Tag #129250 - Interview #78769 (Mariasha Vasserman)

All of us went to the Jewish lyceum [4] on Karu Street. At present that building belongs to the Estonian Jewish community. At that time there were two private Jewish lyceums. One of them, where we went to, had the teaching in Ivrit, the other one in Yiddish. When Perets was in the junior grades of that lyceum, some subjects there were taught in Russian; when my sister went there, all subjects were taught only in Ivrit. Ivrit wasn’t spoken at home.

One year before lyceum, I went to the kindergarten, where children were taught Ivrit. We had a wonderful teacher called Anna Klas, the daughter of the chazzan of the largest Tallinn synagogue [5], Gourevich. Then she became a pianist. Her son Erie Klas is the conductor of the Tallinn symphonic orchestra. Anna didn’t only teach us music; she also taught us the rudiments of Ivrit. Children perceive things quickly and after kindergarten we were ready to study all lyceum subjects in Ivrit. We stayed in the kindergarten from morning until noon. Probably it was not very different from modern kindergartens. We played different games, learned how to sing, draw, went for strolls. Many children, with whom I made friends in the kindergarten, were enrolled in the same grade in lyceum. All my friends from childhood were Jews. Most of them were my school friends. Some of them were children of my parents’ friends.