Category Archives: Rosh Hashanah

Sweetness & Radiance

September comes to a close this week and as it does, we get to celebrate with subtle sweetness. We begin with the setting sun this 25th of September and the start of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Apples and honey are traditional to Rosh Hashanah: eat these sweet things to help ensure a sweet year ahead. You might also eat challah bread and Teiglach: small balls of dough that are baked in honey and mixed with chopped roasted almonds and candied cherries. My family discovered them one September in a local Jewish bakery. We were mesmerized by the tin plates of Teiglach, piled high into a cone, wrapped in cellophane. They reminded us so much of the struffoli we make each Christmas. We bought a plateful and took it home and the teiglach was so good, we went back the next day for another. Something about the nuts and the cherries and the honey make for a sublime combination of sweetness and substance and texture. Eventually, we began making our own, and my sister’s Teiglach are what you see in the photo above. They are so good! L’shanah Tovah is the greeting we say: Have a good, sweet year.

The next day, on the 26th of September, we celebrate the birthday of John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed: our great American apple-planting frontier traveler. He was born at the height of apple season in 1774. Read his story, watch the short animated Disney Melody Time film about him. At the very least, eat an apple. Better yet: drink a tankard of hard cider. John Chapman was not so much interested in planting apples for eating as he was in planting apples for cider making. Back then, cider, thanks to its alcohol content, was a lot safer to drink than water!

We close the month on the 29th with Michaelmas, honoring Michael the Archangel. Blackberries are traditional to Michaelmas, thanks to the story of Michael battling Satan, the fallen angel. As the story goes, when Satan fell to Earth, he landed in a bramble patch––a blackberry patch. I love blackberries, but I can tell you––from well remembered experience harvesting blackberries in Maine––that they are a fruit that will make you curse and swear as you gather them. So many thorns. They lay claim to your clothes and wound you. Satan cursed the bramble patch he landed upon, and legend has it that he returns each year to curse and spit upon that same patch. Some folks will not eat blackberries after Michaelmas for this very reason.

Roast goose for dinner is traditional for Michaelmas, and it is one of the first traditional nut-roasting nights of autumn. In Scotland, there are Struan Micheil, Michaelmas bannocks, somewhat like a scone but a flatbread, basically, cut into wedges, typically made from equal amounts of oats, barley, and rye, traditionally made without the use of metal: wooden fork, wooden or ceramic bowl, baking stone. And served, of course, with blackberries or blackberry jam.

The day belongs to St. Michael the Archangel, but traditions have arisen in various parts of the world that honor other angels this day, too. Some will honor Gabriel and Raphael along with Michael. Others will include Uriel, Raguel, Ramiel, and Sariel. This is something I’ve written about in the past about Michaelmas, but will say it again, for I love speaking this litany of angelic names each autumn, and the further down the roster we go, the more mysterious the names become as we cross a fascinating linguistic bridge to ancient tongues. The “-el” suffix of these angelic names is Sumerian in origin, signifying “brightness” or “shining,” names that in their true form would be Micha-el, Gabri-el, Rapha-el, Uri-el, Ragu-el, Rami-el, Sari-el. The list continues: Camael, Jophiel, and Zadkiel; Anael, Simiel, and Oriphiel; Metatron, Israfil, and Malak al-Maut. Their etymology connects to the Akkadian ilu (radiant one), the Babylonian ell (shining one), the Old Welsch ellu (shining being), Old Irish aillil (shining), Anglo-Saxon aelf (radiant being), and English elf (shining being). Speak these names aloud; immediately we are transported to an ancient time, a time when angels were perhaps more commonly seen, in all their radiance.

Are they still around? Many folks think so, and I am not one to doubt them. In a few days time, on the 2nd of October, we’ll celebrate another angelic day, one even older than Michaelmas and one much more personal: the Feast of the Guardian Angels. Its roots are in the Fourth Century, when believers began setting up altars in their homes each October in honor of their angelic protectors. How auspicious that we get to walk amongst angels this time each year.

COME SEE US!
We begin popping up a lot throughout South Florida these last few months of the year. Here’s where you’ll find us in October:

OKTOBERFEST
Friday, Saturday, & Sunday October 7, 8, & 9, and again Friday, Saturday, & Sunday October 14, 15, & 16. Tickets are required and must be purchased ahead of time (and they usually sell out). Click here for tickets.
American German Club
5111 Lantana Road, Lake Worth, FL 33463
We’ll be there both weekends with our big 10′ x 20′ tent filled with German Advent Calendars and handmade artisan goods from Germany for seasons throughout the year, and right next door to us you’ll find my mom and sister in their own tent selling Mom’s embroidery work: Millie’s Tea Towels.

November dates include Dia de Los Muertos in Lake Worth and Florida Day of the Dead in Fort Lauderdale (both on Saturday November 5, sorry!), the Swedish Julmarknad (Christmas Market) in Boca Raton on November 19, Krampusnacht on December 9 at the American German Club in Lake Worth, and Krampusnacht leads us into the American German Club’s Christkindlmarkt on December 10 and 11. I’ll keep you posted of each right here at the blog, or check the events listing at our Facebook page: @conviviobookworks.

 

 

 

Sweetness & Light & 918

My sister, Marietta, has been searching for candied cherries, but I don’t think she’s had much luck. They are an ingredient in the fruitcake we make at Christmastime, and in a biscotti recipe handed down to us from an old family friend, Genevieve Marchione. We didn’t make fruitcake last Christmas, but Cummara Jenny’s biscotti have been in high rotation in the family kitchen, and, alas, all the candied cherries in the pantry were used up in the biscotti. But today, Marietta wanted to make teiglach, the Rosh Hashanah delicacy that remind us so much of the struffoli we make at Christmastime, too (and while it’s ok to skip the fruitcake, you can never skip the struffoli). Struffoli and teiglach both begin the same way, as small balls of dough. The struffoli are fried; the teiglach are baked, so they are healthier. Both are covered in honey. The teiglach are mixed with chopped almonds and candied cherries. For Jews at Rosh Hashanah, they represent sweetness for the new year ahead, and Rosh Hashanah this year begins tonight, with the setting sun, and with the sounding of the shofar, a hollowed out ram’s horn, which gives the day another common name: the Feast of Trumpets. The celebration of the new year concludes ten days from now with solemn Yom Kippur; these are the high holidays/holydays of the Jewish calendar.

Micah 7:19 reads, “You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea,” and you may find people at the water’s edge during Rosh Hashanah, casting bread into the sea, each bit of bread carrying some of those sins. And with dinner tonight: a round loaf of challah, round to symbolize the circle of the year (as one year ends, another year begins), and, of course, apples dipped in honey… and, with some luck, teiglach, too. L’shanah Tovah.

Tomorrow, the 19th of September, brings the Feast of San Gennaro, which typically manifests as a huge street festival in New York’s Little Italy. This year, no––just a small, socially distanced celebration is taking place. I imagine there were many times in the Old Country, during times of plague and the Black Death, that the street festival for San Gennaro was canceled, too. San Gennaro is St. Januarius––but even in the United States he is mostly known by his Italian name of Gennaro. He is the patron saint of Naples, Italy, and when so many Napoletani migrated to New York at the turn of the last century, San Gennaro became big there, too. The first celebration of the Feast of San Gennaro on the streets of New York City was on his feast day, September 19, in 1926. It is, typically, Little Italy’s biggest feast, and its longest running.

My mother remembers going to the feast when she was a girl. She went for the music and the food and the cute boys (especially the ones in the bands), but she remembers also the procession with the statue of San Gennaro hoisted up on the shoulders of men. Pious observers would pin dollar bills to the saint’s cloak as he was paraded through the city streets, on his way to the church.

I was at one or two San Gennaro feasts myself, when I was a little boy. What I remember most are lights strung up in the night sky, decorations that spanned from pole to pole above the street, sausages and peppers on crusty Italian bread, music and people all around me, and big balloons filled with sand that a kid like me could punch up and down into the air. The balloon was attached to my wrist with a rubber band. It was the best thing ever to the me that was 6 or 7 years old. Better than the lights, better than the food, better than the mobs of people.

One last thing about today: It’s the 18th day of the 9th month, and here in the States, we write that in numerals as 9/18, and 918 is an important sequence of numbers to us letterpress printers, for .918″ is the height of all the types we use in the printers’ trade: all the metal type, all the wood type, all the images, too, be they linocuts or woodcuts or wood-mounted copper plates––everything we print has to be .918″ tall from the base to the printable surface. And so we celebrate today Letterpress Appreciation Day. A fine celebration of the day would involve watching the virtual online Library Wayzgoose Festival I produced for the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. It features Miami designer and letterpress printer Catalina Rojas, music by the Lubben Brothers, and me, I’m your host. Coming in at just over an hour, it’s an event: you’ll want to make some popcorn and pour yourself a little something: make it a grand time. I’m so proud of it, and honestly, can’t believe how well it turned out. I hope you’ll watch today or tonight or anytime you can.

NEW IN OUR CATALOG!
Beautiful Protective Face Masks from Chiapas

We’re so excited about these new additions to our Convivio by Mail catalog: protective face masks, in all sorts of traditional Mexican embroidered patterns, made for us by an extended artisan family in Chiapas. When their usual source of income––tourism to Mexico––dried up this past spring with the COVID-19 pandemic, things were looking bleak. But the family came up with the idea of devoting their skills toward making masks, and we’re pleased to report that the family are now doing well and they are very busy making masks. They appreciate every order that comes in, and we are so happy to help them get their wares out into the world. Visit our catalog and you’ll find the family’s embroidered masks in floral patterns, as well as other traditional Mexican designs: Calavera (above), Frida Kahlo, Maria Bonita, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Sugar Skull, and Otomi-Inspired patterns. We just received a new shipment from them on Wednesday. Masks are $16.50 each plus Free Domestic Shipping with discount code BESAFE (even if you buy just one). Bonus special when you purchase four masks: we’ll take an additional 20% off and ship your domestic order for free (no discount code necessary for that offer). International orders? Contact us and we will see what we can do for you to make shipping expenses as low as possible: mail@conviviobookworks.com.

 

My apologies for neglecting to click PUBLISH before going to bed last night… the result is subscribers won’t get notification of the post until the wee hours of the morning on September 19. Chalk it up to human error (and this human’s tiredness). Image: Teiglach, as it should look. Purists, you may want to stop reading now, but as it turns out Marietta could not find candied cherries anywhere, so she made this year’s platter of teiglach with chopped dried apricots. Still sweet.

 

Tagged

The Sweet Things

Two holidays come this 29th of September: It’s Michaelmas, when we celebrate Michael the Archangel, and later, with the setting sun, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, will begin. Blackberries are traditional to Michaelmas and apples and honey, of course, to Rosh Hashanah. The apples and honey are purely symbolic: eat these sweet things to help ensure a sweet year ahead. You might also eat challah bread and Teiglach: small balls of dough that are baked in honey and mixed with chopped roasted almonds and candied cherries. My family discovered them one September in a local Jewish bakery. We were mesmerized by the tin plates of Teiglach, piled high into a cone, wrapped in cellophane. They reminded us so much of the struffoli we make each Christmas. We bought a plate and took it home and the teiglach was so good, we went back the next day for another. Something about the nuts and the cherries and the honey make for a sublime combination of sweetness and substance and texture. Eventually, we began making our own. The photo above is of my mom’s and sister’s Teiglach. They are so good (and not bad at all for a couple of Italian American Catholics!).

Blackberries for Michaelmas comes not from symbolism but from story, and I do love good story-based foodways. It is the story of Satan, the fallen angel, battling Michael the Archangel, and it is essentially thus: Satan fell to Earth and landed in a bramble patch––a blackberry patch. I love blackberries, but I can tell you––from well remembered experience––that they are a fruit that will make you curse and swear as you harvest them. So many thorns. They lay claim to your clothes and wound you. Satan cursed the bramble patch he landed upon, and legend has it that he returns each year to curse and spit upon that same patch.

Roast goose for dinner is traditional for Michaelmas, and it is one of the first traditional nut-roasting nights of autumn. In Scotland, there are Struan Micheil, Michaelmas bannocks, somewhat like a scone but a flatbread, basically, cut into wedges, typically made from equal amounts of oats, barley, and rye, traditionally made without the use of metal: wooden fork, wooden or ceramic bowl, baking stone. And served, of course, with blackberries or blackberry jam.

The day belongs to St. Michael the Archangel, but traditions have arisen in various parts of the world that honor other angels this day, too. Some will honor Gabriel and Raphael along with Michael. Others will include Uriel, Raguel, Ramiel, and Sariel. This is something I’ve written about in the past about Michaelmas, but will say it again: I love these names, for the further down the roster we go, the more mysterious the names become and we cross a fascinating linguistic bridge to ancient tongues. The “-el” suffix of these angelic names is Sumerian in origin, signifying “brightness” or “shining,” names that in their true form would be Micha-el, Gabri-el, Rapha-el, Uri-el, Ragu-el, Rami-el, Sari-el. The list continues: Camael, Jophiel, and Zadkiel; Anael, Simiel, and Oriphiel; Metatron, Israfil, and Malak al-Maut. Their etymology connects to the Akkadian ilu (radiant one), Babylonian ell (shining one), Old Welsch ellu (shining being), Old Irish aillil (shining), Anglo-Saxon aelf (radiant being), and English elf (shining being). Speak these names aloud; immediately we are transported to an ancient time, a time when angels were perhaps more commonly seen.

Are they still around? Many folks think so, and I am not one to doubt them. In a few days time, on the 2nd of October, we’ll celebrate another angelic day, one even older than Michaelmas and one much more personal: the Feast of the Guardian Angels. Its roots are in the Fourth Century, when believers began setting up altars in their homes each October in honor of their angelic protectors. But today, we enjoy the sweet things in life. L’shanah Tovah.

COME SEE US!
We begin popping up a lot throughout South Florida these last few months of the year. Here’s where you’ll find us these next few weeks. To be kept apprised, follow us on Instagram or Facebook: @conviviobookworks

FLORIDA DAY of the DEAD: OFRENDAS EXHIBITION OPENING
Sunday October 6 from 11 AM to 3 PM
History Fort Lauderdale (inside the historic New River Inn)
231 SW 2nd Ave, Fort Lauderdale
We’ll be there with a mini pop up of our traditional Dia de Muertos artisan goods. My family is also building one of the ofrendas in the exhibition.

FALL NIGHT MARKET at SOCIAL HOUSE
Saturday October 19 from 4 to 8 PM
Social House
512 Lucerne Avenue, Lake Worth
Social House is always a favorite venue of ours, and its magic is especially potent at night! Not sure yet what we’ll be showing, but count on anything we bring to be handmade by traditional artisans.

AUTUMN MAKERS MARKETPLACE
Sunday October 20 from 10 AM to 4 PM
Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton
Live music, family fun, and lots of great local makers. We’ll be there with a big boutique of traditional Dia de Muertos artisan goods, Shaker herbs & teas, Seth Thompson’s Royal River pottery, and maybe even a little advent calendar preview.

REAL MAIL FRIDAYS: HALLOWE’EN SOCIAL
Friday October 25 from 2 to 6 PM
Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University Libraries, Boca Raton
It’s a special edition of the Jaffe’s popular Real Mail Fridays letter writing socials, this one with an All Hallow’s Eve theme. Expect good old fashioned autumnal fun plus a mini Makers Marketplace. We’ll be there with a selection of our traditional Dia de Muertos artisan goods.

DIA de LOS MUERTOS LAKE WORTH BEACH
Saturday November 2 from 3 to 9 PM
Hatch 1121
1121 Lucerne Avenue, Lake Worth
Lake Worth’s homegrown Day of the Dead festival. Find us in our usual spot out in the courtyard near the dancing and the mariachi!

FLORIDA DAY of the DEAD
Saturday November 2 from 3 to 8 PM
Huzienga Plaza
32 East Las Olas Boulevard, Fort Lauderdale
One of the nation’s largest Day of the Dead festivals; current plans have us there for the first portion of the event in the park on the New River where the Skeleton Processional begins. (The event continues on in one form or another all the way through to 4 AM!)