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My paternal grandfather, Naftali Cohen, lived in Salonika [today Greece] and I don’t know what year he came to Bulgaria with my father. I don’t know if my ancestors came from Spain [see Expulsion of the Jews from Spain] [1], but I know that they are Sephardi Jews [see Sephardi Jewry] [2], so they must have Spanish blood. I also didn’t know my maternal ancestors: only my grandmother Buka [Moshe Alvas] [Editor’s note: her real first name was Bohora, but according to the Sephardi tradition the eldest sister was always called Buka in the family regardless of her official name.] She looked very old to me when I was a child. I didn’t know my maternal grandfather: he died before I was born. I also didn’t know my father’s parents and know almost nothing about his kin, I only know that he had three brothers and I knew only one of them. The reason is that my father died when he was 43 years old and I was four years old at that time. I have a vague memory of his death and hardly have any other memories of him.
My grandmother Buka lived in a dilapidated house on Pozitano Street in Sofia with her only son. Now the house doesn’t exist, there is a block of apartments in its place. She wore a shamia, a sleeveless jacket and a petticoat. She was a small, but very strong woman and quite strict. She dressed according to the fashion of those times. I don’t know if anyone wore special Jewish attire in Bulgaria at that time. My grandmother moved to Israel in 1947 or 1948. I remember her well though. I even remember a very funny event: when she was told that she would be immigrating, she declared that she didn’t want to move, because those who died while traveling weren’t buried according to the rituals and they were thrown into the sea.
My grandmother was a rohesa: a woman who prepares the dead bodies in the synagogue. She was the leader of that organization or club [Chevra Kaddisha]. My grandmother even prepared the dress for her funeral: the so-called ‘murtazh’ [kitel] and when she was about to leave, she grumbled, ‘If I die on the road, they wouldn’t be able to dress me in it.’ She also had a special funeral cushion, she had prepared everything. But the funniest thing was that when she arrived in Israel safe and sound and my uncle wrote, ‘We are okay, we have arrived’, my husband David Yakov Levi, whom I had just married, said, ‘Now, your grandmother can turn her murtazh into a swimming suit!’ My grandmother was very religious, and those rituals were observed only by very religious Jews.
My grandmother Buka lived in a dilapidated house on Pozitano Street in Sofia with her only son. Now the house doesn’t exist, there is a block of apartments in its place. She wore a shamia, a sleeveless jacket and a petticoat. She was a small, but very strong woman and quite strict. She dressed according to the fashion of those times. I don’t know if anyone wore special Jewish attire in Bulgaria at that time. My grandmother moved to Israel in 1947 or 1948. I remember her well though. I even remember a very funny event: when she was told that she would be immigrating, she declared that she didn’t want to move, because those who died while traveling weren’t buried according to the rituals and they were thrown into the sea.
My grandmother was a rohesa: a woman who prepares the dead bodies in the synagogue. She was the leader of that organization or club [Chevra Kaddisha]. My grandmother even prepared the dress for her funeral: the so-called ‘murtazh’ [kitel] and when she was about to leave, she grumbled, ‘If I die on the road, they wouldn’t be able to dress me in it.’ She also had a special funeral cushion, she had prepared everything. But the funniest thing was that when she arrived in Israel safe and sound and my uncle wrote, ‘We are okay, we have arrived’, my husband David Yakov Levi, whom I had just married, said, ‘Now, your grandmother can turn her murtazh into a swimming suit!’ My grandmother was very religious, and those rituals were observed only by very religious Jews.
Location
Bulgaria
Interview
Adela Nissimova Levi