Family Traditions that are more widespread than you think

Not wearing a kittel.

Growing up I thought it was made up or a mistake.

However it is in fact a common minhag among Polish Jewry (Ger chasidim for example)

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Never. I borrowed one for my wedding and thats it.

The polish minhag is that a kittel is only worn by the elderly

DY

Just Erev Yom kippur? I’m surprised True heimishe eat them on Hoshana Rabba and Purim too

True heimishe know exactly how to shape them so you’d never mistake them for wontons.

No, no, wontons. We didn’t have time to make kreplach, so we ran to to the local Chinese kosher restaurant (the one with the name which is a play on words between a Hebrew word and a Chinese word) to buy wontons, and there was a line of people doing the same.

I think I once heard of one that wasn’t.

That’s probably the one I heard of.

Lawyer explains it in the geography club thread.

Breaking a fast on hard liquor and meat sounds very difficult on the digestive system and the body.

Tisha b’Av, we have lots of cake and juice. After yom kippur, honey cake, followed by appetizing, as the salt in the fish helps the body reabsorb the salt lost during fasting.

Growing up, my mom taught me to always break an egg in a small glass Pyrex to check all over for blood spots, including peaking underneath the little dish. In the rare occasions when an egg had blood, the egg would be tossed out and I’d get a new one.

For anyone who is new here, fyi, I grew up in a less observant household. Later on in life, I noticed that many people [read less observant and non-Jewish] just break their eggs into the pan, bowl, or whatever dish they need to use it for, in cases where they don’t need to break one egg at a time exclusively to beat or whatever [gosh doesn’t it sound violent in this context?].

It turned out that my mom taught me halacha, something her mother taught her, and I found that out many many years later when I learned more about kashrut. I love my mom. Pretty cool 🙂

Thanks!

1. Not wearing a kittel in shana rishono on Yom Kippur and Pesach.
2. Round kreplach on erev Yom Kippur and triangular ones on Purim.
3. Making Brocha on lulav and Esrog in the sukkah.
4. Saying Nishmas on the day of your child’s chasunah
5. Eating a hard boiled egg at the Pesach Seder

Lightbrite, I so enjoyed reading your post.
It reminded me of a saying about even the most “empty” (- not learned) Jews being as full of Mitzvos as a pomegranate is full of seeds. Unfortunately I can’t source it or even quote the words in Lashon Kodesh properly. (I’m sure there are a few CR members who can, if they read this. I think this might also be the source for the mistaken thought that a pomegranate has 613 seeds.)
Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say anything less than nice about your mother. You mentioned in your post that you were raised in a not so observant home, and I thought it noteworthy that you still managed to absorb a lot of good things there. From the way you come across, I’m sure you gained a lot besides checking eggs for a blood spot.
You’re so lucky to remember and appreciate all the good things your mother taught you!

Iacisrmma – sorry, that was a typo – I meant to wrote Motzei Yom Kippur. Thanks for the correction.

Golfer – maskim. +1. i was thinking along the same lines but don’t know if I would have been able to express it as well.

ubiquitin: Here was the initial question: “What family traditions did you grow up with that you thought were just yours and later found out were not so uncommon?”

In the shul where I grew up (1960’s and 1970’s), most people made the brocha on lulav and esrog in shul right before Hallel. They did not go down to the shul’s sukkah. So in my neighborhood it was not “common” and only later did I find out how common it was.

Eating an egg at the seder is not universal. Again, in my neighborhood it was not common.

Not exactly minhagim, but for sure familial:

My parents always called slippers ‘bedroom shoes. No one else I knew used the phrase. Then I grew up, became frum, moved to Monsey, learned ah bissele Yiddish, and learned the phrase ‘stenk shiach.’

Another phrase that I never heard outside of my family was ‘on the riggle’. Other people locked the door, we put it ‘on the riggle’. Then as a Mommy in Monsey I was asking a more experienced Mommy how to keep my toddler from making trouble in the bathroom, because he had just reached the door-opening stage. She told me “You need a riggle” and presented me with a hook-and-eye lock to put on the outside of the bathroom door.