Tag #123904 - Interview #78792 (Harun Bozo)

The religious holidays were very joyful at home. At Purim, everyone would go visit everyone else. A special dessert called 'mahmur' would be made. Mahmur is made from flour and semola, then stuffed with chestnuts, pistachios and cinnamon. After baking this in the oven, you put powdered sugar on it. This is a special dessert of Urfa. There would also be cookies, and then another kind of dessert made by mixing almonds with pistachios and sugar. On Pesah, we would keep the matsa inside special cloths and eat it during the whole festival. In our house, we used the same kitchenware for Purim and Pesah. Even then they would be washed very carefully in a big cauldron where water would be boiled for this special kitchenware. My aunt's children would also come to our house and we would say the 'beraha.' We would be at least 15-20 people. I notice people reading the Agada [Hagaddah] nowadays; it is read very fast and finished really quickly. Our father, however, would take care to explain everything to us in detail. While reading the Agada, we would first read the text in Hebrew and then we would also read the translation in Arabic so we could understand what the text said. This was special to us. Now this tradition has disappeared. My father could understand all the prayers he read, we couldn't.