Re: new Budowitz album, Wedding without a Bride, now out

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

-- Budowitz Home Page: http://www.merlinms.dircon.co.uk/budowitz/


> while you're at it, could you explain why they always drank tea in glasses
> in the old country? Didn't they have any cups?

The drinking of tea from glasses is a Turko-Arabic custom. Since much of the
regions of Ashkenazi population were under Ottoman rule from the 16th to
early 20th Century, these customs spread through those regions. The use of
glass as a drinking vessel is a fairly recent phenomonen, and was reserved
for the upper classes due to the difficulties in its production. Drinking
vessels for the lower classes were generally made of ceramic, so the use of
glass carried an implicit class categorization. The history of the breaking
of the glass for the mazel tov is discussed in detail in the notes of the
Budowitz CD. Michael Wex was an important source of information for this.

 

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