the ballroom in 3 minutes for the evening festivities.
Thanks for the good wishes
Queen an Syag L chochma
I have two words to say: Shalom Bayis.
My Father, Grandfather and Great Grandfather (Z”L) always taught me that it is Poppa’s job to make a living. Momma rules the roost and decides how that parnassah is spent…..
I am sure that I am only seeing about 75% of the bills for the chasunah. The rest is coming from momma’s Knippel. But, I’ll make sure to find a way for some unexpected funds to find their way into one of momma’s handbags.
We are enroute to NYC for the evening affair. The sheitelmachers and makeup ladies are waiting for the ladies in the hotel I and my brother, brother-in-law, adult nephews, male close cousins will gather in a reserved meeting room for Mincha and a L’Chaim……………
It’s the morning of the chasunah.
Poppa has been banished to his spare office above the garage.
The caterers and florists are in full swing. B”H we never got the snow predicted for Shabbos. The sun is shining and the ceremony will be in our garden as planned.
Momma and the Kallah have instructed Poppa to keep his mouth shut and his checkbook open…clearly I have little say in what goes on today.
Tisch at 10:30, Chupah promptly at 11:15 Drinking and feasting at noon…all is well with the world
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
They don’t want us to visit
Queen,
When mutual friends of the dating couple (same age) decide that it would be a good idea to fix up Chaim and Sara. Often these friends are room mates or in the same shiur with them.
Back in my day it was common for girls in the dorm at Stern to fix up a fellow dorm mate with a guy at YU. The contact was usually between siblings or close cousins at the 2 schools, so the boy girl contact wasn’t unusual or improper.
Sometimes, by the time room mates have spent a couple of years living together, they have a better idea what might make a good match than a shadchan.
In those days parents didn’t demand resumes and didn’t have 100+ item checklists (demands). My eldest son is already married almost 30 years. My daughter getting married I”H this Sunday met her chusan in Law School. They were the 2 always being seated together at school functions and being served airline meals. After the second semester, a female Jewish professor strongly suggested they consider marriage, that neither one would be happy with a spouse without advanced secular education.
Da Nang, used to be South..now just: Viet Nam
The USA had a major Air Base there in the 1960s and early 70s.
DaasYochid……….
Right about Kof-K, not Chaf….been a long day. I had lots of respect for them 36 years ago when only the father was supervising limited items. Now not so much.
KVH was the top supervision in New England for Decades under Rabbi Halbfinger, did not require meat to be glatt, supervises the in store bakeries for most New England chains, such a Stop and Shop,Shaw’s. Big Y, etc.
Problem is that it was originally part of the Synagogue Council of Massachusetts that included non-orthodox (Euro Traditional but no mechitza) synagogues..and some of their pulpit rabbbis did local inspections. Last 10+ years if is part of the Orthodox only Rabbinical Council of New England with much higher standards.