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Purim. The hamantashen was a wonderful thing, Mom made a triangle-shaped pastry with poppy seeds, very tasty, and you went around with rattles… On the streets, in the Jewish quarter. Everyone had them.
In the Polish quarter the Polish kids bought them too sometimes, simply because they liked them. You could buy them in the Jewish quarter in stores, of course. I also remember that you made pastries, whatever one could do best, and went to visit friends with that pastry.
On the Purim, you could trick others. I cheated our neighbor several times that I had seen her husband, he had come back, and she was all unhappy. Her husband was a wheeler-dealer, she liked it when he went away to Warsaw and wasn’t home.
There were the masqueraders, there was theatre. You can have fun, it’s a good thing. I can be an atheist and do not care about a religious holiday but the food and everything else – why not?
It’s the same with those masqueraders on Epiphany day these days [traditionally, children dressed up as Biblical figures visit neighbors’ homes on Epiphany day, a religious feast falling shortly after Christmas].
In the Polish quarter the Polish kids bought them too sometimes, simply because they liked them. You could buy them in the Jewish quarter in stores, of course. I also remember that you made pastries, whatever one could do best, and went to visit friends with that pastry.
On the Purim, you could trick others. I cheated our neighbor several times that I had seen her husband, he had come back, and she was all unhappy. Her husband was a wheeler-dealer, she liked it when he went away to Warsaw and wasn’t home.
There were the masqueraders, there was theatre. You can have fun, it’s a good thing. I can be an atheist and do not care about a religious holiday but the food and everything else – why not?
It’s the same with those masqueraders on Epiphany day these days [traditionally, children dressed up as Biblical figures visit neighbors’ homes on Epiphany day, a religious feast falling shortly after Christmas].
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Interview
Anna Mass
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