Emerich Grinbaum - October 3, 2000 & January 8, 2001
Religious Life
How religious was your family?
You know, everybody was observant. We were pro...practice...practically uh, more than half, approximately the same level of religiousness. Of course, kosher. ??? Everybody was kosher, strict kosher. We were Friday evening and Saturday 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 before that most of the time and we went with our father to the synagogue. My mother lit 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, with regular, 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. You know, 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. One was 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 or less Modern--I would say Modern Orthodox.
Modern Orthodox.
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