Bubbe Meise and Blessings: Old Wives Tales and Women's Torah

bubbe-meise. Noun. (plural bubbe-meises) from Yiddish (literally) A grandmother's fable. Although very close to the idea of an old wives' tale, bubbe-meise is a shade more serious.

I come from an illustrious line of Hungarian Hasidic Rabbis...

We wore our underwear inside out if we had an important appointment, say, with a doctor. We had red strings from Rachel’s Tomb, spirited out of Israel, worn fastidiously on our wrists. We threw salt with abandon, knocked on tables like woodpeckers, stuck silverware that had fallen on the floor into a flower pot for 24 hours to “cleanse” it from the fall, and placed garlic cloves and camphor in the corners of our bedrooms to confuse evil spirits. -Tobi Ash, Kveller

http://www.kveller.com/i-spit-on-my-child-to-ward-off-the-evil-eye-and-it-worked/

1. Throwing clod of earth behind you from the burial as you walk away
2. Step on the glass at wedding
3. You should never have a baby shower or buy anything for a baby before it’s born. (In fact, we don’t even say “Mazel Tov, but rather B’sha’ah Tovah to a pregnant woman.)
4. If a child is laying on the floor and you step over him, you must walk back over him or he won’t grow anymore
5. The foot of the bed cannot face the door! Too easy for demons to carry you out "feet first" while you are sleeping and whisk you off to your burial. MIL
6. Don’t open an umbrella in the house (or it will rain at your wedding)
7. IF you eat an olive, you have to have at least two (a lone olive is only eaten as part of the meal after a funeral)
8. Don’t put shoes on a dresser or a table or bad luck will ensue. Never sew clothes while someone is wearing them and if you must, tell the person wearing the clothes to chew on a string/cracker.
9. When you move into a new house you must make sure to have a broom, salt, sugar, loaf of bread (or flour) and of course a mezzuzah, and it’s even more good luck to move in right before Shabbat.
10. Never pass a knife, needle, scissors or salt to anyone. Put it on the table, let the other person pick it, unless you want to fight with this person in the future. (Grandma -Sephardic)

We All Stood Together

by Merle Feld

My brother and I were at Sinai

He kept a journal

of what he saw,

of what he heard,

of what it all meant to him.

I wish I had such a record

of what happened to me there

It seems like every time I want to write

I can’t—

I’m always holding a baby,

one of my own,

or one for a friend,

always holding a baby

so my hands are never free

to write things down

And then

as time passes,

the particulars,

the hard data,

the who what when where why,

slip away from me,

and all I’m left with is

the feeling.

But feelings are just sounds

the vowel barking of a mute.

My brother is so sure of what he heard-

after all he’s got a record of it-

consonant after consonant after consonant.

If we remembered it together

we could recreate holy time

sparks flying.

"One should not believe in superstitions, but still it is best to be heedful of them..." - Sefer Hasidim (Book of the Pious) 13th c. Germany

Nachmanides - Responsum 282

The study of astrology is not forbidden. Even though the Talmud (Shabbat 156a) states: “There is no mazal (celestial, source of influence) for Israel,” there were sages who did not share that view. Thus, even though the latter was a minority opinion, the fact that it exists demonstrates that astrology is not nonsense, nor is involvement in its study forbidden.