Tag #122657 - Interview #101182 (Simon Glasberg)

The shochet – also a religious title – was the person who performed the kosher slaughters for the believers. People traveled to Radauti in order to go to the shochet. I remember that my mother would have wanted to take the fowl to the shochet, but she didn’t always manage to do so because we lived far from the downtown area. There was one kilometer and a quarter from our house to the synagogue where we attended the religious service. We had to walk at least one kilometer and a half in order to reach the temple. Another 500-600 meters and you were out of the city. There was only one shochet in Radauti, also in the dowtown area, close to the Jewish bathhouse, that’s where people went and where the shochet performed the ritual slaughter. It was a place specially fitted for this purpose, in a blind alley, similar to a courtyard, but still a public place, where there was someone who cleaned, erased any left-over traces, if there were feathers or… [other remains]. I used to go the shochet sometimes, I accompanied my mother. But she wasn’t able to go there very often. She would ask one of the neighbors to do it. She didn’t have the strength, the heart to do it, and she had some good neighbors who used to say: ‘Give it here, Mrs. Glasberg, for I’ll chop its head in no time.’ In the Jewish tradition, for instance, fowls are not slaughtered in the fashion Romanians do it, by chopping the head completely. The head wasn’t severed, only the veins in the front, and the blood was drained – a certain ritual.