Tag #152127 - Interview #78152 (vladimir olgart)

Every Friday my mother cooked for Sabbath. She baked challah in the Russian oven, made stuffed fish and boiled chicken. It wasn't allowed to cook or heat food on Saturday. On Friday evening our family got together for a prayer. My mother lit candles and we sat down at the table for a Saturday meal. Our Ukrainian neighbor used to light our kerosene lamps and make fire in the stove on Saturdays in the winter. My father prayed at home on Sabbath and he read a chapter from the Torah to us, and then we had guests over. My father's cousins lived in Skvira and so did my mother's brother Dudik before he moved to Kiev in the 1920s. They visited us with their wives and children. They all had big families. We had a lot of fun. We had tea, cookies and sponge cakes that my mother made. We sang Jewish songs, recited poems and danced. My parents had a record player and records with Jewish songs and dance music. We used to dance Jewish folk dances: sher, freilakhs and skotchna. We also got together at birthdays.