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On Sjabbath (Saturday) the Jewish community of Rozalimas
went to the synagogue(sjoel), where they attended the service, men downstairs
and women upstairs. The service was led by the rabbi, some members of the
community and by the chazan whose task was to sing during the service and in
this manner to bring people closer to God. The language used during the service
is Hebrew, which is the religious language. The spoken language used by the Jews
was Yiddish. The religious marriages took place in the synagogue and the bar
mitsvah (the occasion on which Jewish boys are, from a religious point of view,
considered as adults and during which they are called to read a passage from the
Torah).
These celebrations were to take place
in Rozalimas as well, but no recordings have been found on this matter.
Nevertheless we can still imagine people celebrating, wearing their best clothes
in the synagogue, in the 'restoran' or at home, where they must have had a lot
of fun , where a lot of typical Jewish music was played (also known to all the
other people of Rozalimas) and where the spoken language was Yiddish (which
originates from an area of Germany, in the eleventh century and later influenced
by the Hebrew and the Slavic languages). ' Vu zol ikh geyn? ' is an example of
the Yiddish language
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Esterke and her schoolmates
This picture shows
Esterke and her schoolmates and her teacher in the garden of the school
of Rozalimas. This picture was made in 1929. In those days the school consisted
of four classes. In the period before 1919 (1910-1918) there were two classes.
The school was founded in 1789. In the middle of the picture we see Angele
Shukiene, the teacher. In the front we can see four Jewish girls, from the left
to the right: Mase Zakaite, Ete Zakaite,
Malke Klovanskyte and Esterke
Saskolskyte.
Four out of thirteen pupils were Jewish. The sisters
Zakaite probably didn't live in Rozalimas, but in a village nearby, I wasn't
able to detect the names of their family on the Rozalimas map (from 1940)
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