Tag #135515 - Interview #78023 (Fridric Iavet)

I don't think we had a rabbi, but there has a cheder. I didn't go there, because my parents didn't want me to get spoilt. There were all sorts of children, they cursed sometimes, and they wanted to protect me. My father hired a melamed for me, but when nobody was home, I ran away. I locked him in the house and I left. My parents reproved me, but they didn't beat me - only my mother hit me sometimes. I remember the melamed taught me the alphabet and how to say the prayers. He was in his forties and he wore a beard. He went from house to house and the taught children, but he didn't have many students, because most of them went to the cheder. Dad wanted me to learn at least what was necessary for the bar mitzvah, which didn't actually happen, because of our leaving to Asia.