Tag #130401 - Interview #78005 (Rudi Katz)

My father didn't study religion with me, but he sent me to cheder two or three times a week, from the age of six until I was around ten years old. He didn't want to send me to do further studies in a yeshivah, but it was tradition, and I think my mother wanted me to have some basic knowledge about Judaism. We studied with bocherim from Maramures, who knew Hebrew, in a room in the synagogue we usually went to. It wasn't really a classroom, with a blackboard, and we didn't use notebooks. We just had to have a Hummash or Siddur, the teacher read first and then we had to read after him. He would go around and hear us read, and if we made mistakes, he would slap us.

We studied with both bocherim and melamedim. I studied with a melamed, Margulis. He had a cheder in his home, but he also came to our home to teach me; we did translations from the Hummash, and reading exercises, and learned the right punctuation. I remember he had a lot of books, but he didn't speak Hebrew as well as the young bocherim, who studied in a yeshivah. I remember I had a friend whose melamed was teaching him Hebrew, and it was a sensation, because Jewish kids usually learnt that in yeshivah, not in cheder. I wasn't very hardworking, during the class I never read the entire paragraph I was supposed to, because I used to go drink water three times, then ask permission to go to the toilet three times. When I took it up again, after I retired, I barely knew the letters! But it eventually came back to me.