Tag #127097 - Interview #78448 (Eli (Eliyau) Perahya)

I didn’t get any special religious education when I was little, meaning I didn’t attend Mahazike Torah or Sunday School [Mahaziketora] [18]. I learned all the prayers, our creeds and traditions from my grandfather Ishak, who had educated generations, and from my father’s practices. I am well-connected to my religion and traditions; however, I never act dogmatically when it comes to practice. For me, the basis of religion, the essence of it, is its spiritual message to be given to the people. For me Leviticus and Deuteronomy [Two of the Five Books of Moses, the Torah] contain all the laws for contemporary human rights and values, and are the base of humanism itself. While until very recently I was regularly carrying out the tradition of limmud [prayer and ceremony held on the same date of funeral every Jewish year, like the yahrzeit in the Ashkenazi tradition] for the relatives who passed away, I now prefer to donate a certain amount of money instead to some charitable institutions in the name of the deceased. The only exception being the ceremony of reading my father’s name in the Ashkenazi synagogue on Rosh Ashana and Yom Kipur for the noon prayer, as I mentioned earlier.