Tag #135877 - Interview #78511 (Vasile Grunea)

My father and I didn’t go to the synagogue every Saturday. When I went to a non-Jewish school, we also had classes on Saturday and my father usually worked on Saturday, too. But we observed the traditional Friday rituals on Sabbath and we had better food on Saturday, we had cholent and the so-called salz fish. This is boiled salty fish in aspic, which we called zultz in Yiddish. Another Jewish specialty is gefilte fish, which translates as stuffed fish, but which is in fact more like ground fish; it has a sweetish flavor because it’s served with a sweet sauce. My mother did salz fish usually, which has become a great delicacy for me. We usually had cholent for Saturday lunch. As we weren’t that strictly religious, my mother warmed it, I think, but I am not a 100 % sure. The Havdalah prayer, the prayer marking the end of the Sabbath, was said over a wide braided candle made from a white and a blue candle, and they poured a little bit of strong brandy on a tray and lit it, but I cannot really tell you why – it was a tradition.