Tag #123048 - Interview #99947 (Samuel Birger)

I vaguely remember the rest of the holidays. Rosh Hashanah was associated with a lot of deserts. I liked apple with honey. On Yom Kippur parents fasted and spent the whole praying. We, children were not compelled to fast. We took advantage of the absence of parents and ate everything we could at home. I liked Sukkoth. The stands for sukkah were kept in the shed. Father set up those stands in the yard and put fir branches over them. For the whole week we had eaten in sukkah and played in the yard in spite of cold weather. When we felt bored playing in our sukkah, we ran to aunt Leya’s yard and played in her sukkath. I liked to watch singing and dancing Jews carry torah scroll from synagogue on Simchat Torah holiday. The joyous procession went around synagogue and entered it from another entrance located in front of the main one. We, children, were most looking forward to Channukah. We liked to play with spinning top and eat tasty latkes. Mother lit candles in a sconce called channukia, which was on the window-sill. Grandfather Alter gave so-called chanukkah gelt, we were so agog to get. On Purim mother baked hamantashen with poppy. I do not remember anything else regarding this holiday. Maybe there were pageants in rich families and shelakmones were taken to each other. The only thing I remembered was freshly baked poppy rolls and scrumptious meal.