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On Friday morning my mother went to buy live chicken at the market. I took it to a shochet. We had chicken broth and a chicken on Sabbath. Mother filled chicken neck with fried onion and flour. It was delicious. In summer and spring, when fish was inexpensive mother made gefilte fish. She usually cooked for two days. She left ceramic pots with cholnt in the oven overnight and the food was still hot on the next day. On Friday mother also made challah bread for Sabbath. We met Sabbath when father came from work in the evening in Sabbath eve. Mother prayed and lit candles. After the prayer we all said ‘Shabbath Shalom’. Our father said a blessing over food and we sat down to dinner. We were poor and our mother always tried to make something delicious on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Our father didn’t go to work on the next day. Saturday was a working day during the Soviet period, but my father always switched shifts with his barber colleagues to have Saturday a day off. On Saturday morning our father went to synagogue. Women went to synagogue on Jewish holidays. When the synagogue was closed my father went to a prayer house. When he came home he read from the Torah to my brother and me and told us stories from the Bible. Nobody did any work on Saturday. Our Ukrainian neighbor came to light a lamp or stoke a stove in winter.
Period
Interview
Arkadi Yurkovetski