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Emerich Grinbaum - October 3, 2000

How religious was your family?

You know, everybody was observant. We were pro...practice...practicallyuh, more than half, approximately the same level of religiousness. Of course,kosher. ??? Everybody was kosher, strict kosher. We were Friday evening andSaturday morning we were going to the synagogue.

Tell me about Friday evening...

Friday evening.

at your house.

Uh, Evening we went-we changed clothes, we took a bath beforethat most of the time and we went with our father to the synagogue. My motherlit candles. And we came back from the synagogue, there was nice white uh,table and like covered with white, with challah, with wine and uh, with, withregular, regular uh, F...Friday evening uh, dinner.

Did you sing Zemirot as well?

Pardon me?

Did you sing Zemirot? Did you sing anything?

No, no we didn't sing, no. And we ate, and you know, that's family,family uh, with the family. Uh, we didn't, you-sometime we had guests. Youknow, there one...once in awhile you know, we invited some people to the table,but not too often.

Um, how many synagogues were there?

A lot, a lot. There were two big synagogues in the center. Onewas the-although everybody was Orthodox, there was no such a thing that uh,Conservative or some-in Hungary they called neolog, but neolog is in Budapest,not in our area. Everybody-but the level of, of uh, religiousness different.In that huge-the biggest synagogue which we used to go, that was a more orless Modern-I would say Modern Orthodox.

Modern Orthodox.

Orthodox.

When you went to school did you learn religious prayers andthings like that?

A lot, you know. We studied more than-we, we learned Tanách.We were very, very versed in Chumash and Tanách and we studied a lotwith explanations, we discussed. So we studied that, you know. And the prayersI learned before because we go-before going to school I was five, I went tothe cheder, I went a couple of years, so we learned that. But you know, theinteresting thing in the cheder the translation was Ashkenazi pronunciation.And when the, in the Hebrew school we studied the Sephardi, the regular Hebrewand the Siphrut with the, the literature and Bialik and everything, but thereal. So eh, then we changed. But I still can read in both ways whatever Iwant, uh.

Do you still read Hebrew literature?

Yes, I'm going to the Hebrew school every Sunday uh, to MiraLev which is a midrash college and there are different...uh, we're going tothe highest level because we discuss Israeli topics and, and reading newspapersand discuss politics. And, of course uh, my Hebrew is, is not as good as itwas. The reason is this. If you, I-if I may say, because after '45 when cameback, I didn't talk Hebrew at all until I came here. So for thirty-five yearsor something, no Hebrew. So I almost forgot.

Under the Soviet regime.

Soviet regime there was no Hebrew at all. First of all, nowhere,no, nobody to talk to. And secondly it was forbidden. You can speak a littleYi...Yiddish, is-it was not suspicious. Hebrew language was a bourgeois language.

But you knew Yiddish.

Not very good. I uh, I-the reason I-I tell you, my father wasfluent, he-

Yiddish, no problem. My mother didn't speak much Yiddish. Shewas from Hungarian village and the Hungarian villages didn't speak much He...uh,Yiddish. So mother influenced us. We learned a little bit when we were goingto the cheder, we learned Yiddish. But after I went to the, we went to theHebrew school, the, to the secular, we didn't speak Yiddish at all.