The Jewry of Kolozsvar played an important role in the economic and cultural life of the city. There was a Jewish philharmonic society, the Goldmark [8], which was comprised of amateur Jewish musicians. This philharmonic society organized a concert every year, and my family used to attend these concerts.
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Bela Muller
I can clearly remember the Kolozsvar of my childhood. There was a very large Jewish community in Kolozsvar. There were some sixteen to seventeen thousand Jews back then. [Editor’s note: According to the census of 1930, the Jewish population of Kolozsvar consisted of some 13,000 people.] The Jewry of Kolozsvar was divided into three communities. The largest one was the Orthodox community, followed by the Reformed and the Neolog communities [6], and there was the strictly religious community, the Sephardim [7]. The latter was the smallest; they had their own prayer house. In the city there were around 15 to 20 prayer houses and five larger synagogues. These greater temples were on Papp Street, Mikes Kelemen Street, Malom Street, Horea Street and Baritiu Street. Only the one on Horea Street was Neolog, the rest were Orthodox temples. We belonged to the Orthodox community.
I attended the elementary school of the Orthodox community; I didn’t graduate from high school. Overall I was a good student. My favorite subjects were mathematics and history. My teacher was a man called Uncle Binder, who taught me from first to fourth grade. From fifth grade we had different teachers for each subject. The mathematics teacher was called Uncle Bihari. I completed eight grades.
Bar mitzvah is a very important event in every Jewish family. They taught me every detail beforehand. I had to read in the synagogue the maftir of the weekly verse of the Torah. [Editor’s note: Maftir, informally, refers to the final section of the weekly portion read on Sabbath and holiday mornings in the synagogue from the Torah scroll; technically, it means the person who is called to read that section. The maftir section is usually a repetition of either the last part, or the entirety of the previous reading. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maftir] It was the first time they called me to read the Torah. After the reading I had to deliver a short speech, praising my education. I had to praise my parents’ devotion and love and I vowed, of course, that I would conduct my life according to the education I received in my father’s house. Because with the occasion of bar mitzvah, at the age of 13 one is graduated to be of full age, and beginning with that moment one is responsible for one’s deeds. Until one’s bar mitzvah the father holds the entire responsibility for the deeds of his son. At the end, the relatives and acquaintances attending the ceremony congratulated my father and me. Next the Kiddush followed, which was some kind of a festivity at our home. Pastry, strong and light alcoholic drinks were served. It’s customary to give gifts on this occasion. I don’t remember anymore what presents I got, but these used to be fountain pens, watches or books.
However, through my parents, I picked up the most important basic principles of the Jewish life, and the essential elements for tending the Jewish tradition.
It was customary in the Jewish families to send the boys to religion school, called cheder, even from the age of four or five. There I had my first contact with the Hebrew alphabet and I learned to read from the prayer book. I can clearly remember our teachers, Rebbeim Goldner and Samuel, as well as Rebbe Heszkl. They were very strict about teaching. We had to rehearse the weekly verse – the five books of Moses were divided into weekly verses. Each week they read one verse in the synagogue, and they taught the same verse in the cheder. In later years I continued to get a religious education, but to be honest, to no avail.
Unfortunately we didn’t know Hebrew, we knew how to read, but we didn’t really understand the text. However, we always got some explanations from our father with regard to the prayers. Otherwise, in the family we used to talk in Yiddish. My parents’ mother tongue was Yiddish. We learned it living in a Hungarian environment.
I liked Pesach best, because seder was a very nice family event. Even before seder my mother used to clean up the house, paying particular attention not to leave in the house chametz, that is, any meal that was made using yeast. On seder the family used to sit together, my mother used to read from the Haggadah, and the meals were exquisite. Each holiday has its special type of meal. On Pesach the main meal is matzah, as we aren’t allowed to eat anything containing yeast, only meals without yeast. In the meat soup my mother used to put special matzah balls. We had potato doughnuts, which is a traditional Jewish meal for that period.
We used to socialize with families of similar conception. Apart from Jews, we also had relations with Christians, especially with our neighbors. For example, on Saturdays, when we were not allowed to put on the light or light the fire, one of our Christian neighbors, the shabesgoy, used to come over. We gave him a piece of challah, a plate of chulent, and he used to put the lights on or off or lit the fire in the stove and put some wood on the fire, when we needed it.
On Saturday afternoon we used to go to the cheder, where we attended religion classes.
We were a strictly Orthodox family; we used to observe the Jewish holidays regularly. The holiest holiday of the Jews is the Sabbath, on Saturday. Actually, there’s only one even holier holiday: Yom Kippur. Every Jewish family, including my parents, of course, prepared very well for Sabbath. Our home was spotless, even we, the children, had to help out in the cleaning. My parents had special care for the Friday supper. I don’t exactly remember the preparations anymore. On Fridays, my mother used to light the candles. We, the boys, went with our father to the synagogue. When we came back from the synagogue, the table was laid with a white tablecloth, and there were two big loaves of challah covered, and the candles were lit.
We sat at the table and my father said the prayers and bentsched us. That is, he gave us a blessing. I don’t know the origin of the term bentsched. [Editor’s note: This is a Yiddish term. However, it does not mean to bless the children but to say the blessings after finishing the meal.] I can’t remember the text of the blessing, as it was in Hebrew. I think it began with ‘God bless the children of Abraham, Jacob and Yitzak [Isaac]…’ Even today the observant families do it the same way, but there are no such families in Kolozsvar. The Friday evening supper was a ceremony in itself. We used to sing songs at the table; we sang Friday evening songs: the Shalom Alechem, the Kol somer sabosz kados mechalelo and the Manei ha B'simcha. The meals had a specific order, as well. First we ate the fish aspic. This meal can only be prepared in Jewish households. My wife prepares fish aspic quite often even today, she knows the recipe, and I don’t. Then came the meat soup, the beef and then the farfel.
On Saturday morning we again went to the synagogue with my father, then we came home and we had a festive dinner. The Saturday dinner had already been prepared on Friday. We ate chulent then. The chulent was made from bean and hulled barley. They used to put meat in it and poured water over. After that [on Friday] we took it to the bakery and we put it in the preheated stove. We left it there for the night, and the shabesgoy brought it home on Saturday.
We sat at the table and my father said the prayers and bentsched us. That is, he gave us a blessing. I don’t know the origin of the term bentsched. [Editor’s note: This is a Yiddish term. However, it does not mean to bless the children but to say the blessings after finishing the meal.] I can’t remember the text of the blessing, as it was in Hebrew. I think it began with ‘God bless the children of Abraham, Jacob and Yitzak [Isaac]…’ Even today the observant families do it the same way, but there are no such families in Kolozsvar. The Friday evening supper was a ceremony in itself. We used to sing songs at the table; we sang Friday evening songs: the Shalom Alechem, the Kol somer sabosz kados mechalelo and the Manei ha B'simcha. The meals had a specific order, as well. First we ate the fish aspic. This meal can only be prepared in Jewish households. My wife prepares fish aspic quite often even today, she knows the recipe, and I don’t. Then came the meat soup, the beef and then the farfel.
On Saturday morning we again went to the synagogue with my father, then we came home and we had a festive dinner. The Saturday dinner had already been prepared on Friday. We ate chulent then. The chulent was made from bean and hulled barley. They used to put meat in it and poured water over. After that [on Friday] we took it to the bakery and we put it in the preheated stove. We left it there for the night, and the shabesgoy brought it home on Saturday.
She was very young when they took her to the concentration camp in Auschwitz [today Poland], but she survived.
After she graduated from the seven grades of the Jewish community school, she worked in a hosiery shop. She was a seamstress.
They summoned him in 1936 to Arad. Unfortunately, he was a weak man, he didn’t resist to the instruction. He got lung-disease, and he was sent home.
He was a student at a Bible university, in the yeshivah of the famous rabbi from Vizsnic. This elder brother was a real Bible scholar.
They were all deported in 1944. They didn’t come back home.
They had a small grocery store. They had two rooms, and the grocery store was in the front room. The store was so small that it didn’t even have an emblem.
Like Eszter, she also learned to become a dressmaker.
Before the state of Israel was founded, they lived in very difficult conditions, but after 1948 my brother became an independent contractor. He established a carpentry workshop and this way continued his life.
He was a cabinet-maker and he immigrated to Palestine in 1936. He was able to emigrate with the help of the Transylvanian Zionist movement, as a member of a Zionist organization unknown to me. Emigration took place in an organized way. Palestine was the mandated territory of Great Britain [4] then, and they refrained from the emigration of the Jews. There was a fixed number of people each year they issued certificates for immigration. I didn’t know how many certificates were issued for Transylvania [5], and how many of those for Kolozsvar. The Zionist movement distributed these certificates amongst the militants. This way my brother Jozsef got to Palestine and began to build up his life.
In spring 1980 they sent me an invitation letter, so I was able to visit them. I stayed there for six weeks.
My brother-in-law was a clothier. Due to the difficult economic situation, it was very hard for them to get by, so they decided to immigrate to Argentina. As a matter of fact, it was entirely my brother-in-law’s idea, and he wanted it badly. First Moricz emigrated, toward the end of the 1930s, and my sister followed him shortly after. They settled in Buenos Aires, and stayed there right until the end.
Next she learned the sewing profession at a private contractor.
She attended elementary school in the school of the Orthodox community, and she finished seven grades there.
Since my father was an excellent chazzan, that is Baal tfile, he used to get himself a job at a prayer house in Kolozsvar for the period of the holidays of fall – Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. From the money he earned as a chazzan he usually bought wood for us to have something to heat with.
We didn’t have our own house; we lived in a rented apartment in Kolozsvar in modest conditions. Our apartment was modestly furnished, and consisted of two rooms and a kitchen. It was arranged in order to accommodate a family of eight. We slept two children in one bed. It was always a problem to obtain wood for the winter.
My parents were poor people. My father worked all his life as a religion teacher at the Orthodox community, and supplemented his income by tutoring the children of the wealthier families in the afternoons, teaching them religion.
The youngest boy emigrated in the same period and settled down in a village in Hungary.
Ignac and Jakab immigrated to America in the 1920s.
Otherwise there are many Jewish tourists that go to Borszek, because it’s probably the only spa in the country where you can find an operational synagogue and a ritual bath, a mikveh. There’s no Jewish community in Borszek anymore; the synagogue and the mikveh are supported by the national community center: the Federation. The Federation operates a spa network, where retired Jews with low incomes and the youth involved in teaching the talmud torah or in the choirs can spend their summer holiday at very reasonable costs.