Zellig Bach A Child's Longing for Home
9 Friday: a Gentile Woman Lends a Hand
 

The yeshi've was my world, the only world I knew. On my way to and from my Sundays I would pass the tall, white church on the hill; but as it had no place in my spiritual world, it was, in a strange way, almost nonexistent in my physical world.

There was also the marketplace where peasants from miles around would come twice a week to sell their produce. They brought the air, even the smell, of a totally new and different world beyond the confines of the world I knew. But before the day was over they returned to their homes and fields, and my school town would again remain immured in its typically exclusive Jewishness. Now it chanced that it was my Friday that introduced me unintentionally to the other world, the non-Jewish one.

The donor of my Fridays, it goes without saying, was Jewish, but her house was on the outskirts of the small town, and the people who lived there were mostly gentile.

She was in her late forties, of very small build, and lived alone. She seemed totally unconcerned about religion. She never asked me about my studies, nor did she express or show interest in anything religious—and I could never understand why she gave me a "day" in the first place, unless it was for no other reason than the goodness of her heart.

She had a gentile servant-woman named Ba'she, also unmarried, a sturdy, tall and buxom woman in her late thirties. Ba'she had a bright, round face, lots of energy, and a pealing laughter. With her knack for turning ordinary everyday happenings into delightful experiences, she reminded me in many ways of Mr. Gurevitch, of my Mondays. Both radiated affirmation and love of life, and the ring of their laughter bubbled with happiness.

My Friday donor had a cow, and Ba'she would carry on lively "conversations" with her. She milked the cow, churned butter, pressed cheese. She also grew vegetables—tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes.

The food here was the freshest I ever tasted, every meal wholesomely prepared and served with loving care. For some unknown reason—maybe on account of my saying the traditional prayers before and after my meals, a custom from which they both felt excluded—my donor and Ba'she had always eaten before I arrived. So during my meals Ba'she was busy serving me, never tiring of preparing anything which might please me, while my benefactor just sat quietly on a sofa, taking in and enjoying the whole scene.
 


I was very small for my age, and once Ba'she sat me down in her lap, hummed melancholy strains of a Lithuanian lullaby, and rocked me playfully for several minutes as if I were an infant.

One day, upon noticing something lively in my hair, Ba'she removed my hat which I wore all day long in the manner of a grown-up pious Jew, and gave it a brief inspection with an apparently practiced eye. She promptly decided that my hair badly needed a good washing with lots of hot water and plenty of strong "blue" soap.

This was certainly a very valid conclusion. No one could deny that. But that she also decided to do it right then and there, was to me the greatest surprise. Before I could utter even a token protest, my hair was already in deep, warm lather. It was an immensely pleasant sensation which I had not known for a long time, and Ba'she's strong fingers, gently and efficiently working all over my hair and scalp, mysteriously quickened my pulse.

Once she asked me who was taking care of my laundry. Finding my answer unsatisfactory, she promptly suggested that I bring it to her every Friday so that she could wash it for me. This I accepted without hesitation. Thus Ba'she washed my hair and did my laundry every Friday for almost two years.

And so it happened that Ba'she, a simple peasant woman, was truly like a mother to me, with greater concern and understanding than my so-called "foster mother" Esther. That Ba'she was non-Jewish made her deeds in my estimation even greater. It was clear to me that, while the good deeds of the donors of all my other "days" would assuredly go to their credit in the heavenly ledgers and stand them to good account in the Hereafter, all my learning and praying and pious ways were naught and meaningless in the eyes of her God. Ba'she's kindhearted deeds were thus greater and of purer quality, because there was no future recompense, except the deep and boundless gratitude in the heart of the child and future man.

Friday was my warmest "day" in terms of human relationships. But as luck would have it—my luck!—this outstanding and wonderful "day" consisted of two meals only, breakfast and lunch. This, of course, was not the fault of either my Friday donor or Ba'she. Friday evening was an inseparable part of the Sabbath, and the Friday evening meal belonged traditionally to the Sabbath "day."

I was intensely saddened by the loss of a whole third of my "Friday," but soon found in this very loss a strange and remarkable cause for rejoicing . . .