Tag #140971 - Interview #87722 (Mariana Farkas)

My father usually went to the synagogue on Saturdays, it was on the same street where we lived, and my mother and I accompanied him on the high holidays, when the women go there as well. My parents fasted on Yom Kippur, and I also fasted all day, from 5 o’clock in the afternoon until the next evening, when the moon and the stars appeared. I think I started fasting when I was ten years old. My mother lit the candles and recited the blessing on Friday evenings, and she cooked the traditional dinner: for Friday evenings she usually baked sponge cake; we used to drink coffee with milk and eat sponge cake. On Saturdays we ate chicken soup with balls made from matzah flour. She made cakes as well, like hamantashen, on Purim. My mother never worked on Saturdays, except on the things she couldn’t avoid. My father used to say the prayers, but he wasn’t a bigot, he knew I studied religion in school so neither he nor my mother made my head swim with this.