Re: Chaim WEIZMANN and tea drinking

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At 05:00 PM 12/27/2006, you wrote:

"Bruce Sanders' theory is that having the sugar cube visible for all to see,
while drinking tea, was a sign that you could afford sugar. I'd like to
expand this with some nice info in an eMail which I kept an year ago - but
could not find on-line now.

I had to do some research for a friend. His family is related to the
Weizmanns from Motol. Chaim Weizmann, the first president of modern Israel,
was born in Motol, in today's Belarus. Searching for Weizmanns and Motol, I
came across this. The author of the eMail.mentioned quoted his uncle Aaron.

Perhaps, but I am sceptical of the explanation for sipping tea through sugar.
The first reason is that the sugar cubes that I found in the USSR were large and extremely hard--
you could break your tooth trying to bite them in half. Thus they *could* be held between the teeth.
Consider that it would be awkward and messy to do that with a flimsier Western sugar cube.
If you dissolve the cube in the tea, assuming you want all the sugar, you get a homogeneously sweet
drink, but if you use the "entre-dents" method, you can get a pleasant mix of sugar-sweet and tea flavor.
This is the positive reinforcement for the custom.
As for using it as a diagnostic of origin, I have seen the custom observed by Russians--real Russians, not
Jewish Russians, and I think it was more a social than an ethnic or regional marker.
Finally, I would check out the cost of sugar a century ago in the old country. Sugar was readily available
in the USSR when many other products were in short supply, and is and was an important product for the
manufacture of home brew, something pursued by Russians of all classes.
Perhaps the quote about the Weizmanns being able to have sugar every day was meant somewhat ironically
or sardonically.
Jules Levin
Los Angeles ---
Sender: Jules Levin <ameliede@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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