Tag #110356 - Interview #79258 (Leopold Sokolowski)

I had my bar mitzvah when I was 13, in 1937. We were rather poor and bar mitzvah is an expensive affair. So I had it not on a Saturday but on a regular working day in the Tempel. [Editor's note: A progressive synagogue in Cracow at the corner of Miodowa and Podbrzezie Streets. It was built in the 1860s. In the interwar period, assimilated Jewish intelligentsia gathered there. Services were held in German and Polish. The best known rabbi of that synagogue was Ozjasz Thon]. Before the war, the Tempel was the most beautiful place. The main shammash in the Tempel was my father's cousin, whose name I can't remember. They wore those hats and robes, I don't know what to call them, and everything was exquisite. There was Doctor Ozjasz Thon [10] and doctor Szmelke, the rabbi. It was a progressive synagogue. The women were separate from the men. Next to the main building there was a smaller shtibl. That's where my bar mitzvah was held on a Wednesday.

Of course, there had to be a minyan; there were always 15 to 20 people, not more than that came. My father bought a bottle or so of vodka. That was a custom in the Temple, on special occasions, but since Jews easily got tipsy, tiny glasses sufficed. The guests were treated to some shortcake and that was it for my bar mitzvah. Poor. I knew that others got a bicycle for their bar mitzvah, or a watch, or something else. Of course I had to study, put on a tefillin. I didn't feel like it; not out of atheism, but because of sheer laziness.