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You went to cheyder [correct form: cheder] from when you were six [Editor’s note: boys usually went to cheder from the age of 3]. There wasn’t a Jewish school in Nowe Brzesko, but there was a [ritual] butcher and he was our melamed. It was his cheyder. You paid to go. I don’t remember what he was called. He’d given over one of his private rooms in his apartment to it. The butcher had a beard, I remember, and he was quite sturdy, not a young man. He wore an overcoat. And I learnt the Bible [Old Testament] with him, and at the same time I learnt Hebrew and Jewish. Some of the boys already knew Jewish, but I didn’t. The Bible is in Hebrew, but at the lessons it was translated word by word into Jewish, not into Polish. I remember to this day what I learnt, those bits from the Bible. It was the 5 Books of Moses, the Mish [correct form: Mishnah; the compendium of oral law edited by Rabbi Judah haNasi in approx. 200 A.D.], it’s called. And I even studied the Gemara [the compendium of commentaries and explanations supplementary to the Mishnah; together they make up the Talmud]. I went there for two years.
The Torah is the Jews’ holy book, and it’s divided up over the whole year. Every week there’s a different section – parsha [Heb.: part], it’s called – and it’s read out in the synagogue. When we went to cheyder, the teacher went over it with us too, and talked about that parsha. We didn’t understand much of it, but on Saturday I didn’t go to cheyder but to one of the citizens who knew the Torah, and I had to give an account of what I’d learnt over the week. And I remember I was quizzed by this one guy, who lived in the Square, and if I knew it, all of it, he would pinch me on the cheek with satisfaction. He used to give me something to eat there. No, I didn’t just go to him, to various families. I think it was either Father asked someone to test me, or the butcher himself sent us. All the children used to do that, because it forced you to study better. If I had to go and talk about what I’d learnt, then I had to try and remember what I’d been taught. All in all I went to cheyder for about two or three years, because at the beginning of the war I was still going. I think it was every day except Saturday and Sunday. Yes, I went on my own, because it wasn’t far. I don’t remember how long I was there for, an hour or two. I couldn’t say how many of us there might have been in that one room... five, ten – more or less the same age. Boys of other ages went too, but at different times.
The Torah is the Jews’ holy book, and it’s divided up over the whole year. Every week there’s a different section – parsha [Heb.: part], it’s called – and it’s read out in the synagogue. When we went to cheyder, the teacher went over it with us too, and talked about that parsha. We didn’t understand much of it, but on Saturday I didn’t go to cheyder but to one of the citizens who knew the Torah, and I had to give an account of what I’d learnt over the week. And I remember I was quizzed by this one guy, who lived in the Square, and if I knew it, all of it, he would pinch me on the cheek with satisfaction. He used to give me something to eat there. No, I didn’t just go to him, to various families. I think it was either Father asked someone to test me, or the butcher himself sent us. All the children used to do that, because it forced you to study better. If I had to go and talk about what I’d learnt, then I had to try and remember what I’d been taught. All in all I went to cheyder for about two or three years, because at the beginning of the war I was still going. I think it was every day except Saturday and Sunday. Yes, I went on my own, because it wasn’t far. I don’t remember how long I was there for, an hour or two. I couldn’t say how many of us there might have been in that one room... five, ten – more or less the same age. Boys of other ages went too, but at different times.
Period
Interview
Emanuel Elbinger
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