Tag: New York

Russian-Soviet-Jewish-New-Yorkian-American-Parisian Tea Culture

Every night after dinner, my mom asks me a one-word question: “Tea?” After I nod my answer, she pulls out two teacups, two saucers, and a teapot from the cabinet behind her. In the teapot, she prepares zavarka, a concentrated form of tea, using black tea, named Paris, which I bought from a company based in SoHo. Over tea, she tells stories about her home country, Moldova, and adjustment to NYC. In 1993, my mom and her family immigrated to NYC from Moldova, along with the 35,900 other Jews emigrating from the former Soviet Union. After 1970, the largest wave of Jewish immigration since the 1920s occurred, and one of the largest locations of settlement was NYC. Migration was influenced in part by war breaking out when Transdniestria, now considered a region in Moldova, declared independence from Moldova. This region was composed mostly of the minorities of Moldova’s population, and Moldova refused to recognize it. When she escaped this situation as a refugee to NYC, my mom was one of many Soviet-Jewish women married early. She received one of the most common Soviet wedding gifts: a tea set. This set now stands in a cabinet in my mom’s kitchen, displayed as a reminder of her Soviet roots, but when used with American tea and her American daughter, the tea set reminds my mom of her adjustment to a new home.

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A sound carrier: My uncle’s talking drum

On a shelf in my uncle’s reading room sits a small talking drum. You can easily recognize it by its wooden frame, which is surrounded by leather strings and fitted with two leather faces. The drum only ever leaves the shelf when someone asks about it, and when it does, it always ends up in my uncle’s hands. He is very fond of it and his arms tend to fold around it like wings closing over a nest.

Traditionally, the drum is used during celebrations and coronations for kings because it has the ability to mimic the tone of a person’s voice. However, in my family, it takes on a different role. When it comes out, we gather around whoever is playing and take turns trying to guess what the drum is saying. When it reaches my uncle, the drum settles into a playful rhythm that makes people want to dance. Its crisp, tight sound is what first attracted my uncle to it. That sound was harder for him to find after he moved to the United States in the 2000s, which prompted him to get a talking drum of his own. The sound of the drum celebrates my family’s life in the U.S, but like a heartbeat, it is also a reminder of home. We carry the sounds of home with us, and the talking drum is my family’s way of sharing that sound.

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