Tag #127610 - Interview #78077 (Adela Hinkova)

For Purim, my mother made sweet ring-shaped buns with ‘alkashul’ [the filling of the bun, made of honey and walnuts]. I loved them. There’s a belief that these sweets should be preserved exactly for Pesach. There’s one month between Purim and Pesach. They take place during the early spring. The snow had just started to melt. My mother took a big earthen jar and filled it with such buns. We had an attic full of mice and we could hear them running around. Once she made my brother climb up and put the jar there so that nobody would eat the buns before Pesach. But I loved them very much and usually I would go up, take one and close the jar again. And when Pesach came, my mother said, ‘Santo, go and fetch the jar, we will eat sweets now.’ Santo fetched the jar and it was empty. My mother shouted at me, ‘You ate them!’ and I said, ‘No, I didn’t, the mice ate them.’ My mother was angry that she wasn’t able to observe the ritual. On this holiday we give away food.

My mother would buy a chicken. She boiled it, stewed it, took some fruit and vegetables, filled the basket, put a white napkin with embroidery on it and went to give it to someone in need. That person was called ‘el mirkado’ [Ladino for ‘bought’]. This meant that we ‘bought’ him, that we had made a vow to help him. And my mother would bring him food on all high holidays. But that had to happen in secret. He wouldn’t have to feel offended that someone was helping him. She dressed officially and said she was going to her ‘kupets’ [dealer]. This was a different man every year. I understood that she was going to a different person by the way she cooked the food. She was convinced that that was the way to do it, although I didn’t agree with her on that.