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At a funeral, a prayer is recited both in Hebrew and in Romanian. There is only one God above all of us. The prayer is recited by the rabbi. There is now a rabbi in Galati, who comes to Braila too. I don’t know his name. What’s special about Braila and the surrounding area is that the deceased Jewish men are not dressed in the traditional way – in the white shirt they wore when they got married. Here we take a few meters of cloth and make a pair of pants with no holes for the feet, like the ones babies wear. We also dress him in a blouse, and pull a hood over his head. We wash the deceased with wine and hot water, then we get him dressed. A small pillow is put under his head, but it is filled with clay instead of down. There are no blankets or anything underneath the dead. The little pillow with earth signifies the fact that the dead is buried in earth.
The deceased isn’t kept in this outfit for three days, like Christians do. The funeral takes place the next day. We don’t keep our dead in the house for three days. The casket looks different from the typical Christian one – it is nothing more than a box made of planks joined together with nails. We put sawdust and the little pillow with earth. Everything is very simple. Of course, one may be buried in a more modern fashion, but those who really care about the tradition would never do that.
We don’t give alms immediately after the funeral, because people are really upset at that time. One may hold a commemoration of the deceased every year. You go to the synagogue and prepare a traditional meal, with fish – not steak – with cheese and cakes. Serving ‘rachiu’ [strong liquor obtained generally by distilling fermented sweet fruit juices or by diluting distilled ethyl alcohol with water] used to be considered a Jewish tradition. But nowadays brandy or vodka will do. In the morning of the commemoration, twelve men come to the meal at the synagogue.
The deceased isn’t kept in this outfit for three days, like Christians do. The funeral takes place the next day. We don’t keep our dead in the house for three days. The casket looks different from the typical Christian one – it is nothing more than a box made of planks joined together with nails. We put sawdust and the little pillow with earth. Everything is very simple. Of course, one may be buried in a more modern fashion, but those who really care about the tradition would never do that.
We don’t give alms immediately after the funeral, because people are really upset at that time. One may hold a commemoration of the deceased every year. You go to the synagogue and prepare a traditional meal, with fish – not steak – with cheese and cakes. Serving ‘rachiu’ [strong liquor obtained generally by distilling fermented sweet fruit juices or by diluting distilled ethyl alcohol with water] used to be considered a Jewish tradition. But nowadays brandy or vodka will do. In the morning of the commemoration, twelve men come to the meal at the synagogue.
Location
Braila
Romania
Interview
Cornelia Gatlan