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The Sephardic Jews and the Georgian Jews lived together in Adana. Georgian Jews were weaker culturally than Sephardic Jews. Georgian Jews spoke Georgian amongs themselves without fail. My father used to go to the synagogue on Saturday mornings. The synagogue was a rented house that had been converted to a synagogue anyways. There would be extensive work for the holiday of Passover. Coffee beans would be boiled, dried up and ground in a special way. Rice would be rinsed, dried, and filled in bags. Since there was no matzoh, bread would be baked with yeastless flour and salt, and that bread would be eaten throughout those 8 days. My mother would make orange marmelade at home and it would be offered to guests on silver trays along with water. There were no chocolate or other types of candy then. It was a tradition to offer sweets like this. During one Passover, one of our Muslim neighbors came to visit us. They did not grasp that they had to use a spoon to eat the jam my mother was offering this way. They started eating it from the bowl. After a few spoonfuls, they apologized saying they couldn’t finish the bowl. This practice is quite special.
My uncle would translate the Passover Hagadah into Georgian after reading it, so that the children could understand it. The Hagadah was in Hebrew. My uncle would translate the Hagadah that was in Hebrew instantly, to enable us to understand. In this way, we comprehended Passover. White candy [made with sugar. Mastic, oranges, milkfat, almonds could be added to it. This candy that needs to be mixed with a wooden spoon after bringing to a boil, is quite difficult to make], charoset, and homemade wine were specialities of Passover. On the second night of Passover, we would drink a special soup with rice [recipe at the end of the interview].
We would not eat the dried fruit distributed during Purim right away. We would put those dried fruit under our pillows, and sleep like that till the morning. There was poverty and shortages. This dried fruit that was offered to us, seemed like a blessing. From a child’s perspective, we ate them slowly so we would not run out. We even put them under our pillows to protect them. There wasn’t the abundance of today. Those bags were like blessings for us. Candy, dried fruit were not stuff that was bought usually. My mother would rinse the seeds of a watermelon, salt them, dry them up in the sun, and then bake them, and we would munch on them with a lot of pleasure. In Adana, where holidays were celebrated in the true sense of holidays, relationships between friends were as strong as family.
There was no synagogue in Adana, a house had been converted into a synagogue. This was a rental house. And a lot of effort had been put into converting it into a synagogue. This house did not belong to a Jew. Jews were not able to own a lot of real estate then. A lot of them were foreign nationals anyways, and legally foreigners could not own real estate. The community was connected to each other in Adana. The president was Gaston Mizrahi. Gaston Mizrahi had spent a lot of effort to convert this house into a synagogue. And they would invite us to their home on Passover evenings. The Mizrahi family was a wealthy family. They had an optical business. The Mizrahi family had four sons named Isak, Moiz, Albert and Metin. These children also worked for the Jewish community in Adana.
My uncle would translate the Passover Hagadah into Georgian after reading it, so that the children could understand it. The Hagadah was in Hebrew. My uncle would translate the Hagadah that was in Hebrew instantly, to enable us to understand. In this way, we comprehended Passover. White candy [made with sugar. Mastic, oranges, milkfat, almonds could be added to it. This candy that needs to be mixed with a wooden spoon after bringing to a boil, is quite difficult to make], charoset, and homemade wine were specialities of Passover. On the second night of Passover, we would drink a special soup with rice [recipe at the end of the interview].
We would not eat the dried fruit distributed during Purim right away. We would put those dried fruit under our pillows, and sleep like that till the morning. There was poverty and shortages. This dried fruit that was offered to us, seemed like a blessing. From a child’s perspective, we ate them slowly so we would not run out. We even put them under our pillows to protect them. There wasn’t the abundance of today. Those bags were like blessings for us. Candy, dried fruit were not stuff that was bought usually. My mother would rinse the seeds of a watermelon, salt them, dry them up in the sun, and then bake them, and we would munch on them with a lot of pleasure. In Adana, where holidays were celebrated in the true sense of holidays, relationships between friends were as strong as family.
There was no synagogue in Adana, a house had been converted into a synagogue. This was a rental house. And a lot of effort had been put into converting it into a synagogue. This house did not belong to a Jew. Jews were not able to own a lot of real estate then. A lot of them were foreign nationals anyways, and legally foreigners could not own real estate. The community was connected to each other in Adana. The president was Gaston Mizrahi. Gaston Mizrahi had spent a lot of effort to convert this house into a synagogue. And they would invite us to their home on Passover evenings. The Mizrahi family was a wealthy family. They had an optical business. The Mizrahi family had four sons named Isak, Moiz, Albert and Metin. These children also worked for the Jewish community in Adana.
Period
Location
/Adana
Türkiye
Interview
Rebeka Evgin
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