Tag #144063 - Interview #94880 (Yefim Volodarskiy)

Our family was religious. My father was sure to celebrate Saturday, Pesach and all other holidays. They followed all religious rules. He went to the synagogue and I was carrying his tallit and the Torah. My father prayed and then we went home together. We asked our Ukrainian or Russian neighbor to light the lamps at home. We followed kosher rules and made matzah. Now the synagogue produces matzah, but at my time few Jewish families got together to make matzah. Almost all Jewish families cooked gefilte fish on Friday. I was told that it was the same before the revolution in 1917 [11]. Then Jewish families bribed the policeman giving him gefilte fish on Saturday. I don’t know why they wanted to bribe him. People always believed it was good to establish friendly relationships with authorities, just in case. He liked it very much. They also cooked chicken. At that time Jewish housewives bought living hens. We had a cage at home where we kept hens. Only this chicken was kosher. There was a special slaughterer since families were not allowed to slaughter themselves. The slaughterer slaughtered the chickens on Friday. Every family used to have a cage with chickens.