(RNS and NPR) — In Jewish tradition, after someone dies, the anniversary of their death is marked by lighting a yahrzeit candle. Taking their name from the Yiddish word for “year-time,” yahrzeit candles come in a stubby glass holder a couple of inches high. They burn for 24 hours, to remember and honor the person lost. After the candle has burned, the little glass is left behind. And in some families that old glass is put to a new use.
Ruth Lebed’s grandmother came from Eastern Europe, a region that was sometimes Russia, sometimes Poland. She never learned English very well, but she was an amazing baker. Growing up, Lebed lived right next to her grandparents and remembers her grandmother’s baking.
“She would make rugelach, and she would make strudel,” said Lebed. “And all of these little delicacies that you really didn’t see in bakeries.”
After her grandmother died, Lebed and her mom tried to re-create her recipes — specifically the dough she used for rugelach, which also made excellent hamantaschen — and the recipe called for a glass of juice. Which left the family wondering: What’s a glass?
So, they tried a cup — didn’t work. One of their everyday juice glasses — also wrong.
“And then finally,” Lebed remembered, “my mom said, ‘You know what? Grandma used to keep all of her yahrzeit glasses.’”
And that was it.
Others share similar stories. Judy Bart Kancigor, author of “Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes From the Rabinowitz Family,” came across several mentions of “a glass of flour” when gathering her family’s recipes. In response to a query about yahrzeit glass recipes on an online Yiddish forum, one respondent mentioned a family story of someone who thought the “1 gl of rice” measurement referred to a gallon, leading to a rather inedible stuffed cabbage.
Using candles on the occasion of a death goes back as far as there are candles. And using candles to mark the yahrzeit, the anniversary of a death, is mentioned in Jewish tradition as far back as the Middle Ages. But the mass-produced glass holders came later. It’s unclear exactly when production started, but advertisements for yarhzeit candles from Standard Oil Co. started showing up in the Jewish press as early as 1914.
The glasses of a hundred years ago were a bit bigger than today’s — like a small juice glass, thick and beveled, sturdy enough to hold a candle that burns a whole day (Kancigor measured her family’s glasses as holding a cup plus 2 tablespoons). Many American Jews grew up with the memory of Eastern European grandparents cleaning old yahrzeit candle glasses and using them as measuring cups, as everyday juice glasses or (since they were thick enough) to hold a cup of hot tea, to be sipped Russian-style, through a sugar cube held between one’s teeth.
This repurposing may seem a little questionable. Perhaps even sacrilege? But the yahrzeit glass is not officially a sacred object, with no mention in the Talmud or the Torah.
“This is custom, or minhag, as we would call it,” explained Sarit Wishnevski. Wishnevski leads Kavod v’Nichum, a Jewish group that supports chevra kadisha, the volunteer groups that prepare bodies for burial in the Jewish tradition and care for those who are grieving.
“There is no ritual obligation to mark the anniversary of a death. I think we do it because it connects us with our ancestors. It connects us with memory. It helps us to mark time.”
Wishnevski says the yahrzeit candle is a mechanism — it’s not sacred in and of itself, but serves as a way to bring people into a sacred moment. And because there’s no official liturgy, people can light the yahrzeit candle and figure out what it has to say to their own personal mourning.
“We don’t get over people, right?” said Wishnevski. “We carry them with us forever, and it’s a really beautiful way to remember those people, and to dedicate time to the people who are with us.”
But not everyone has that reaction to the yahrzeit candle.
Hasia Diner taught Jewish history at New York University. When she was growing up, her father and stepmother lit a lot of yahrzeit candles — for all of the relatives who were lost to the Holocaust. And after the candles had burned down, her stepmother would gouge out any remaining wax and use the glasses on their breakfast table. Or to cut out poppyseed cookies or little blueberry-filled varenyky. But for a child, it was a bit scary.
“It was just traumatic to see these things,” remembered Diner. “I didn’t want to see those glasses. I didn’t want to see them with the flame in them, and I didn’t want to see them with orange juice in them.”
But it made her realize death is a part of life. And looking back now, Diner sees it as kind of beautiful.
“Just to think that that cookie that I am biting into came from the glass to remember my mother … that’s kind of really powerful.”
Erin Fortuna’s grandmother also reused yahrzeit glasses for her baking — and also came to this country as a Jewish immigrant with a legacy of loss.
“She brought the memory of those that came before her. She brought the memory of her mother who couldn’t make it here. She brought the memory of her sister and her nieces and nephews who died.”
Fortuna, who has committed herself to preserving these family recipes, says they’re all the more meaningful because of the use of this glass.
“She brought the memory of everyone every time she made a recipe, because there’s so much more than just a glass candle.”
To some extent, the generations who came before are always in the room when you make an old family recipe. But using a yahrzeit glass, this physical reminder of loss, makes that presence even more concrete — in a way that’s sweet, and sad, and meaningful. And maybe even delicious.
This story was produced through a collaboration between NPR and RNS. Listen to the radio version of the story.
