-
I used to belong to an organization -
Habonim.
-
[Interviewer:] Habonim, uh.
[Matsil:] ... when I was a kid.
-
I said to my father: "I'm gonna make"--
-
My father was a rabbi
and a mohel and a shochet.
-
And, I said him: "I want to make Aliyah."
He says: "No way."
-
Because all my friends made Aliyah
and they're still there.
-
Whenever I go to there -
I've been there to Israel - I visit them.
-
[Interviewer:] They needed you more here.
[Matsil:] Yeah, my father wanted...
-
I'm not sorry either because
I met my beautiful wife.
-
No, I was born here
but my first language was Greek.
-
And, then I...
-
My father was a rabbi,
-
made sure when I went...
I learned to speak Hebrew.
-
He spoke to me nothing but Hebrew
to the day he passed away.
-
[Interviewer:] Really?
-
My father was born in Greece
- in Ioannina -
-
and he was...
-
His family was very well... you know,
very well learned.
-
There was a... Ioannina -
-
the Jews were there for
quite a few hundred years.
-
Marcia knows more exactly.
-
And, they had a rabbi in Ioannina
and he died
-
and they chose my father
to become a rabbi.
-
So, they sent him to Salonika
and while he was there
-
he learned to be a mohel and a shochet
in addition to getting the rabbinate.
-
And, that's it.
-
And, he learned Hebrew -
he spoke Hebrew his whole life.
-
As a matter of fact,
when I started to speak Hebrew,
-
he spoke to me only in Hebrew
at that point.
-
I grew up in a Greek household
learning Greek:
-
that was my first language,
and then, of course, English,
-
and then, Hebrew.
-
And, later on in years,
I studied Spanish
-
and it came very handy because
-
I ended up owning a factory in which
97 percent were all Puerto Ricans,
-
and if I didn't know how to speak Spanish
I would have been in big trouble.
-
In Ioannina, they spoke Hebrew very well.
-
I mean, those who knew.
-
And, of course,
my father had gone to Salonika
-
and was ordained and he knew his Hebrew.
-
[Interviewer:] Was that also the case
in Salonika -
-
did they use Hebrew as a spoken language?
-
I don't know. I think they -
-
the Saloniki - used Ladino.
-
A lot of Ladino.
-
And, that I know for a fact because
-
I belong to the Sephardic Temple
in Cedarhurst,
-
which is a Spanish synagogue which
is the closest thing to a Romaniote thing.
-
And, so that's the synagogue that
I go to every Shabbat and holidays
-
and they speak Ladino.
-
As a matter of fact,
they have a prayer - a bendicho -
-
which means a song which,
-
before they take out the Sefer Torah,
they open the heikhal
-
and they read this
bendicho del... whatever -
-
I forget the name,
and in Ladino...
-
and they do it every week.
-
[Interviewer:] You spoke of
the Romaniote dialect as well.
-
Right. I grew up speaking...
it was my first language.
-
It was Greek.
-
[Interviewer:]
That was the only Greek you knew.
-
And then, if it wasn't -
-
I'm the youngest,
I was the youngest of 10 children
-
and my siblings only spoke...
spoke in mostly English.
-
They all spoke Greek fluently.
-
And, I was fortunate:
my father, you know,
-
it was Depression years
and I had the time.
-
He had the... he was able to
send me to Hebrew school,
-
and I went to a Syrian Hebrew school
-
because that was the only Sephardic,
you know.
-
So, I learned how to speak Hebrew.
-
It was four hours a day.
-
And, two hours we would just read,
learn how to read,
-
and read from the Chumash and the Tanakh.
-
And, the other two hours were
speaking Hebrew -
-
learning and speaking Hebrew.
-
[Interviewer:] So, do you think...
Do you remember Romaniote well enough--
-
Greek... Well, I still speak Greek.
-
[ speaks Greek Romaniote ]
Do you speak Greek?
-
[ speaks Greek Romaniote ]
which means: "I speak Greek."
-
And, I don't speak it as often, but I...
-
Once you learn it as a youngster
it just stays in your mind.
-
[Interviewer:] But, the Greek you speak
must be quite different from--
-
It's what they call [ speaks Greek ] -
[ Greek ] means "from the countryside."
-
It's different from the...
when I speak to...
-
I was in Greece, the only...
I was there once
-
and I started speaking Greek to somebody
-
He says: [ in Greek ] -
"You're from Ioannina."
-
They knew the dialect,
-
I guess the way we know
a Southern accent or a Western accent.
-
They knew exactly the...
[ speaks Greek/ Romaniote ]
-
I say: "You're from Ioannina."