Re: it happened Hannukah

Traditional Jewish kindness and hospitality is NOT a Christmas story. How sad!?

>>> "Barbara Meagher" <bmeagher_at_rogers.com> 12/19/03 08:59AM >>>
What a lovely and heartwarming story..............a wonderful and very fitting tribute to your father, and to you also for recalling and retelling it. Could very well have been a Christmas story..................<G>


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Barbara ZYHA KUCZMYK Meagher

bmeagher_at_rogers.com

Toronto, Ontario, CANADA

with roots in

LUCAVITA,BUKOVINA & OBERTYN,GALICIA



----- Original Message -----
  From: Lucca Ginsburg
  To: czernowitz czernowitz
  Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 8:42 AM
  Subject: it happened Hannukah


  On the second day of Hannukah in 1959 my father saw an elderly man sitting alone on a bench in front of the Haifa Municipality.
  He looked familiar, so my father approached and after a better look at him, he asked:
  -"Aren't you Mr. Meshulam Friedmann of the Friedmann Vegetarian Restaurant in tbe Russischen Gasse in Czernowitz?
  -"Yes, I am!" said the man.
  -"So why are you sitting here outside in the cold?"

  Mr. Friedmann told my father that he lived with his son and daughter-in-law who had a small boy in a very small apartment. It often got very crowded. Truth was that his daughter-in-law was not delighted about his constant presence, and there were often arguments between the couple. Mr. Friedmann told my father that he tries his best to be out of the house as much as possible.

  Do you remember the Friedmann Restaurant? Do you remember the vegetable soups, the pirogen, the Totsch, the luscious cakes? This restaurant was a landmark in all of the Bucovina.

  Anyway, my father invited Mr. Friedmann to come along to our house for lunch, which he did. In the course of further talk, Mr. F. said he would like some other living quarters, and it so happened that a single man rented out a room of his flat in our house.
  Mr. Friedmann moved in the same day.

  He became a member of our family. We celebrated all holidays together, and I...have a recipe book of some very luscious cakes which were offered at the Friedmann restaurant. Of course he himself never worked in the kitchen, but he still remembered how certain cakes were made. I also have many photos of him, he was such a pleasant looking man.
  In fact he had one son, Salo Friedmann living in New York, married to a cousin of my mother's, and he had another son living with his wife in Nazareth.
  Sometimes...own children are not the answer. He adopted our family, or rather we adopted him until the day he got very ill and passed away.

  I wish you all a Very Happy and Carefree Hannukah!
  Lucca





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Received on 2003-12-19 15:57:17