My mother didn’t observe the Sabbath very strictly, but she tried not to light the fire, she didn’t sew, she didn’t cook.
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Felicia Menzel
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Before dinner, my grandfather went into a corner and said a prayer, and everybody had to keep quite while he did that. He said blessings if he ate fruit, he recited the kiddush on Friday evening, my grandmother lit two candles. My grandmother was the one who lit the candles on Friday evenings, she used the Yiddish term ‘bentshen likht’ for the blessing she said. At the [conclusion of] the Sabbath my grandfather said Havdalah.
For Friday evenings my mother cooked gefilte fish, I liked to watch her cook: she removed the skin and the bones, then she minced it, tradition said you had to mince it three times in the machine; then she added eggs, pepper and flour or bread crumbs, I don’t remember exactly. We didn’t have soup all the time, but we had boiled poultry, with potatoes and a cake.
My mother wanted to have time to say the blessing rather than spend too much time cooking on Friday afternoon, so on Thursday she always cooked traditional Moldavian sponge cakes, they were delicious, and other cookies as well. I didn’t have time to help my mother much in the kitchen, I was busy with school.
My mother wanted to have time to say the blessing rather than spend too much time cooking on Friday afternoon, so on Thursday she always cooked traditional Moldavian sponge cakes, they were delicious, and other cookies as well. I didn’t have time to help my mother much in the kitchen, I was busy with school.
We observed the Sabbath, my grandfather didn’t work, and someone from the families we always had as tenants came to light the fire. We had a servant who did the cleaning, but my mother and grandmother did the cooking. The food was kosher, we kept separate pots for milk and meat; I remember arguments about that, because sometimes the servant washed a fork that came in contact with milk in the basin for the pots that came in contact with meat. When my grandmother noticed, there would be a big scandal, and the servant had to go.
When I was little, I met a few rabbis that were in Iasi, because my grandmother wasn't happy for my mother to be so young and remain a widow with two children, she wanted her to remarry. The rabbi, one from Sighet, came home with the shadkhan, a nice old man, but my mother didn't like anyone they suggested. I remember that my sister and I were introduced as well, and I burst out laughing when I saw that the rabbi went into a corner to pray. We had to leave the room immediately, my mother only cast a glance at us but we knew it meant trouble. We laughed because we thought it was funny how he went into a corner and started praying all of a sudden, because he didn’t look like a rabbi to us, he had no payes or beard.
Even after that there were rabbis from Cluj, from Buhusi [town in Bacau county, on the bank of Bistrita river], from Stefanesti [in Botosani county] , but my mother didn’t accept anybody. So although she was still young, my mother never remarried, she didn’t fancy anyone.
Even after that there were rabbis from Cluj, from Buhusi [town in Bacau county, on the bank of Bistrita river], from Stefanesti [in Botosani county] , but my mother didn’t accept anybody. So although she was still young, my mother never remarried, she didn’t fancy anyone.
Our financial situation wasn’t great, but I never knew what hunger was, or what it felt like not to be able to buy an orange or something like that.
The house we lived in was an old house in Iasi, on Anastasie Panu Street, with three rooms, a balcony, and with the toilet and the kitchen on the balcony. The rooms had no separate entry, each one led into the other, in a row, so if you wanted to go from the last room outside, you had to go through the other two rooms. Several neighboring houses shared our courtyard, but there was no garden, and my mother didn’t grow anything as the yard was paved. We had running water and electricity.
My father had bought our house, the one I lived in, but unfortunately he never got to live in it, he died before we moved in. I was born in 1920. After his death, in 1921 my grandparents came to live with us: it wasn’t proper for my mother, being a young widow and their only child, to live alone.
My father had bought our house, the one I lived in, but unfortunately he never got to live in it, he died before we moved in. I was born in 1920. After his death, in 1921 my grandparents came to live with us: it wasn’t proper for my mother, being a young widow and their only child, to live alone.
My father set up the business with the help of two of his Social Democrat friends, he had no money of his own to invest. This was his occupation between 1918 and 1921, but nothing much came out of it, because he soon died.
So those Italian partners, who were in the weaving industry, grew interested in him, and fond of him as well, so they gave him a new job, supervising their new representation in Galati. We almost moved to Galati, because of my father’s business interests there, but my grandfather wouldn’t hear of it, he didn’t want to leave his synagogue and his rabbis.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My father spoke Italian very well, and when he came back from the war, he was sent by his employer to Italy, and, with his gift for languages, he became fluent in Italian in six weeks.
My father had already left for war; in 1914, he was drafted to the Romanian army. During World War I he fell prisoner to the Austro-Hungarians, in Slovakia. He was held hostage until the end of the war, in a place called [in German] Trentschin-Teplitz [Trencianske Teplice in Slovakian]. My mother didn’t know where he was for a while, she was desperate, so she kept on going to Bucharest, to the army’s general staff, and she persisted until she found out that he was alive. My father came home in 1918.
My father was quite passionate about Social Democracy, he even wrote articles in newspapers, like Romania Muncitoare [Workers’ Romania, a Social Democratic newspaper]; he had a quick temper, from what my mother told me about him. My parents went camping to celebrate on 1st May. It was more like a party, workers came of course, but it wasn’t much of a parade. After my father died, my mother didn’t go anymore.
My mother would never have married a Christian, not so much for her sake, but she adored her parents, and her father was especially religious.
They fell in love and got married in 1914. They had a religious wedding, my grandfather wouldn’t have had it any other way: but the wedding didn't take place in the synagogue, they had the chuppah at home. My father refused to wear a gold wedding ring, he thought it wasn’t proper for a social democrat, so only my mother had a wedding ring. [Editor’s note: Jewish women receive a wedding ring at their wedding, men don’t need to wear one.] My mother’s parents weren’t against my father because he was a social democrat; their daughter was one as well. He wasn’t very religious anyway. My mother used to say, as a superstition, that if he had worn a wedding ring, maybe he wouldn’t have died so young.
This is how my father met my mother, Haia Sura Grunberg [nee Schatz]: at a Social Democrats club, they were both Social Democrats.
He worked as an accountant and as a proxy for another Jew named Horovitz.
My father, Saia Grunberg, was born in Iasi in 1887. He spoke Romanian, and he studied at a business high school in Iasi.
Mother worked as well, but before she married: she taught German and manual training classes at the Jewish school in Iasi; my mother was known in Jewish circles because of her father and grandfather.
She studied at a boarding school for young ladies in Iasi, which belonged to two old German spinsters, so she knew German very well. I remember my mother used to tell me that her mother used to tie her beautiful hair in a pigtail with a taffeta ribbon. One of the Knoch spinsters, who was more ill-tempered, always got mad at my mother, because when she moved, the taffeta would creak, and she used to cry out, ‘Du Fratz!’ [‘You little brat,’ a very Austrian German term].
My mother was born in 1888 in Iasi, and her mother tongue was Yiddish.
Moreover, my grandfather was very religious, and he was the only one who could recite Kaddish after his parents died.
My grandfather had siblings who left for the USA, but I don’t know their names. My grandmother also had three sisters who all left for the USA: Roza Katzman, Freda and Lea. I don’t know why my grandparents didn’t leave for the USA as well; but life wasn’t easy back then, and their siblings couldn’t have helped them very much.
She had a few quarrels with my grandfather, I remember, because he used to take presents, products and the like, to every rabbi who was in Iasi, to show his respect, not for anything else, he wasn’t looking for help. But their financial situation wasn’t so good; they were working hard, so sometimes my grandmother didn’t approve of all these presents.
My grandmother was strict, and a dignified person, she never went in anybody’s courtyard, and she didn’t talk much with our Christian tenants, who rented a room from us between the two World Wars.
My grandfather wasn’t politically involved, but we kept a Keren Kayemet [2] box in our house.
I don’t think she had any schooling, she was a housewife, but she helped my grandfather at the counters in the market: she sold merchandise, at the retail counter, and my grandfather sold at the wholesale counter. Their business was rather good, the market was near the law court in Iasi, and a lot of people did their shopping there.
He was married to my grandmother Seindla Schatz, nee Fainaru, who was born in Iasi in 1866. She spoke Yiddish as well, and she too was religious: she lit candles every Friday evening and she cooked kosher food. She observed the Sabbath, but she only went to the synagogue on the High Holidays. She didn’t wear a wig or a kerchief.
My grandfather was a religious man, quite religious, because his father had been a scholar: he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath and High Holidays, wore tefillin and observed kashrut. He didn’t have payes [side-curls] or a beard and he never shaved with a blade [it is forbidden for men to use a blade to shave according to traditional orthodox Judaism]. Someone, a barber I think, came to his home and trimmed his beard with a machine. He went to the mikveh every morning and when he came home from work in the evening, he washed, changed his clothes, took a religious book he had from his father, and went into a corner to read, that was his relaxation. Also, every evening he said his prayers singing, he had a beautiful voice like his father. He wore tefillin when he prayed at home, but not the tallit, he wore it only in the synagogue.
I know my maternal grandparents had a house of their own, but I never knew that house; I only really knew them once they lived in the same house as us. I know from my mother that in my grandparents’ former house there hadn’t been electricity; she had ruined her eyesight reading during the night or learning with an oil lamp. That old house was in Sfantu-Lazar neighborhood, which was a Jewish, or half-Jewish neighborhood, mostly intellectual Jews lived there.
He spoke Yiddish, but Romanian as well.