By Rabbi Michoel Oishie for COLlive and Hasidic Archives
As a rabbinical student, I went to Oleksandriya, Ukraine, to organize a Pesach Seder there. I did not know much Russian at the time, but there were two elderly people in the community who spoke Yiddish. They acted as my interpreters.
As evening fell on the last day of Pesach, I told my interpreters to announce that we would be making Havdalah. The prayer, thanking Hashem for separating between the holy and the mundane, marks the end of every Shabbos and holiday.
“Havdalah, Havdalah, what is this Havdalah?” one elderly man said to himself and then added, “Ah, that is when we say, ‘G-aht fun Avrohom’!”
That prayer, recited in many communities by women and girls as Shabbos ends, begins like this: “G-d of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, protect Your beloved people Israel from all hurt, in Your love. As the beloved holy Shabbat goes away, that the week, and the month, and the year, should come to us with perfect faith …”
The law (Havdalah), he did not recall; the custom of his grandmother, he did.
The man taught me that personal traditions and customs are important. Now, with my own family, I make sure to perform these small customs with warmth and love. I don’t tell anybody what they are. I just do them. I want my children to have their own sweet Jewish memory, their own G-aht fun Avrohom.
An excerpt from the forthcoming book In the Trenches: Stories from the Front Lines of Jewish Life in Russia, it can be pre-ordered here. Find more of Hasidic Archives latest books on HasidicArchives.com. Hasidic Archives books are also available in bulk.
women DO NOT look at their fingers as the brochah on the fire is recited.
for reason see ketsos hashulchan hilchos havdala.