The civil marriage certificate of Seindla and Pinhas Schatz

This is the civil marriage certificate of my maternal grandparents, Seindla and Pinhas Schatz. It was issued in 1915, but of course they were married earlier: they probably didn’t have an official civil marriage until 1915. The document says that they declared that they were married, and they brought witnesses to prove it. It also says that somebody else signed for my grandmother, because she didn’t know how to write.

My maternal grandfather, Pinhas, or Pincu, as the Romanians used to call him, Schatz, was born in Iasi in 1852, and he was a grain shop owner; he kept two modest stands in a market place that had recently opened back then. He spoke Yiddish, but Romanian as well. I know my maternal grandparents had a house of their own, but I never knew that house; I only really knew them once they lived in the same house as us. I know from my mother that in my grandparents’ former house there hadn’t been electricity; she had ruined her eyesight reading during the night or learning with an oil lamp. That old house was in Sfantu-Lazar neighborhood, which was a Jewish, or half-Jewish neighborhood, mostly intellectual Jews lived there.

My grandfather was a religious man, quite religious, because his father had been a scholar: he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath and High Holidays, wore tefillin and observed kashrut. He didn’t have payes or a beard and he never shaved with a blade. Someone, a barber I think, came to his home and trimmed his beard with a machine. He went to the mikveh every morning and when he came home from work in the evening, he washed, changed his clothes, took a religious book he had from his father, and went into a corner to read, that was his relaxation. Also, every evening he said his prayers singing, he had a beautiful voice like his father. He wore tefillin when he prayed at home, but not the tallit, he wore it only in the synagogue.

He was married to my grandmother Seindla Schatz, nee Fainaru, who was born in Iasi in 1866. She spoke Yiddish as well, and she too was religious: she lit candles every Friday evening and she cooked kosher food. She observed the Sabbath, but she only went to the synagogue on the High Holidays. She didn’t wear a wig or a kerchief. I don’t think she had any schooling, she was a housewife, but she helped my grandfather at the counters in the market.

My grandfather died in 1928, and he was buried in Pacurari, the Jewish cemetery from Iasi, and a relative of his recited the Kaddish. Grandmother died in Brasov in 1942, and she was too buried in the Jewish cemetery here; someone from the community recited the kaddish.

My grandfather had siblings who left for the USA, but I don’t know their names. My grandmother also had three sisters who all left for the USA: Roza Katzman, Freda and Lea. I don’t know why my grandparents didn’t leave for the USA as well; but life wasn’t easy back then, and their siblings couldn’t have helped them very much. Moreover, my grandfather was very religious, and he was the only one who could recite Kaddish after his parents died. My mother, Haia Sura, was their only child.