Zellig Bach A Child's Longing for Home
11  Saturdays: a Window to the World
 

If my Fridays took me geographically to the outskirts of my school town and brought me in direct contact with a warm, understanding gentile woman, my Saturdays transported me even farther and introduced me indirectly to life in the country—fields and barns, and the ways of peasant folk.

My Saturdays were at the home of a former butcher who became a cattle dealer. The head of the family, as well as his two elder sons, were out in the country most of the week, traveling from one livestock fair to another. Between fairs they would visit farmers and country squires to buy cattle. Sometimes, after drawn-out negotiations, they would sleep overnight in small country inns, in homes of farmers, or even barns.

On Friday afternoons father and both sons would return home for the Sabbath, to stop all manner of business from sundown to sundown in observance of the day ordained at Mount Sinai.

To cover different sections of the countryside, father and sons worked separately, but all three within a short distance from home in order to get back in time for the Sabbath. Their weekly gatherings became the occasion, during mealtimes, to give and exchange colorful details of their business deals and travel experiences.

To me it was an exquisite view of life in an entirely new world. Everything they said was like a tale from a different "outer" world. I was fascinated by their conversations, although I thought that it was impious for a Jew to think of money or business matters during the Sabbath. Furthermore, since the father and his two sons spent practically five-and-a-half days in the country, I wondered whether they had a min'yen (a quorum of ten) to pray three times a day, as required by tradition, and how they managed to observe the dietary laws among gentile peasants.

Many a Jew had to neglect, for economic reasons, the study of the sacred word, but he tried to make up for it in manifold ways. Giving a "day" to a young student was, of course, one of the ways. But I did not have the feeling that the family head of my Saturdays was very much concerned about the fact that learning was not part and parcel of his life, nor that of his two eldest sons. I even had the distinct notion that they enjoyed the doings and goings-on connected with their trade.
 


It was a large family—father, mother, and eight grown-up children, five sons and three daughters—and there was much happy banter at mealtime about the children, relatives, and, of special fascination to me, stories about peasant life, amusing incidents in inns and barns.

The table here during the Friday evening meal groaned under the massive weight of the many courses, steaming, delectable dishes piled high with nostril-tingling, mouth-watering varieties of foods.

Slices of white Sabbath Kha'le, with a sip of sweet red wine, each preceded by appropriate blessings, were followed by a wondrous array of appetizers: pieces of gefilte fish fit for a king, with a dash of breath-taking, tear provoking horseradish; chopped chicken liver with chicken fat, sprinkled with grated radishes; heavenly golden soup with "eyes" of fat cruising on top; and jellied calf's feet with a liberal sprinkling of garlic.

Next came the main dishes—golden-brown halves of roast chicken; huge cuts of boiled flanken; heaps of savory slices of braised breast of beef; and the superb tsi'mes, that grand culinary Sabbath affair of potatoes, carrots, meatbones and plums;

And then came honey cake, and poppyseed cake, and scones with currants or raisins, and tarts and strudel; and apples and pears, and pressed figs, and all sorts of preserves;

Blue siphon bottles with taste-tingling, appetite-renewing seltzer constantly made the rounds among the members of the family and their weekly guest for the Sabbath "day."

Such a never-ending array of delicacies was to me, who came from an extremely poor home, beyond imagination.

Next day this fabulous abundance was topped by the one big meal of the Sabbath day, the meal after the lengthy morning service in the synagogue, and finished off with that veritable ambrosia of the Jewish cuisine—the tsho'lnt, a forestaste of the celestial banquet in Paradise, where the Righteous are feasted on the Leviathan and the "Guarded Wine." As usual, second and third helpings were the order of the "day."

But the meal of Sabbath evening was in total contrast to the two preceding meals. The father and his two elder sons already busied themselves with preparations for next week's trips. Everyone ate when and as he pleased, alone or with others.

The Sabbath evening meal was not a family affair anymore, and I usually ate alone, as if to be ready for the three lonely Sunday meals that lay immediately ahead, the meals during which practically not a word was spoken.

Each time the day of Sabbath drew to a close, intense sadness would slowly settle in Jewish dwellings, and everyone, old and young, felt the pain of separation. In synagogues and study houses the Sabbath valedictory was intoned in semidarkness. Queen Sabbath, herself saddened, was ready to depart, and harsh weekday reality was standing at the threshold to take her place.
 


The sorrow of the hour would overflow my heart. I felt the great separation personally. It was as if Sabbath, whom I had taken filially into my heart, was leaving me.

My studies taught me that the very minute of the fatal divide of the week from the sacred into the secular was of universal moment. The legendary river Sambat'yon, its fiery waves and glowing stones becalmed and hushed all Sabbath long, already sensed the oncoming change. The twenty-four hours of respite for the sinners in Hell were over, and their trembling souls must now start anew their cycle of punishments and torments. I, too, I felt, must now go back to my old cycle, the cycle of my "days" . . .

I would take a long and lonely walk to my room thinking all the time of home where in the graying hours of twilight, before Sabbath was over, my sisters and I would gather in one room, to await together the moment when it was permitted to light the kerosene lamp. And as the grayness of the evening would thicken into almost total darkness, and hooded shadows got together on the walls and told each other voiceless secrets, my sisters and I sang various songs, to still with the loudness of our voices the sadness of the moment within us.

I remembered in particular a simple Yiddish folk song which we used to sing at home on such Sabbath evenings. It was a beggar's account of his weekly fare:

 I felt like the beggar in the song, despite the "daily" variety of homes and tables, and like a true kinsman of his, I, too, could lament in similar tones: