קולטור

A Glass of Tea

Tea was a beloved daily drink among pre-war Eastern European Jews, especially in Russia, just as it was among non-Jews of the same area. In those days, water for tea was boiled in a samovar, a metal container with a faucet near the bottom, which was often heated with coal. Unlike in other cultures where tea is served in a china teacup or ceramic mug, tea was served in a glass.

Enjoying a glass of tea became a symbol of a peaceful social moment, of an invitation to spend time with family and friends. People would, for example, chat or play chess over a glass of tea, usually accompanied by a nosh. The wealthy would always serve tea with various jams and pastries. To drink the tea, the custom was to take small sips through a piece of sugar held between the teeth.

The esteemed Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem had the following words of praise for tea drinking: “When the samovar is brought out, and everyone sits down to drink Wissotzky’s tea — it’s a godly delight!” Wissotsky’s tea, still popular today, owes its name to a Muscovite Jew, Kalonimus Wolf Wissotzky, who founded the Wissotzky Tea Company in 1849. By the early 1900s, his company had expanded to become a tea empire — the largest tea company in the world.

Drinking tea was such an ingrained part of daily life that a Yiddish folk song describing how the keyser (emperor) goes about his day — how he eats potatoes, how he sleeps, and so on — includes a stanza about how he takes his tea:

Sugar used to be sold in a big conical block known as a sugarloaf, or in Yiddish a hitele tsuker – because it looked like a tall hat. When people sipped tea through a piece of sugar, as mentioned above, this would have been either a piece broken off a sugarloaf or a piece of rock sugar. The keyser*, of course, drinks his tea differently from ordinary people – rather than having sugar with his tea, he has tea with his sugar!