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l~harlng was a way of life for our entire family in the little
house in Pumpian， Lithuania， where I was born in 1907，
two weeks before Chanukah， the Jewish \"Feast of
Lights，\" which usually falls in December. Living in our
small， one-room wooden house with its thatched roof
kept us all in close harmony and there was even a
measure of joy， despite the hardships of those days in a
tiny town in Eastern Europe.
Life there during my childhood was quiet and leisure-
ly， and I liked Pumpian very much. I liked the feel of my
bare feet on the smooth， flattened earthen floor that was
cool both in summer and winter. For warmth on cold
winter afternoons and nights， we huddled as close to the
huge， rough-brick oven as we could. And for light we had
the soft glow of candies and our kerosene lamp. Putty，
supplemented by rags， was stuffed into cracks to keep as
much of the cold air as possible from coming through the
two double-paned windows in the \"front\" of our house，
which actually faced our backyard. Our one-room abode
had no other window. The door of the house also faced
the back yard， where Mother， with all of us helping，
planted a garden and raised vegetables during the warm
Spring and Summer mouths.
Here， too， each year Father built a succah， a kind of
booth， where we celebrated Succoth， one of the many
~olidays that played a major role in the life of the Jewish
;ommunity of Pumpian. Succoth marked the traditional
rewish harvest time， and we helped Father roof the tiny
landmade wooden structure with branches and we deco-
ated the inside with flowers， fruits， and nuts symbolic of
he harvest. The succah and the Succoth recalled the
m.p~rary hastily erected dwellings of ancestors in
)Or!y years of wandering in the our
-~， otter the exodus from Egypt. desert on the way to
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