The Heavens Are Empty - Avrom Bendavid-Val [13]
Each family had a mill in which the wheat was ground into flour. From the barley they prepared tasty cereals. Each family possessed a wooden mortar, made from the stump of a tree and burning a hole in the root. To use in this they made a pestle for crushing. The barley was put into the hot oven after the bread had been taken out. Inside the oven the barley dried and after that it was put into the mortar and crushed with the pestle. This work was always kept for Thursday so that they would have enough crushed barley for the Sabbath meal.
On Friday everyone finished work early and after lunch everyone, young and old, would dash to the ritual bathhouse to take a bath, would then get dressed in Sabbath array and would go to the synagogue. In summer it was a pleasure to hear the friendly greetings “Shalom aleichem”9 and the music of the voices of the fathers and children was carried from the synagogues the length of the street and would enter into every limb. After supper we would sit out on our front steps and breathe in the delightful scents of the grass, the blossoms and the pine trees of the Radziwill forest. We had no electric light but there was light in our hearts and our eyes sparkled and illuminated the darkness around. We used to sleep soundly and peacefully without fear of burglars or thieves.
On the Sabbath morning one would awaken to the sounds, coming through the open windows, of the chanting of psalms or the reciting of the weekly portion of the Torah. Neither did the women stand idle. They had to wait for the Gentile who came to milk the cows on the Sabbath and for the Gentile cowherd who took the cows out to pasture. After the early morning prayers we would drink the tasty chickory from a pot warming on the oven. The milk was well boiled with a thick skin on it. Only then would we put on our kapotehs10 and girdling cords and our prayer shawls with the tzitzis11 tucked into the cords and we would go to the synagogue in whole families, grandfather, father, sons and grandchildren; a whole regiment!
We came home gaily and in high spirits, made kiddush,12 washed (even the very small boys) and smacked our lips over the calves’ foot jelly and chulunt13 that only an angel could have baked so deliciously in the oven, and were served with potato pudding (“kugel”), and if there was a piece of stuffed intestine (“kishke”) in addition, then it was indeed a Sabbath meal of the first order. After eating the meat out of the chulunt and the tzimmes14 we said grace and went to bed.
We were no sooner up than the hot tea, which was taken out of the stove, was on the table. Then the whole family would go out for a walk around the fields and gardens to see and take pleasure in the way all was sprouting, growing, and blooming. Only a villager can realize what this means; a town dweller can never understand it. Many would stroll in the Radziwill forest. The children would pick the wild berries with their mouths for, on the Sabbath, it was forbidden to pick by hand because that was defined as work. After the walk the men would go to the synagogue for the afternoon prayers and would return home to “shalosh seudes,” “the third meal,” a good “borsht” whipped with cream, and again the singing of the zmires [Sabbath songs] would resound throughout the townlet. After evening prayers we made “havdala,” the ritual prayer differentiating between a holiday and a routine day. The women would then go off to the cow stalls to milk the cows and churn the butter, as it had to be ready for dispatch to Lutsk early on Sunday morning.
Everyone lived for the peaceful routine of the Sabbath, and the year was marked by the Jewish holidays. People gave the date of their birth as so many days or weeks before or after the nearest Jewish holiday. Shmilike