Tag #153086 - Interview #94113 (Yevgenia Kozak)

Our family was poor. My father earned to support the family and my mother was a housewife. We were not miserably poor, though. Mama always managed to make a special dinner on Saturday. We rarely had meat or fish, but she made delicious puddings, strudels with jam and challot.  Before Pesach and other holidays we bought poultry in advance and kept them in a shed in the backyard. My father took them to the shochet and we always had all traditional food on holidays. I wouldn’t say my family was that religious. My father or mother didn’t have their heads covered.  My father didn’t cover his head to sit at the table.  Perhaps, this was the sign of time. However, my father put on a kippah and my mother had a kerchief on to go to the synagogue every Saturday. I liked going to the synagogue with my parents. I liked the ceremonious mood embracing the town on Saturday: all Jews and their children dressed up (we also had fancy outfits) to go to the synagogue. I usually carried my father’s book of prayers - he was not supposed to do even this kind of work on Saturday. Mama and I went upstairs where women were supposed to do their praying, and my father stayed downstairs with other men. I continued going to the synagogue, when I became a pioneer 10, though pioneers were not allowed to attend it. I liked Jewish holidays even without knowing their history: I enjoyed the happy moments of my childhood, going out with the family and having delicious food. On Purim mama and grandma made delicious hamantashen filled with poppy seeds. I remember Sukkot  in autumn, when we had meals in the sukkah in the backyard, but my favorite holiday was Chanukkah, when we visited grandma, who gave us some money and we enjoyed nice doughnuts and potato pancakes. During Pesach my father didn’t conduct the seder – the family just sat at the table and enjoyed a special meal.  However, we had fancy silver kosher crockery that was kept in the attic. His crockery, the matzah that my father brought from the synagogue and traditional food – this was all that marked the Pesach in our house. Sometimes we visited grandmother Etl on holiday where we met with mama sisters Mania and Golda and their husbands and children who also visited grandma and arrived from Odessa.