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The bedroom doubled as a
formal living and dining room. We would eat in this room on the Sabbath
and holidays. I was dismissed early from khayder on Friday. Mother
did not go to the store on Friday so she could stay home and prepare for
the Sabbath. There were beautiful smells in the house, particularly in the
cool weather, when Mother baked at home. She would make her own challah,
butter cake, and mandlbroyt (almond bread, a cookie baked twice,
like biscotti). When she roasted a chicken, she was generous with garlic
and onions. While my father was still in Apt [now Opatów-ed.], two
brothers from a poor family would eat the Sabbath midday meal with us.
Their mother was widowed, so they were considered yesoymim,
orphans. They would have been about twelve and fourteen years old.
In warm weather, I would
take Mother's challahs and cakes to the baker's oven, because it
was too hot to bake at home. Friday afternoon, by about three o'clock, the
baker would be finished for the day and the oven would still be hot.
that's when I would pick up the challahs and cakes for the Friday
night meal and bring the food to be cooked for the Saturday meals: coffee
and milk for breakfast, and soup and tshulnt for the midday dinner.
The tshulnt was a stew of beans, potatoes, and meat. The baker would put
the dairy dishes on the left side of the oven and the meat dishes on the
right side. Everything cooked slowly overnight in the baker's oven, which
retained the heat from Friday's baking. You are not allowed to light a
fire on the Sabbath, but cooking food in the radiant heat of the oven was
allowed. I was delegated to bring this food to the baker on Friday and
pick it up on Saturday.
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Kirshenblatt, Mayer
(1916-2009)
Picking up Saturday's Tshulnt from the Baker
July 1996
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 40 in. |
Preparation for the Sabbath
was a big production, what with the baking, cooking, and cleaning. Mother
got up very early Friday morning. After she was done with the cooking and
baking, she bathed us in a big wooden laundry tub in the kitchen. The last
thing she did was to scrub the floor. Both the floor and the kitchen
furniture were made of unpainted pine. Mother poured a bucket of water on
the floor, got down on her knees, and scrubbed the bare wood with a brush
and a scouring powder called bielidlo. It was a combination of
bleach and abrasive. She would mop up the water with a rag. From constant
scrubbing, the floor and furniture became a beautiful ivory color. You
could see the grain in the burnished wood because the scrubbing wore away
the softer part of the grain and exposed the pattern. We had to remove our
muddy shoes when we came into the house. |
