One of them already assembles the decoration as soon as “Last Christmas” sounds for the first time somewhere, the other one quickly makes a few spaces at the last minute on the 23rd … We have people from the Ebersberg district for our “Bunter Advent” series asked how they celebrate the days from December 1st and what should definitely not be missing.
German-Israeli Nirit Sommerfeld has been showing how Christmas and the Jewish Hanukkah festival are similar in magic and meaning since 2009 in the concert reading “Yiddish Christmas” together with the Orchestra Shlomo Geistreich and, alternately, the storytellers Helmut Becker and Martin Umbach. The gallery of grandma Margarete, wife of grandfather Julius, who was murdered in the concentration camp, plays an important role in the program as in real life. The product made of butter, quark, nuts, raisins and more, which Sommerfeld puts into the oven in large quantities as early as November to give it away to her musicians, stands as a symbol for everything that the cosmopolitan – born in Israel , grew up in East Africa and in the district of Ebersberg, where she returned 13 years ago after two years of immigration in Israel – what is important: remembering the family and eating as a communal experience. But it’s not just the taste that is special, but above all the history of the origins of the stollen. In the absence of a recipe, Sommerfeld’s mother Ahuva experimented with ingredients and spices until her husband Rolf recognized the smell from his parents’ kitchen in Chemnitz. Today the baking process can even be done by Video follow, in time lapse on nirit.de.
But just as the actress, author and musician allows culinary equality to prevail by serving her loved ones both the Saxon specialty and delicacies from the Jewish tradition, such as the oil-fried pastries made from very fine yeast dough or latkes, i.e. potato pancakes besides Hanukkah she always celebrated the Christian Christmas festival – with gifts, stories and songs like “Maria went through a thorn forest”, which she loves very much because of the symbolic power. Because, as she conveyed to the two daughters when they were little, the birth of that “revolutionary who said a lot of great things and put love before everything else” is definitely worth celebrating. And since it is extremely important for Sommerfeld to bring light into the hearts with music and texts, she defies the tightened performance conditions and plays “Yiddish Christmas – Building Bridges and Carrying On” on December 7th in the Prinzregententheater. It is quite possible that in the specially edited Hanukkah song “Ssura!” (“Disappear!”) Not only meant the darkness …