Tag #155333 - Interview #103735 (Nikolay Schwartz Biography)

We could buy bread in a store, but my mother preferred to bake it. On Friday morning my mother made dough in a big kneading trough. She usually made bread for a week. She made big round loaves of very delicious bread from brown flour and for Sabbath my mother made 2 challah loaves from white flour. My mother formed loaves from dough and pleated the challah forms, put them into a basket and sent me to the baker. He baked the loaves and I came later to pick them up. When we ran out of bread before the week was over, my mother bought some from the baker. Sabbath was sure to be celebrated. Even if my father was away, he tried to return home before Sabbath. My mother did a lot of cooking for Sabbath. The family was big, and she had to cook for two days. On Friday my mother made chicken broth with homemade noodles or with dough grains. There was gefilte fish, ground radish with onions and goose fat, and tsimes [3]. When she was done with her cooking, my mother put a pot of cholnt into the oven, closed the oven leaving the cholnt overnight. It stayed hot for a long while in a ceramic pot. On Friday, before Sabbath began, we went to the mikveh. After the mikveh my father put on his fancy suit and went to the synagogue. My mother set the table, put the Saturday challah bread on it, lit candles and prayed over them. When my father came back, we sat down to dinner. Nothing was to be done after dinner. It wasn’t allowed to hold money or strike a match. My Jewish friends were already waiting for me outside. We went for walks chatting. Next morning we went to the synagogue. My mother also went to the synagogue. The prayer ended at about 11. We had lunch after the synagogue. After lunch my father prayed and then sat down to read the Torah. We sat around him and he read us a Saturday section from the Torah. Then we went for a walk while my father read till Havdalah, when the first star appeared in the sky. By that time the children were to be back home. My father conducted the Havdalah, separation of Saturday from weekdays. My father lit candles that were smaller than the ones lit on Sabbath. Everybody had some wine, even the children. My father prayed, poured a little wine into a saucer to put down the candles in it. At this the Sabbath was over.