Welcome To

service, which was run with two sets of horses and wagons. This group was also particularly busy on Friday, delivering meals before sundown and the start of Shabbat. Inna's earliest memories are of the privileged lifestyle she had as a little girl in Gorodok. She remembers the estate, the servants, the carriage with horses, and the tutors and governesses who taught and took care of her. Iosif's first memory of his father is bound up with visions of going to the synagogue. On Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for religious Jews, Shlomo had the honor of blowing the shofar. He was very educated on Jewish matters and the elders of the community oen asked his opinion. He liked to read the Torah and the Siddur, the Jewish prayer book. On Simchat Torah, the celebration of the Jews receiving the Torah, he joyously turned to the Bareyshit, the first words of the Torah, "In the beginning..." Shlomo told Iosif that every time he read the Torah he discovered something new. Shlomo went to synagogue every Friday. Depending on the time of the year, the candle lighting would occur either before or aer services. Hava would light the Shabbat candles, as tradition states that the woman of the house lights them. Aer Shlomo returned om synagogue, the house would be ready for the big holiday (holy day) ritual. Hava and the girls would have spent all day preparing, with the smells of cooking chicken filling the air. This was before supermarkets sold chickens, carefully cut up and wrapped in plastic. In those days, preparing a chicken for the evening meal required many hands. First, early on Friday, Iosif accompanied his mother to the market, where she would carefully select the plumpest live bird om one of the farmers. Iosif then took the clucking chicken to the shochet (kosher butcher). There, in the prescribed manner, the chicken would be Shofar A shofar is a horn, traditionally that of a ram or other kosher animal, that is blown by Jewish males in synagogue during the "Jewish New Year" of Rosh Hashanah and to mark the end of fast at Yom Kippur. In Biblical times the shofar was used to announce important events, such as the alarm of war or the coming of peace. It is the only Hebrew cultural instrument to have survived into modern times with no change.

• Cover