Chapter FOUR

The sun had barely risen when shops around the market square began to bustle with shtetl folk rushing to make last-minute purchases for the Sabbath. Candles, matches, kerosene, salt, and flour flew off the shelves. 

By late Friday afternoon, the little village teemed with the scurry of women carrying earthenware pots of cholent, a ragu of meat, potatoes, beans, and barley, to Jankiel’s bakery, where their pots sat simmering in his oven overnight. They were collected the following morning, piping hot, and served for lunch since no cooking was allowed during the Sabbath.

At the sinking sun, all trade ceased. No money was permitted to exchange hands. Merchants closed shop early, and the streets grew quiet.

At dusk, Rav Semmel made his way to the mikveh in the synagogue courtyard, where he immersed himself in its steamy waters, brushing his body with a small broom, a purification ritual to cleanse body and soul before entering the synagogue.

The drone of menfolk chanting the mikveh prayers rose from the bathhouse, drifting down Pilsudski Street through the open kitchen window where Sheva and Regina stood polishing the silver Sabbath candlesticks. 

“I remember so clear my mother verklempt (choked up) when she heard the singing - crying quiet to herself, the tears running from her eyes when we stood there polishing. She singing soft the prayers together with the voices coming in the window.  She came from a very religious family. Rich people. My father’s family didn’t had money.  My mother was special. Everybody was her friend. She didn’t had one enemy.”

After bathing, her father put on his newly washed bekishe and set out from the bathhouse. Hastening through the village, he rapped on the shutters of the shtetl homes with his knobbed staff, summoning the men to evening worship.

Meanwhile, Regina helped her mother put the finishing touches to the Friday night meal, the kitchen deliciously redolent with mouth-watering aromas—chicken soup with dumplings, stuffed cabbage leaves bathed in a tomato puree, pickled herring on a bed of onions, honeyed carrot tzimmes, and for dessert, a fruit compote or perhaps an apple raisin babka layered with nuts, dusted with cinnamon and sugar.

“My mother was famous for her cooking. She made chicken soup the color from gold. Since a little girl, I learned from her. She put next to the kitchen table a chair for me to stand so I can watch.” 

Every Sabbath, Moishe, Regina’s brother, and his family would join them for the Sabbath meal and any stragglers her father brought home from the synagogue.

“Always he brought home with him oreme mentshn (poor folk) or some strangers passing through who have nowhere to go for Shabbos. Four, five, six people.  My mother put extra chairs around the table before Shabbos in case visitors were joining us. ”

They would set the table with a white linen cloth and their best china. At the head of the table, where her father sat, stood an empty silver goblet he would fill to the brim with sweet wine at the start of the Sabbath dinner, and next to it, two crusty loaves of braided challah, one topped with sesame seeds, the other studded with plump sultanas.

As twilight fell, all preparation ceased, and Sheva called Regina to light the Sabbath candles. 

And from street to street, house to house, flickering flames danced on windowpanes, and a spirit of holiness descended the little shtetl. 

As the skies drew dark and night settled over the village, kerosene lamps were lit, and the women and children, dressed in their Sabbath finery, eagerly awaited the menfolk. 

After the service, jubilant chants rang from one end of the village to the other as the men spilled out of the synagogue and streamed along the cobbled streets, making their way home, where they would gather for the Sabbath meal.

“Starting eight o’clock, I was looking from the window, waiting for my father. My mother was asking from the kitchen, ‘He’s coming yet?’ Then, corner Pilsudski and Bystrzycka Street, I could see him, and I ran quickly to open the door.”

He would hang his hat and bekishe on a brass hook on the wall and fold her in his arms.

“Have you been good this week, Regina?” he would ask.

“Always he asked me this. Of course, I told him ‘yes.’ Then he would shout to my mother in the kitchen if I have been good. ‘A malakah. (An angel)’ she would say. Same thing every time.”      

And in every Jewish home, children lined up for the traditional Sabbath blessing, and fathers spread their hands over their heads and recited: “May God make you like Efraim and Menashe, Sarah, Rifka, Rachel, and Leah. May God lift his eyes, show you favor, and be gracious unto you. Amen.”  

And the lilt of song and prayer rose from house to house, welcoming the Sabbath bride—the worries and travails of the week forgotten.

“The house was shaking with singing, and my father was dancing round the table with all the men.  Everybody having a good time. In the afternoon before Shabbos, my mother made a few beds on the floor with pillows and blankets in case strangers were passing through who have nowhere to stay.  Shabbos was for us very special. Sometimes, we didn’t finish until early morning, talking, arguing, laughing, my father explaining Talmud.”

Such was life in the little village. But their hardscrabble lives were, in truth, guttering flames. Within a few short years, the dam of anti-Semitism would burst. Within a few short years, there would be not a whisper of a single Jew living in the little shtetl.

All of them utterly vanished.,