Originally I was stumped on what to post for this blog. I wanted to talk about my Romanian heritage. Growing up in a strongly Romanian Orthodox family I was always around bread and the wine. Due to a family member recently passing away I wanted to talk about how we use food in our funeral ceremonies. During our funerals we will have rings of callah and bottles of wine. The callah is a type of bread and each ring will have 3 candles placed in it. One for the father, one for the son, and one for the holy spirit. My family will stand and the immediate family (husband, daughters, sons, and grand children) will be the ones that place their hands on the bread and the wine. We all then create what looks like a web where we have to touch the shoulder of the person in front of us so that way we are all connected to the callah. The callah in this sense represents the person body. The family members will hod the bread and move it up and down. It Romanian culture this symbolizes the persons spirit leaving the body, we will also do this with the wine to show that they will have a safe trip up into heaven. As we do this we sing memory eternal in Romanian ( memorie veșnică). This is how we honor those who have passed and how they are not with us but they are still here in our memories. We then will break the bread and drink the wine. We have to kiss the cross of the priest before we partake in eating the bread or the wine. We also repeat this ceremony at the 6 weeks of the family members passing, again at the 6 months and once more at the one year mark.
Monday, April 14, 2014
Food tradition
Blog post assignment: Write about a tradition / food / value within your religion / family.
Originally I was stumped on what to post for this blog. I wanted to talk about my Romanian heritage. Growing up in a strongly Romanian Orthodox family I was always around bread and the wine. Due to a family member recently passing away I wanted to talk about how we use food in our funeral ceremonies. During our funerals we will have rings of callah and bottles of wine. The callah is a type of bread and each ring will have 3 candles placed in it. One for the father, one for the son, and one for the holy spirit. My family will stand and the immediate family (husband, daughters, sons, and grand children) will be the ones that place their hands on the bread and the wine. We all then create what looks like a web where we have to touch the shoulder of the person in front of us so that way we are all connected to the callah. The callah in this sense represents the person body. The family members will hod the bread and move it up and down. It Romanian culture this symbolizes the persons spirit leaving the body, we will also do this with the wine to show that they will have a safe trip up into heaven. As we do this we sing memory eternal in Romanian ( memorie veșnică). This is how we honor those who have passed and how they are not with us but they are still here in our memories. We then will break the bread and drink the wine. We have to kiss the cross of the priest before we partake in eating the bread or the wine. We also repeat this ceremony at the 6 weeks of the family members passing, again at the 6 months and once more at the one year mark.
Originally I was stumped on what to post for this blog. I wanted to talk about my Romanian heritage. Growing up in a strongly Romanian Orthodox family I was always around bread and the wine. Due to a family member recently passing away I wanted to talk about how we use food in our funeral ceremonies. During our funerals we will have rings of callah and bottles of wine. The callah is a type of bread and each ring will have 3 candles placed in it. One for the father, one for the son, and one for the holy spirit. My family will stand and the immediate family (husband, daughters, sons, and grand children) will be the ones that place their hands on the bread and the wine. We all then create what looks like a web where we have to touch the shoulder of the person in front of us so that way we are all connected to the callah. The callah in this sense represents the person body. The family members will hod the bread and move it up and down. It Romanian culture this symbolizes the persons spirit leaving the body, we will also do this with the wine to show that they will have a safe trip up into heaven. As we do this we sing memory eternal in Romanian ( memorie veșnică). This is how we honor those who have passed and how they are not with us but they are still here in our memories. We then will break the bread and drink the wine. We have to kiss the cross of the priest before we partake in eating the bread or the wine. We also repeat this ceremony at the 6 weeks of the family members passing, again at the 6 months and once more at the one year mark.
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That is so interesting what you do with the callah during funerals! I would have never known that about the Romanian culture... Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing, I find the aesthetics of Eastern Orthodoxy to be very beautiful
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! Thanks for sharing! Amazing what we learn from one another!
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