Tag #155075 - Interview #103673 (Ladislav Roth Biography)

My mother started her preparations for Sabbath on Friday morning. There was a Jewish bakery nearby where they sold bread and challah for Sabbath.  My mother bought bread, but she baked challah at home. We had a big stove with an oven in the kitchen. My mother baked challah and then she also made cakes or a tort for Sabbath. She fried a goose in the oven and made gefilte fish. When her cooking was over she put a pot with cholnt into the oven. Then my mother’s sister came and they went to the mikveh. We had a big bathtub in the bathroom, but on Friday my mother followed the ritual going to the mikveh. Other women came to wash and make pedicure and manicure there.  Then my mother and Ilona went to a hairdresser. My mother came home with a beautiful hairdo and put on a fancy dress. 
 
My father often worked in the evening, including Friday. Regardless of whether my father was or wasn’t at home my mother lit candles and prayed over them.  Then we all sat down to dinner. On the next day, if my father was working, my mother took the children to visit her sister or grandmother Zali, my father’s mother. Sometimes my mother’s sister Ilona and her children came to visit us. We played with our cousins and my mother and her sister talked having coffee and cakes.  Sometimes we went to walk in the town park. My parents didn’t go to the synagogue on Sabbath.  Neologs didn’t recognize a ban for work on Saturday. My mother heated a meal on Saturday and lit lamps in the evening.