Aunt Pearl and Grandma Becky’s Candlesticks

By Ruth Ellen Gruber Some time ago, I wrote a post including my aunt Pearl Gruber Kaplan’s recollections of her mother, my grandmother, Rebecca (Rosenberg Gruber) Rifkin, lighting the candlesticks on Friday night. Here is a recent picture of Aunt Pearl, with a still life she painted of the Shabbos candles, and the candlesticks themselves. [...]

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(Real) Candlesticks at Oswiecim

By Ruth Ellen Gruber I was in the Polish town of Oswiecim last week — the town outside which the infamous Nazi death camp Auschwitz is located. Before World War II, Oswiecim was a fairly typical small town, with a majority Jewish population, known in Yiddish as Oshpitsin…I’ve written about the different ways the town [...]

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