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And there is this law in Jewish religion that if a widow wants to remarry, the entire family gathers and the oldest brother has to give permission. Father was at that time the oldest brother and he had to give this permission. This was called halizah [1] in Hebrew. And Father had to recite some verses from the Torah and this he would have done, because it wouldn’t have hurt anyone, but in addition to that there was also this stupid custom that he had to throw his shoe at the family members gathered there and whoever was hit with the shoe was supposed to die that year. And Father didn’t want to do that. He said that under no circumstances would he ever want to cause anyone’s death. Anyway, what he said was: ‘This woman must be over 70 years old, if she was young, then perhaps I’d make this sacrifice, but does she really need to have a husband now? If she’s lived this long without a husband, she’ll survive a bit longer and I won’t use these barbaric methods.” So he didn’t do it and this Cytryn family really pestered us because of it.
Period
Interview
Helena Najberg