The Museum of |
Shabbat and the Jewish Holidays |
Paint What You
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The baker raised a nice family. One day he died. Someone took me to the shive, the mourning, and pointed out a glass on the windowsill. The water in the glass was quivering. I was told that the baker's soul was cleansing itself before escaping through the window to heaven. It was customary that, on Saturday afternoon, after a heavy meal, people would lie down for a nap. When I was six or seven years old, there wasn't much to do then. I had a cousin my age, and we went to school together. We would play in our kitchen on Saturday afternoons. There weren't many toys to play with, so we used whatever we could find: we liked to line up the kitchen chairs and benches and play trains and wagons. Father would emerge from his bedroom, which was right next to the kitchen, and beg us, "It is such a beautiful day. Why don't you please play outside?" Not until I was a married man with children of my own did I understand why my father wanted to get rid of us on a Saturday afternoon. |
My parent's bedroom was a nice room. The exterior wall was so thick that the windowsill was more than two feet deep. Mother filled the windowsill with plants: red geraniums, aloe vera, which we used for medicinal purposes, oleander in big wooden planters, and fuschia. We kept the gramophone in this room. We got it from one of my father's aunts, Mime Maryem: she was my grandfather's sister. She lived in a small town. When she was about to immigrate to Canada, my father went to say good-bye to her and brought back her gramophone. We considered it the first gramophone in Apt, although others have also claimed that honor. With it came one record: Rossini's William Tell Overture. This was the first classical music I heard. We played it incessantly. we would open the windows and all the neighbors would line up to listen to the miracle: some people wondered how a whole orchestra could fit into such a small horn. |
Kirshenblatt, Mayer
(1916-2009) |
Mayer talks about Shabbat in his family's home, as well as the furnishings in the family house. Listen to it. |
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