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Part Two: The Braverman Family 55 surreptitiously at a semi-underground Jewish bakery. During the Passover celebrations, the table was covered with a white cloth or, if one was not available, a white bed sheet. Leib sported a kippah (yarmulke) and talit, and sat at the head of the table. Candles were lit. Malka helped the older daughters serve food while Leib intoned the sacred blessings. Until the prayers were done, the children were forbidden to touch food. Then the children asked the pertinent Seder questions. It was not until the entire program was over that they could finally eat. Much as she appreciated Jewish holiday cuisine, the highlight of the feast for Zhenya was Malka's borscht. Maybe it was not the tastiest of foods on the table, but certainly the most filling—a quality much appreciated in those lean years. Malka took a great interest in her children and she was highly educated. She could read and write Hebrew, Yiddish, Ukrainian, and Russian. All of her children recall her reading the Torah and the Siddur in Hebrew (at home, of course; women were not permitted to read the Torah in public). On the High Holy Days, Malka and her daughter Klara oen went to services at the Central Synagogue in Moscow. The Braverman family was very religious and always kept kosher. Malka and Leib oen spoke in Hebrew inside the house. When she read books and periodicals, they were primarily written in Yiddish. Malka was always making comments in Yiddish such as, "A mentsh tracht und Gott lacht" ("A person plans and God laughs"). Above all, Malka was a pragmatist. She was immune to nostalgia, a saying that was applied to Jews who were victims of anti-Semitism. She loved her country, but also knew that better lives lay outside Russia's border. "When the door is open," she would say, "you must be the first to go." Below: Malka Braverman, Moscow, 1949. Zhenya's first memory of her father Leib was his putting on the prayer shawl and laying tefillin in the morning, as all orthodox Jewish men still do. She remembers her father as a tireless worker. At one point, he was involved in the manufacture of candies. The family lived in very close quarters. The two-room apartment did not have any beds at all. At night, Leib and Malka pulled out bedding and thin mattresses and everyone slept together on the floor. In the morning, the bedding was rolled up. It was crowded, but the children didn't complain. They had a full life of school and dance lessons. The children attended non-religious Russian- language schools, the only kind available in the town. They spent their leisure in a variety of youth clubs at the Young Pioneers' Palace.

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