Rekindling an old Elul tradition in our times

For centuries across much of Eastern Europe, the onset of the Hebrew month of Elul would mark the time for a beloved practice led and driven largely by the women of the household and community. With its unique mix of physicality and spirituality, it offered a tangible avenue for channeling grief and preserving memory. The practice involved the creation of candles for Yom Kippur: soul candles for the deceased; life candles for the health of the living. 

In Judaism, if there is one object that embodies the widest spectrum of times and their emotional correlatives, it is the simple candle. We light candles at moments of great joy: ushering in shabbat and yom tovim (festivals), adorning and ascending in number on the chanukiah. Their glow both fosters and symbolises divine light and beauty. We light candles at our darkest moments: the shiva candle, the yahrzeit candle, the yizkor candle. Today we place small candles (often tealights) at sites of death and tragedy. Their glow symbolises our loss, our memory of the departed and belief that their soul journeys on beyond: ‘The breath of a person is God’s candle’ (Mishlei/Proverbs 20:27). As the flame reaches upwards, so does their spirit, so do our thoughts. At times when words do not come easily, if at all, a burning candle speaks volumes.

Nowadays, these candles are mass produced, but in the scheme of things it was not so long ago that they were handmade. The candles made during the month of Elul were special ones, crafted ritually and imbued with great significance. Memories, hopes, tears and prayers were embedded into their wicks, into their wax, by the women who made them.

The practice of wick laying and its association with women goes back to ancient times. We are told in the Tanach that Deborah, the judge and prophet, was ‘eshet lapidot’, which is often translated as ‘woman of torches’. Her wicks were taken to the Tabernacle at Shilo to light the menorah.  

The earliest reference in the Ashkenazi world to women laying wicks is found in an elegiac poem written by Rabbi Eleazar ben Judah of Worms in 1196 in which he laments the brutal murder of his wife, Dulcea, in what is considered an antisemitic attack. His lament takes the form of an acrostic poem, personalising the traditional Eshet Chayil (Woman of Valour) text and, letter by letter, describing Dulcea’s deep faith, as well as her hands-on work (of which there was much) in supporting her family and community economically and practically. One of these many actions was wick laying. 

But back to the Elul ritual… From Rosh Chodesh Elul, on Mondays and Thursdays (corresponding to the days on which the Torah is read) and then daily in the week preceding Rosh Hashana and during Aseret Yamei Teshuva (the ten days of repentance between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur), feldmesterins (cemetery measurers) would wait at the town’s cemetery gates. They were experienced female elders, considered experts in their craft, often paid or sometimes performing the work voluntarily as a mitzvah (good deed). Indeed, their existence shows us that women performed clerical tasks in communities for centuries.

Three women presumed to be feldmesterins. Credit: S. Weissenberg, Neue Folge, (1906)

Women would approach the feldmesterin to lay string around the graves of their family members, usually recently departed but not exclusively, or the cemetery would be circled twice, right to left. As the string was laid down, step by step around the graves, the women of the family would follow the feldermesterin and recite technines (personal prayers for women in Yiddish, generally written by women), which implored Hashem to protect the bodies and souls of the living in the names of the deceased, in the names of the ancestors, going all the way back to the matriarchs and patriarchs.

The ritual would be continued at home with the string from the cemetery now being used for wick laying, led by and with the participation of the women of the household. Sometimes a professional candlemaker, also a woman, would accompany them. The string would be dipped into wax to make large neshome likht (soul candles) for the departed, as well as candles for the living. Here too, the dipping of the wick was accompanied by the recitation of prayers and discussion of the deceased. So much more than a physical source of light, when they lit up the shul on Kol Nidrei, for which they were made, they provided a visceral link between past, present and future, between earth and heaven, the departed and the present, fear and hope. 

While Elul and the first ten days of Tishrei were the most intense time for the performance of this ritual, it was practised at other times of peril or distress in order to bring protection and strength. Plague, a dangerous pregnancy or fear of evil spirits might lead a woman to seek out the services of a feldmesterin or do it herself. While the string was usually used for the wick of candles, it could also be worn as a protective bracelet, similar to the red bracelets worn today. Still to be found in some shetetlach (small Jewish villages) in Russia in the early 20th century, the feldermesterins are referred to sometimes lovingly, sometimes suspiciously, in literary sources. Their role in performing a service and receiving income is noted in scrupulous extant community records.

The month of Elul signals a shift in mood towards the reflective and introspective. Not that we need it so much this year, a year of great heaviness and grief. ‘We do not know what to do,’ we say in Divrei HaYamim (Chronicles) and in the Siddur. ‘We do not know what to do,’ we say to ourselves, we say to each other. 

It is at such times, when we feel lost and disoriented, lacking in words, not knowing what steps to take to settle us, that ritual can be most powerful, not in place of the important work that needs to be done, but to give us the inner strength and presence to meet the outer world.

We feel the weight of the dead this year, those we have lost personally and those we have lost collectively. In many ways, they are one and the same. The sense of overwhelm for many of us is real and ever-present. This year I find myself spending Elul in Jerusalem. Literally as I write right now, in the early morning, I hear the sounding of the shofar (sounds schmultzy but true). I stood in tribute as Hersh Polin Goldberg’s family drove by on the day of his funeral, I join in some of the many protests, I read the walls as I walk, and still I don’t know what to do. 

Protesters arrange yartzeit candles in shape of ribbon, Jerusalem September 2024

The rekindling of this old Elul ritual comes to mind, of going to the cemetery with a ball of string and circling the grave of one of the many slain (‘departed’ is too soft a term here). There will be no feldmesterin waiting for me there and I will find my own words, inspired by the techines. Perhaps some people will join me. It will be a small thing, but it will be something. At the very least, I will be following the women of generations past who looked and worked towards the light.