MEMOIRS OF SHERESHEV
By MOISHE KANTOROWITZ
Avrom-Bear, the chimney-sweep, an old Jew who’s job it was to go around the
Jewish streets Friday and all other holidays before sunset and yell in a loud
voice, ”In Shul Arayin”,
meaning go to the synagogue. This was the signal for the Jewish stores to
close, for the Jewish workers and artisans to stop work and for the women to
light the Shabath candles. In the month of Ellul he used to go around the Jewish streets between two
and three in the morning knocking on doors and shutters shouting “Get up for Slychot” (penitence prayers). Jews used to get up early
every morning and go to the synagogues. I will admit that the majority that
used to go were older men. That chimney
sweep use to go around all the Jewish homes every Thursday and get a donation
for performing that “sacred work” which consisted of between 10-20 groszy from a well to do member or from 1-2 groszy from a poor member who’s
family was starving themselves. Besides
this function, Avrom-Bear was the only chimney sweep
in Shershev.
This old Jew, through all his years, used to climb on every roof in the Shtetl, with a small broom stuck on a long thin stick in
his hand. He positioned himself beside
the chimney jamming the broom into the chimney and used to push it all the way
down to the stove below. Having repeated
it several times he used to climb down and empty the stove below of all the
soot that came down from the chimney. Yet with all of his effort he was as poor
as they come having to support a wife, and a son and a daughter, both of whom
were passed the marriageable age for Shershev. The only benefit he could derive from his
profession was the fact that his beard was always black and nobody has ever
seen his face even on a holiday. Even
this Avrom-Bear used to lower his voice before the
“Days of Awe” which must have been difficult for him, for I believe that he
really forgot to speak in a normal voice. As far as I remember his voice always
thundered from one to the other end of the Shtetl. People made do with less gossip which was
quite popular. After all we had to have
something or somebody to talk about. In short people shied away from “every
forbidden thing”.
We, that is
my little brother “Liova”(Leibl) and I used to go with our father to the synagogue.
The floor of the synagogue, as I mentioned earlier used to be covered with hay
during the “Days-of-Awe”. Fortunately, some old men used to remain over night
to pray and to watch out for the burning candles otherwise I’m sure the
synagogue would catch on fire. For those
“Days-of-Awe” the membership used to arrange for a better “Bahalay-Tefilah”
(a person who leads in the prayer) and not settle for some of our own volunteer
members. They preferred Yankel KLEINERMAN or Tzalke Fun-Di-Zamden (from the
sand dunes) or Bendet LIFSHTZ who had better
voices. Understandably that such “Bahalay-Tefilah” did not come for free and the entire
treasury of the synagogue had to be emptied for such a pleasure which could
cost as much as five dollars. After the
short “Rosh-Hashona” eve prayer the congregants used
to wish each other a “Shana-Tova” (a good year) and
without the customary short chat, go home. The welcoming greeting coming home
was always “Leshona Tova Tikotaivu” (may you be insc0ribed
for a good year), Never a hint of a holiday.
After the “Kidush” (blessing on the wine) we
used to sit down to the “Rosh-Hashana” eve meal which
always used to start with golden chicken soup with noodles. The noodles my
mother used to say is very traditional as a reminder of our long lasting “Galut” (exile). This dish used to be followed by fish,
meat, with “Kreplach” (fritters stuffed with meat)
and other dishes, but never anything sour or bitter. The “Rosh-Hashana”
used to be spent between the house and the synagogue. We boys used to go to the
river and watch the crowd of worshipers that used to gather for “Tashlich” ( the ceremony of
casting the sins).
The ten
days of “Tshuva” (Repentance) used to pass in a very
subdued mood. The day before “Yom-Kippur” early in the morning all members of
the family used to perform “Shlogen Kaporot” (traditional sacrificial ceremony the day before
“Yom-Kippur”); the men with the cock and the women with a hen. Shortly after,
it was my task to take the fowls to the “Shochet”
(ritual slaughterer) who lived on the “Bet-Chaim”
street. The slaughterer, an older
respectable man, stood on the porch in his back yard, wrapped in a blood
stained apron, a long thin knife in one hand, took with his other hand the
receipt which I got from his wife or daughter coming into the house for the
twenty groshy slaughtering fee for each fowl. After
putting the receipt in a little box near by he leads the nail of his thumb over
the length of the sharp edge of the knife to make sure that there is no
adhesion on the knife. (It is a requirement by Jewish law to make the slaughter
of animals or fowls as painless as possible).
After this inspection with a quick slash he cuts the fowls neck and
throws it down to the ground below. Not losing a second he turns to the next
customer. The just slaughtered fowl used to try even to fly in its lasts
seconds of agony. It didn’t last more that 10-15 seconds before they were dead.
I and others used to pick up the fowl and take them home where they used to be
prepared for the meals before and after the fast.
About three
in the afternoon the men used to go to the synagogue for the afternoon prayers.
Right inside the synagogue at the entrance, they used to put down a large table
on which there were a dozen or more large plates containing signs indicating
the name of the charitable organization or purpose for which the alms are being
collected. For example: right in front was the plate for the synagogue, next
for the beadle, for the local free-loan-institution, visiting the sick, burial
associations and others. Besides the
above, there were out of town plates like Jewish national fund, Keren hayesod, keren-tel-chai, yeshivot and for
poor locals, the neediest of all. One had to come with some change in his
pocket. The saddest part was that most of the attending worshipers could use it
themselves. Of course each worshiper had his own preferred charity which he
used to favor more generously then the others.
The
traditional candles that we light on “Yom-Kippur” today in memory of the
departed were not the short and stubby ones; they were waxen candles 60 centimetres long, 5 centimetres
at the bottom and 3 centimetres on top. They were lit
not at home but in the synagogue right after the “Mincha”
prayers on “Yom-Kippur” eve and used to burn until after “Yom-Kippur”, that is
after dark the following day. Almost all
worshipers used to bring with them candles, one for each departed. Thus the
synagogue was full of huge lit candles that use to contribute more to the
already suffocating conditions of the crowded synagogue. As a result many of
the candles used to start melting and bending.
After the afternoon prayers they used to have the meal before the fast
which always started with chicken soup and noodles. My mother use to make sure
that the food is not salty so that we should not be thirsty during the
fast. For “Kol-Nydre”
(main and opening prayer of the eve of the Day of Atonement) and the following
Yom-Kippur day all of the Jewish population in the Shtetl
used to be in the synagogues, except for the bed-ridden. It was a tempting time
for the not so honest non-Jewish elements in the Shtetl
not to try to open a door or a window of a Jewish home knowing that none of the
people are home.
As the form
of the prayers in Shtetl was in all the synagogues
the same, the worshipers used to sing aloud with the “Chazan”
(Cantor) and my father use to make sure that I participate. As a substantial
part of the “Yom-Kippur” prayers are in Aramaic and despite the fact that at
that time I already could converse in Hebrew, I did not understand those
prayers fully and my father used to interpret them for me. I believe that my father had a gift for
languages, for there were no Hebrew schools in Shershev
in his youth and in a “Cheder” (traditional religious
school) they did not use the spoken Hebrew, yet my father was fluent in Hebrew.
The same applies to Polish even though my father grew up under the Czar where
the study of Polish was unavailable. He kept repeating to me; read and
understand what you are reading. “Nehila” (closing service of the day
of Atonement) time was a difficult time for the fasting crowd, firstly because
of the solemnity of the hour and secondly due to the total exhaustion at the
end of the long fast. After the closing prayer the “Ghabay”
(trustee of the synagogue) with some older members use to go outside to see if
there are three stars visible in the evening sky. When they appeared they used
to finish the day with “Maariv” (evening prayer) and
then blow the “Shoifar” (ram’s horn) after which the
worshipers used to answer with a loud “Leshono Abo B’yerusholoim” (next year in
Jerusalem). Worshipers hurriedly use to
wish each other by saying the words “Gmar-Chatimo-Toivo”
(may you be sealed for a good year) and hurry
home. My mother and sister Sheva use to leave the synagogue right after “Nehilo” and go home to get the feast ready which
traditionally use to start for my father with a small glass of Vodka and a
piece of “Lekach” (honey cake).
“Sukkot” (the feast of tabernacles) was a long and pleasant
holiday, which used to usher in the beginning of the winter. It might sound
strange but as far as I remember the first frost used to come
“Chol-Amoed” (intermediary-weekdays) of “Sukkot” and used to end the season of the “Zielonky” (a kind of green mushrooms) that appeared in late
summer and disappeared with the first frost. Gentiles used to put them in
vinegar or marinate. Jews used to fry or cook them.
The time
came to wear “Kaloshy” (short rubber boots worn over
shoes or boots). They had to be taken off before walking into the school. In
order to protect the wooden floors from rotting, they used to spray kerosene on
the floor every month or so. The moment one stepped on the kerosene covered
floor with the “Kaloshy” the bottoms of the “Kaloshy” began to blister and fall apart. With the cold weather and short days, our
activities became limited and we use to spend a fair amount of the evenings in
the local of the Betar where the time used to pass
quickly with singing Zionistic and contemporary songs, dancing the “Hora”, discussions about Zionistic and contemporary
problems.
None of us
could forget the early spring of 1933 when we heard grown-ups speaking of a man
by the name of Hitler who gained power in
One of my
favorite pastimes was reading books which I used to borrow from the Hebrew
library school. The library consisted of some two hundred and fifty books
mostly originally written in Hebrew but there were a few dozen that were
translated into Hebrew from other languages. I would say that a good part of
the library books I read before I left Hebrew school after finishing grade
four. There was also a “Yiddish”
library in Shershev founded by a group of young
people some ten years earlier. One of the founders and initiators of the idea
was my cousin Abraham AUERBUCH who in the year 1930 at the age of twenty
married a local beauty by the name of Channa MAISTER
and shortly after left for
Those young and
idealistic individuals saw it as their duty to provide worldly reading material
for the Jewish youth of Shershev who began slowly to
move away from the “Cheder” tradition to a more
modern educational system that began to expose them to new yet unknown
horizons. I’ll come back to it later.
November used to bring
with it the cold weather but seldom any snow. Yet I remember an eleventh of
November when there was snow on the ground as we paraded on that Polish
Independence Day while the rest of
The father of my two
friends Laizer and Litek
ROTENBERG hailed from around the town of “Chelem”
where he grew up on his father’s estate and from where he brought an
inexhaustible number of stories, which he shared with us boys during the long
winter evenings. Some of the stories were from his childhood, which was much
different than ours. Some were true stories and some were fictions. Being a
good storyteller he could keep us boys hypnotized with his stories for hours.
Many of his stories had to do with witches, ghosts and demons. Living in a society where many grown ups
believed in ghosts, we kids certainly were inclined to believe too. After
listening with my friends to his stories for a couple of hours we used to go
home on the dark night. My friends lived
along the street where one could see an occasional passer by at night. I lived
across the dark and empty square where to one side of our house stood the large
synagogue, which at that time of evening was closed and enveloped in darkness.
Behind our house some 20-25 metres stood the ancient
synagogue all burnt out except for its immense walls, imposing facade and with
young birch trees overgrown on the roof. As the flat ceiling and the upper part
was inaccessible to humans, birds and small animals made their homes there. At
night one could hear strange voices coming from that ancient relic, which were
rumored to be of ghosts, and demons that gathered
there at night. As I was nearing the
house I was also getting closer to the huge Shul and
the sounds coming from there. The closer I got to the house, the closer to the
sounds, the more scared I used to get. The relief used to come the moment I got
a hold of the door handle. The door got locked only when the last one in the
family used to go to bed.
Preparations for “Chanukah” (feast of the Maccabees) use to start in school a month before the festival. Each grade had its part to perform and each teacher wanted to please and get the praise of the spectators. So instead of lessons a lot of time was taken up with rehearsals which were at times quite entertaining and to which the students did not object. The performance used to take place on “Chanukah” Saturday night in the largest room where the stage was situated. The general public used to be invited, but the majority spectators were the parents of the students, especially the parents of the performers. This performance used to remain a topic for conversation in Shtetl for weeks to come, not so much among the students as among the parents who could not stop raving about their children’s artistic qualities or among parents who felt offended by the insignificant part their children were assigned in the play, worse yet if a child was completely overlooked and had no part at all. Traditionally on “Chanukah” we kids used to receive from our parents so called “Chanukah Gelt” (“Chanukah” money). Not only from the parents but also from grandparents and even aunts and uncles if we happened to be there in the right time. It was not big money but more than we used to get from our parents in our daily allowance. We could also spend it on anything our hearts desired.