MDV 646 · Sonia Shevelevna Litvak

Litvak mentions a former classmate from the Yiddish school with whom she now finds it hard to speak, and talks about Jews today who do not know Yiddish. Kerler asks whether Yiddish writers visited Zvil and whether Pepper or Hofshteyn were taught at school; she recalls no visits and does not remember Pepper, and says she has read Hofshteyn.

Also covers Yiddish writers (Fefer, Hofshteyn) and whether they visited the town.

Litvak answers Kerler's questions about the school curriculum. Russian language and literature were taught every day, Ukrainian twice a week, and German only sporadically.

Litvak says she spent four years in Germany with her husband, in the early 1960s. She got by with a little German, and Yiddish helped. She worked in the cultural department of the Soviet embassy after an interpreter judged her German adequate.

Adds that Yiddish helped her communicate in Germany.

Kerler and Litvak discuss the journal Sovetish Heymland: she subscribed to it and later paid to subscribe for the Jewish centre in the early 1990s, but no issues arrived. Kerler explains the closure of Yiddish institutions in 1948 and the shooting of the Soviet Yiddish writers. Litvak ends by asking whether Jews in America speak Yiddish.

Adds Kerler's account of 1948 and the executed writers.

Kerler answers Litvak's question about Yiddish in America, saying the religious speak it. Litvak says she wrote letters to relatives there in Yiddish at their request, though she found it hard to put her thoughts into Yiddish. Kerler praises her Yiddish and her memory, and turns to the hunger.

Litvak recalls the mass arrests of 1937 (?), when she saw columns of arrested people, mostly Jews, led through the street to the station. Her father warned her not to say anything against the authorities. Kerler then asks whether she knew of non-Jews speaking Yiddish, and she says she could recognise Jews by their faces.

Litvak remembers non-Jews who lived on the Jewish street and spoke pure Yiddish. She contrasts the prewar neighbourly solidarity there with today's more individualistic attitudes. Kerler asks about non-Jewish converts to Judaism, which she did not know of before the war.

Litvak says some people today go both to the synagogue and to the church to get help, and she does not understand it. Kerler brings up the term meshumed (convert) for such people.

Litvak describes how her father opposed her relationship with her future non-Jewish husband and locked her in a room, from which he freed her. A sister also objected. She believes the marriage was destined and has no regrets. Her husband was a good man and his parents treated her well. Kerler refers to a story by Abramovitsh, mentioning the Petka and Golovan connection.

Adds a sister's objection and Kerler's literary references.

Litvak describes the Jewish oven in which her mother kept the Sabbath meal warm from Friday until Saturday, and the Sabbath candles. Her father prayed at the synagogue near the market until it was closed, probably in 1933 (?). Afterwards a minyan met in private homes, and secretly after the war too.

Litvak recalls the fine synagogue in the middle of town, with a women's gallery upstairs, where her father went. She admits there were probably other synagogues, since many Jews lived there. Kerler then asks about Sabbath foods.

Litvak describes Sabbath dishes at home: broth with beans, and potatoes with meat cooked in the Jewish oven, with buckwheat kasha. Her mother made gefilte fish, though not every week. Kerler asks how she made it.

The catalogue entry on synagogues does not match; this passage is about Sabbath food.

Litvak gives a detailed recipe for gefilte fish, learned from her mother: carp, fried onions, matzo, pepper, sugar and salt, with the stuffing put back into the skins and boiled with the fish. Kerler asks about the taste, and she says it should be neither too sweet nor too salty.

Litvak says she cannot eat the sweet gefilte fish that comes from America or Israel, and had never heard of sweet fish in Zvil. Kerler goes on to ask what the dish kept warm in the Jewish oven was called.

Litvak describes her mother's Sabbath dishes: roasts, kasha with meat, and cholent with a stuffed intestine. Kerler asks about the Yiddish terms for these dishes, including the word for cholent and for roast meat.

Litvak says she was not taught prayers because her parents were afraid, and her mother covered the windows when she prayed and told the children to tell no one. Kerler links this to the Pavlik Morozov affair.

Litvak recalls Shavuot dairy dishes: green borscht and blintzes with cheese. At Passover her mother made farlirtshikes, matzo dumplings with a filling, which she describes by showing, and fish. Everyone refused the fish's tail and wanted the head or middle, and the father was given the head.

Litvak says the family kept the first seder and observed only the first three days of Passover, since a full week without bread was too hard. Dishes during those days included matzo omelets and potatoes. She says bulbes (potatoes) is a Lithuanian-Jewish word.

Litvak sings the song 'Bulbes', about potatoes served every day of the week. Kerler notes that the word bulbes is not Yiddish, and S2 says a Lithuanian Jew brought the song. Asked about Passover songs, she recalls Chad Gadya only vaguely.

Litvak says her younger brother Leybe asked the four questions at the seder and her father answered. She says Passover at home was well kept until the war, but not after it, when her mother had died.

Litvak describes how her father built a sukkah from cornstalks beside the house, with a bench and table inside. Every house on the Jewish street had one, and some people kept building them even after it was forbidden. Kerler asks for the Russian word for cornstalks.

Litvak answers Kerler's questions about anti-religious propaganda in the school, saying teachers spoke generally against religion, though the teachers were good and kept quiet. Some teachers ate matzo themselves. She recalls Shavuot and Purim foods but little of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Litvak recalls her mother's Purim baking of poppy-seed hamantashn and the exchange of shalekh-mones. She recalls Hanukkah money from her grandparents, her father's warnings about playing with nuts, and the potato latkes fried at Hanukkah.

Litvak recalls a recent communal Passover meal in a restaurant, where she was served meat with rice, which she objects to as an Ashkenazi. Asked about Purim plays, she says there were none before the war, and mentions the phrase for a wicked person from her mother's sayings. Kerler asks about expressions such as 'a good Jew'.

Kerler begins his dialectological questions with Litvak, on expressions for a cemetery (a good place, holy place), and the word for a non-Jewish cemetery. He asks what a Jew from Lithuania is called, and she says her father derived the Litvak family name from Lithuania and from expulsion from Spain.

Litvak says Jews always gave each other nicknames, and her father was called 'the dark one' because of the family's dark complexion. She tells how, in Berlin, a delegation of dark-skinned visitors made a fuss over her son. Her father believed the family descended from the 'black Jews' of Spain.

Litvak says there were Hasidim in town before the war and that people visited a revered rebbe or holy man, but she cannot remember details.

Kerler puts questionnaire items about fruit and food names to Litvak (tomato, plum, cherry, berries, among others) and the word for vodka. She supplies the Yiddish terms and some Russian or Ukrainian equivalents, and does not remember several.

Litvak recalls the Jewish bath in town and says her mother took the children once a year to the mikve, which was part of the bath. Her mother told her not to tell anyone.