RE: [Cz-L] The Lost Synagogues of Czernowitz

Dear all.
I dare to disagree with the last statements. The lack of public display of devotion does not prove the lack of it. I remember as a child going with my parents to pick up my Ungeni born great-aunt from the schul (somewhere in the end the Russian str) and listening to the shoffar every Yom Kippur.
I remember her and my mother baking matzos for Passover and my job was to prick it with a fork. Later we were getting matzo from Joint. My best friend who's mother was a Ukrainian Jew and father the deputy director of GAI (Motor vehicle Administration) remembers her grand and GG mothers doing the same. She was the fork handler. My parents had a regular subscription to the Warsaw Yiddish newspaper thanks to a Polish jewish family we met on a train coming from Lvov.
We had Seders. Everybody came for Rosh Hashanah to our house. My friend's grandmother, who was born in Poland, lived in Paris and came back to build Birobidzan, used to give us dried fruit and explain that the fruit grows in Israel and there is a holiday called Tu B'Shvat. Her apartment on Kobilanskaya was a salon where all the Yiddish writers and intellectuals who still lived in Czernowitz would get together. Her son-in-law was Srul (Lulu) Richker from Radautz. They were my parent's best friends and my best friend's parents.
I remember my 14 year old friend announcing that knows Hebrew. When she started to recite it my parent's Bessarabian friends who all studied Hebrew couldn't believe their years. It was Modeh Ani.
I was surprised to learn that some of my friends who's mothers were Russian and the fathers jewish did not eat khametz during Passover. My best friend had two 13th Birthdays. One a bar mitzva with the rabbi for very close friends (My parents were there, but they did not trust the children) and a big one the next day. People had Chuppas. I don't remember much Vodka, but I do miss the Vishnyak. As for the Ukrainian born Jews, up till 1941 there were Yiddish schools all over Ukraine.
I do know there was a shoykhet.
As for your question/statement Mimi. That was something that Jews struggled all over the world, some even giving up their identity (Madeleine Albright's parents among them)
Maybe there were not to many orthodox Jews in Czernowitz, but the traditions and the believes never left.
Chag Sameach (v'kasher? or not) to all.

Channa
> CC: Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu
> From: mirtaylo_at_indiana.edu
> Subject: Re: [Cz-L] The Lost Synagogues of Czernowitz
> Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2013 08:13:29 -0400
> To: grs_software_at_bigpond.com
>
> Another not minimal factor was: How could one believe in God, after
> the Holocaust?
>
> Mimi
> On Mar 21, 2013, at 6:51 AM, Jacob Greenberg wrote:
>
> > The most ridiculous situation was in the 1960s, just before the
> > great exodus, when there were around 70.000 Jews in Chernovtsy and
> > surrounding towns and there was only one tiny synagogue in the
> > Jewish quarter.
> >
> > Definitely, Czernowitz Jews weren't overtly religious, The Russia
> > born forgot what it was all about and even the Bessarabians and
> > Romanians were drinking vodka and didn't feel the urge to pray and
> > keep kosher.
> >
> > Yes, there was oppression and the after-effects of the war and the
> > Holocaust but still, that unanimous compliance is hard to explain.
> > I don't think it was fear. Emancipation, maybe?
> >
> > Serah Kraft
> >
> >
>

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Received on 2013-03-21 09:49:09