Grave measuring and soul candle making: A Ritual Guide & Supply Box for Elul and Yom Kippur

In Elul (the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah) and Tishrei (the month that begins on Rosh Hashanah), this kit can be used for a self-guided "soul candle" making and home ritual.  Text & translations Annabel (Annie) Gottfried Cohen (unless otherwise noted).

The kit includes:

• Candle wick (enough to measure two averaged-sized graves)

• Tekhine (prayer) card for measuring graves in the cemetery

• Pliable natural beeswax (enough to make 4-8 small candles)

• Tekhine (prayer) card for home candlemaking

• A box of wooden matches with the words נשמה ליכט neshome likht (soul candle) printed in Yiddish on the side. 

Box does not include: small knife or pair of scissors

Excerpt from Soul Candle Guide:

In times of crisis such as during a plague, a difficult childbirth or a severe illness, Ashkenazi Jewish women used to measure graves and cemeteries with thread. While they did this, they recited Yiddish prayers or tkhines that called on the ancestors for help, asking them to advocate with God on behalf of the sufferer(s). A kind of “direct-line” to deceased ancestors and through them to God, these rituals also created a physical boundary between the dead and the living that could help the living stay alive. Used to keep the living on this side of the veil between life and death, the ritual was also sometimes employed to put the dead back where they belonged - to assuage an angry spirit or to exorcise a dybbuk. 

The thread from cemetery and grave measurements was usually used to make candle wick for special soul candles which were then gifted to the synagogue or used for ritual purposes. In some communities, the cemetery was measured every year in the month of Elul to make soul candles for Yom Kippur, with tkhines that called on  the ancestors to persuade God to be merciful in his judgement of the  living. 

Based in Talmudic lore and seen as part of the “women’s mitzvah” to kindle lights, these customs were practiced by Ashkenazi Jewish women for almost a millenium.In many communities, these rituals were led by professional female ritualists known in Yiddish as feldmesterins (cemetery measurers), kneytlekh-leygerins (wick-layers), likht-makherins (candle makers) and likht-tsierins (candle-pullers.)  By the early twentieth century, grave and cemetery measuring  were becoming increasingly rare, but soul candle making (kneytlekh-leygn) remained popular. In fact, the custom of lighting memorial or yizkor candles–still known as נשמה ליכט neshome nicht (soul candles) in Hebrew–developed from this woman’s tradition.