bunnyjadwiga (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bunnyjadwiga) wrote2005-02-16 02:15 pm
bunnyjadwiga) wrote2005-02-16 02:15 pm
Russia, 1633, colored eggs
From The travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia, ed. Samel H. Baron (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 1967):
"On May 24th, the Saturday before Pentecost, I went to Russian Narva to see how Russians honored the memory of their deceased relatives and friends. The cemetery was full of Russian women, who had spread upon the graves and gravestones beautifully sewn, varicolored handkerchiefs, on which they set dishes containing three or four long pancakes and pies, two or three pieces of dried fish, and colored eggs. Some standing and some kneeling, they wailed and cried, and put different questions to the dead, as they are said to do also at funerals. If one of their acquaintances passed by, they turned to him and spoke with a smile, but when he moved on they again began to wail. Among them went a priest, with two servants, who carried a censer, into which from time to time he threw bits of wax, and censed the graves, while repeating a few words. One after another the women told the popy (thus they call their priests) the names of their deceased friends, some of whom had been dead for ten years; others read names out of a book and some gave them to the servants to read, and the priest was supposed to repeat them. Meanwhile, the women bowed to the priest, sometimes making the sign of the cross, and he waved the censer toward them.
The women pulled and pushed the priest from one place to another, each wanting her departed to be served first. When the priest had completed the centsing and praying, which he performed in an inattentive and not particularly reverent manner, the women gave him a large copper coin, like a Holstein sessling or six pennies of Meissen money. The priest's servants took the pies and eggs for themselves, sharing some of them with us Germans who had witnessed the spectacle. We in turn distributed them to some poor children." p. 40-41
"On May 24th, the Saturday before Pentecost, I went to Russian Narva to see how Russians honored the memory of their deceased relatives and friends. The cemetery was full of Russian women, who had spread upon the graves and gravestones beautifully sewn, varicolored handkerchiefs, on which they set dishes containing three or four long pancakes and pies, two or three pieces of dried fish, and colored eggs. Some standing and some kneeling, they wailed and cried, and put different questions to the dead, as they are said to do also at funerals. If one of their acquaintances passed by, they turned to him and spoke with a smile, but when he moved on they again began to wail. Among them went a priest, with two servants, who carried a censer, into which from time to time he threw bits of wax, and censed the graves, while repeating a few words. One after another the women told the popy (thus they call their priests) the names of their deceased friends, some of whom had been dead for ten years; others read names out of a book and some gave them to the servants to read, and the priest was supposed to repeat them. Meanwhile, the women bowed to the priest, sometimes making the sign of the cross, and he waved the censer toward them.
The women pulled and pushed the priest from one place to another, each wanting her departed to be served first. When the priest had completed the centsing and praying, which he performed in an inattentive and not particularly reverent manner, the women gave him a large copper coin, like a Holstein sessling or six pennies of Meissen money. The priest's servants took the pies and eggs for themselves, sharing some of them with us Germans who had witnessed the spectacle. We in turn distributed them to some poor children." p. 40-41
The little men
On a Sunday the cemetery was busy. Not just catching up with Saturday's burials that couldn't happen because it was the Sabbath, but also with Rabbis who came to the cemetery to say prayers for people who couldn't say them themselves. I think they carpooled from Brooklyn or something.
If my Dad came with us he said the requisite prayers. If he didn't come we had to "get a little man". That's what my mother and my grandmother would say. The Rabbi, dressed in a black suit with a black overcoat and a black hat, with a long beard and peyis (the long curls where sideburns would be) would get the names from you and say the prayers and then it was customary to give him some money. I don't know how much. I can't help but think that if he's a "little man" that you give him a "little money"...
Somehow, reading the quote above reminded me of this.