My grandfather was a Russian-Jewish immigrant who joined the musician’s union as a teenager to fiddle his way to an engineering degree at Yale University. The only remnant he brought from the old country was drinking hot tea that he poured in a glass and sipped through a sugar cube pressed between his lips. For some tea-sipping, sugar-cube aficionados, what was a common way for Russians—both Jewish and not—to take their tea is a tradition that has evolved into the “flaming tea ceremony” occurring on one of the eight nights of Hanukkah.
If my relatively small sample of people is any indication, many in my generation had memories of grandparents sipping tea in a clear glass through a sugar cube. But this was the first time anyone had heard of the flaming tea ceremony. Some remarked on their grandparents’ superhuman tolerance for holding unbearably hot glasses. Many chimed in that those glasses had once been jelly jars or yahrtzeit candle holders. Others pointed out that some of those plain, clear glasses were placed in decorative silver holders, or that the tea was served from an ornate samovar. My grandfather always drank his tea from glasses stamped with “Yale Class of 1913.”
In her memoir, “,” Rachel Naomi Remen recalls drinking tea with her grandfather on Shabbat afternoons. During their time together, he taught his granddaughter about Judaism, something her secular parents disregarded. For me, my otherwise highly assimilated grandfather sipped his tea as he delighted in telling me stories about growing up on a dairy farm in Branford, Connecticut. He drove a wagon each morning before school started, delivering milk from his father’s farm. Afterward, he practiced the violin for an hour.
Miriam Leberstein’s excellent 2004 piece in the Forward describes reviving the flaming tea ceremony. Her detailed article mentioned that as a child, Alfred Kazin, author of “A Walker in the City,” remembered that the tea drinking in his childhood apartment in Brownsville was always accompanied by spirited discussions about socialism.
A friend who was a correspondent in Russia for the Christian Science Monitor for many years recalled that sipping tea through a sugar cube was ubiquitous throughout the country—part of the Russian culture. The tradition made a cameo appearance in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” as “sucking tea through the sugar.” The Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin, who lived in the early 19th century, said, “Ecstasy is a glassful of tea and a piece of sugar in the mouth.”
In Russia, my friend observed indigenous reindeer herders in farthest Siberia and pensioners in Moscow; both communities drank tea in their distinctive way. Depending on the food historian, sugar was either a luxury in Russian homes or a staple to which even the impoverished had access. She suggested the latter, given the easy availability of sugar throughout Russia. She saw people in all parts of the country sipping tea through a sugar cube all day long. On special occasions, the sugar cube was swapped out for jam.
The flaming tea ceremony is simple, albeit a potential fire hazard. The fire is in keeping with Hanukkah as the Festival of Lights, welcoming more light into the world around the winter solstice. Darra Goldstein, author of “A Taste of Russia: A Cookbook of Russian Hospitality,” asserts that the proper way to perform the flaming tea ceremony is to place the sugar cube on a spoon, balancing it across a glass of tea with cubes that are soaked in brandy to facilitate the fire.
In another account of the flaming tea ceremony, the lights are dimmed after the Hanukkah dinner, with the menorah supplying the light. Each guest lights their boozy sugar cube perched on a spoon to counter the seasonal darkness that frightened Adam, the first man. Singing Hanukkah songs, each person drops their flaming sugar cube into their glass of tea in the light-filled room.
I have not been able to corroborate or find a discussion on the Orthodox Union’s website about what is or isn’t allowed to be eaten or drunk before prayers on Shabbat morning. It turns out that placing a sugar cube in one’s mouth seems to be permitted.
This Hanukkah, I’ll think of my grandfather at the Formica kitchen table holding a sugar cube between his teeth to sweeten his tea—a luminous memory lighting up my Hanukkah celebration.
