Tag #151231 - Interview #77979 (mark golub)

We celebrated Soviet and Jewish holidays. My mother became the guardian of Jewish traditions in our family after my grandmother died. She began to arrange family gatherings at Jewish holidays. Our whole family got together on Yom Kippur and Pesach. Aunt Riva came from Moscow every year to spend Pesach with us. Mother made traditional Pesach food. She took her chickens to the shochet at Podol. My father went to synagogue on all the holidays. There was one synagogue on Schekavitskaya Street in Kiev. I don't remember anybody praying at home. They all prayed at the synagogue. We bought a lot of matzah, although I took plain sandwiches with bread to work. Our family fasted on Yom Kippur. They didn't follow the laws of kashrut, although my father never ate pork, sausage or tinned meat. My mother was less strict about such things, and she loved to treat all of us except for my father, of course, with a pork chop or a ham.