Part I
A personal story
Jerusalem, not the city of noisy streets, skyscrapers or
humming shopping malls but one of beauty and simplicity, of
love of life despite lack and scarcity, of chessed and
brotherly love, of the ten measures of wisdom, nine of which
were given to the people of Jerusalem.
Life in Jerusalem sixty, seventy or eighty years ago, as
Rebbetzin Nechama remembers it. She was born there and has
lived there to this day. She gives us a taste of the life
that was then and is no more:
The Kindness of the Homespun Girls
We were homespun girls. We lived within the community of our
families, relates Rebbetzin Nechama longingly. We loved the
home, working in the home and for the home. We only went out
to volunteer for old women or those who had difficulty
managing. In those days, everyone understood that they had to
help others, and there were no organized or official
chessed organizations.
Every Thursday, we went out, my sister and I, on a mission
for our mother, to collect money from door to door. With that
money, Mother bought staples for Shabbos for a few needy
families whom she knew personally and whom she helped support
on a regular basis.
Every week, my older sister would visit several families and
help them out. In those days, there were families who
actually lacked everything, because then there was no
government allowance, no welfare benefits. Many old people
were left helpless without any source of income or support.
Our family `adopted' an old woman and everyone in the family
had a job to do for her. One sister cleaned her house,
another stayed with her day and night after she broke her leg
and couldn't manage anything around the house. As the
youngest, I set up her candles for Shabbos.
What, you may ask, was so involved about arranging candles
for Shabbos? First of all, we prepared the wicks. We broke
off a piece of straw from the broom and wound a piece of
cotton around it which was taken from the stuffing of a
corner of the mattress. We put this wick in a small glass and
filled it with oil. These were the Shabbos candles in every
Jewish home in Jerusalem. `Our' old lady said to us that
every time she lit the Shabbos candles, she would bless us
that all we did be successful.
We had regular jobs in the community as well. For example,
washing the floors in the synagogue every Friday. Then, women
and girls from the community were the ones who washed the
shul, without any embarrassment, considering it holy
work in the mikdash me'at, each synagogue which was
considered a smaller, latter-day version of the Beis
Hamikdosh. My mother, o.b.m., did so till the day she died.
She cleaned the shul in the Yemin Moshe neighborhood,
to where they moved after the War of Independence in 1948.
She also laundered its towels and starched the
tablecloths.
When we moved to Yemin Moshe, refugees from the Holocaust
began arriving, broken in body and spirit, and there was a
great deal of chessed to be done for them. Actually,
we did chessed all year round, throughout our lives.
In my opinion, this is how a Jewish home, a home of Torah, is
built. Jews are always thinking about others more than about
themselves.
Did you read any books? Were there any books?
No, there weren't any books as we know them today, only
textbooks such as math primers or lehavdil, the holy
texts. We were told stories about tzaddikim from
Tzena U'rena, Menoras Hamaor and Kav Hayoshor.
I used to read to my grandmother from these books. Only when
I was older did books by Lehman begin to appear.
Where did you learn?
I began my studies at Beis Yaakov, which R' Hillel Lieberman
zt'l founded over sixty years ago. My older sister
still attended the Altshuler school. The boys learned in the
Eitz Chayim cheder or in the Meah Shearim
cheder. These were the main institutions existing in
the Old Yishuv. There were no kindergartens for girls. We
began learning at five or six and the boys began their
studies at three.
The Main Chessed Was at Home
I spoke about doing chessed outside, but
chessed really began at home. We helped launder and
iron and starch. All these were difficult and complicated
chores. We sewed everything at home, from scraps of fabric we
had bought, on our real Singer sewing machine with a foot
pedal, that Mother received as a dowry for her wedding.
We sewed everything, from pajamas to nightgowns to towels and
sheets, as well as clothes for weddings. In my childhood, I
was sewn a set of new clothes twice a year: for Succos and
for Pesach, from a remnant of material costing half a lira.
There was also cheaper fabric — a swatch with a defect,
which cost grushim. Mother would hide the defect with
a pocket or she added lace or other trimming, each person
according to her imagination. Here a tie, there a bow or a
double collar. We were very creative, even without sewing
books, and we looked wonderful. The main thing was that the
clothes be clean and ironed and look very neat.
We laundered and ironed and starched almost all the clothes
till they were nice and stiff. If we wanted a slip, we would
cut one out from a worn sheet, sew it up, thread an elastic
band at the waist, sometimes adding a bit of ruffle or lace
ribbon at the bottom, and we'd have a smart looking slip. My
daughters wore slips like that for years.
Each Thursday, we aired out the blankets and changed all the
sheets in honor of Shabbos. The white sheets gleamed from all
the bleach and were smoothly ironed. I always ironed the
sheets and pillowcases, because they were all cotton. There
was no synthetic material in those days. I ironed the kitchen
towels, pajamas and even the underwear. Then I put them away
in the cupboard, lined up in columns like soldiers.
We never sat idle and never complained about nothing to do.
In those days, even washing the floor was hard work. We
didn't buy floor rags like the wealthier people [still in use
today in Israeli households, called sponjador] but
made them ourselves by sewing together hemp potato sacks. The
floor tiles were not smooth like today's even floors and we'd
have to scrub the bumps and indentations with a straw broom.
Then we shined the tiles with washing soda.
Laundry was a chapter in itself. We would do laundry only
once a month or every six weeks. At night, we soaked the
clothes in a pyla, a large iron tub, with water and a
lot of laundry soda. In the morning, at sunrise, a Jewish
laundress came, put the wash in a big basin, heated it on the
primus stove and boiled it. Then she would scrub clothes
together with us, with large yellow bars of Shemen laundry
soap, all that was on the market at the time. We rinsed the
laundry in the pylas, with plenty of water, and the
white nightgowns were soaked in laundry bluing that gave the
white laundry a white shine. We hung it all up to dry on
lines in the courtyard. The wash came out so clean and
sparkling white that the neighbors who got up in the morning
and saw the clothing would jokingly ask if it had snowed
during the night.
The white cotton laundry was then treated with starch so that
it stayed flat without a single wrinkle. The homemade starch
was a thick, transparent liquid made from potato flour and
water in which we dipped the clothes. To this day, I starch
the napkins I embroidered fifty years ago. When my
granddaughters ask me how it is that the napkins are so
beautiful, I tell them that I starch them to look like
new.
We used a heavy iron whose heat came from the coals deposited
inside it. We would have to fan the coals till they warmed up
and gave off sparks, and more than once, we got coal on our
clean clothes and had to launder them again.
We loved our housework, physically taxing as it was. Hashem
gave us the strength to draw water from the well, to carry
the pails of kerosene and ice, and to do the rest of the
manual work.
After finishing the laundry, we scrubbed the pylas and
the copper primus with sand sold to us by an Arab. We used to
compete who could have the shiniest primus.
Today you push a button and the machine does the laundry, so
all one has strength for today is to push buttons.
A Crust of Bread in Oil, and Water in a Pitcher
We cooked on the primus "stove" and happy was the one who had
an Ideal primus, one that was quieter. Both worked on
kerosene that was brought by Moshiko who rang a hand-held
bell and summoned us all. Everyone needed kerosene and we all
came running to his horse-drawn wagon, with a huge drum. We
filled our pail or two, as need and budget dictated.
We bought ice in the same way. A horse drawn wagon laden with
blocks of ice would show up every other day and whoever was
late in hearing the hand-held bell had no ice for the next
two days. But in any case, there wasn't much food to keep
cool and preserved. Almost everything was cooked fresh,
anyway.
Our small "fridge" was a box about a meter high. The ice
blocks were placed on the upper shelf of the fridge and as it
slowly melted, the water flowed through a tube to the lower
drawer. This had a pipe which was drained into a pail when it
filled. You don't think we threw away that water, do you?
What a waste! We washed floors with it. Between the top shelf
and the bottom drawer were a number of shelves on which we
put a few dairy products and some fruit. I still have the
primus and a paraffin "stove" in my storage area, as well as
basins and somewhat misshapen copper pots. The food would
cook slowly and patiently in them and come out tasting
delicious. Cholent and kugel that stood on a
paraffin or primus stove were much tastier than those made
quickly today in a gas or electric oven.
We drank water from ceramic pitchers called tanaja.
The water was drawn from a cistern, where it was really cold,
and the temperature was maintained for a few days in those
earthenware pitchers. For a simcha, we would add color
and flavor to the water from something we called
barad, literally, hail. This was made from ice
shavings flavored with syrup.
We cooked fresh food every day and on Fridays, for Shabbos as
well, of course. The food was simple. Tomatoes — which
were not always in season — with an egg, lentil or bean
soup. The cooked beans were taken out of the soup, mashed and
a little oil and onion added. This side dish was filling and
delicious.
The delicacy I loved as a child was patties made from a
plant, or actually, a weed, called chubiza, which grew
wild on the side of the road. The small fruit at the center
was taken out, ground up and made into patties. We added many
slices of bread and washed it down with watermelon and were
satisfied. Occasionally, we would get a bunch of grapes in
summer and an orange in winter for a special dessert, but
most of our meals were based on bread.
We ate fish and chicken only on Shabbos and yom tov. A
soup from chicken wings and legs and a few scalded almonds
was considered a real oneg Shabbos. I am convinced
that the chickens then had a different taste than those of
today. Perhaps because we ate them freshly slaughtered and
not frozen, or because they grew naturally, roaming freely in
barnyards. They were brown, red or black, the color of the
local Arab chickens. A soup with two necks, two wings and two
chicken legs, when cooled, would turn out congealed like the
galle delicacy made from real meat bones.
I remember lying in the hospital after birth, together with a
woman from a kibbutz. When she told me that she made chicken
soup from a whole chicken, I thought she came from another
planet. Who could afford a whole chicken? I had five children
at that time and a number of legs and wings were enough for
Shabbos and into the middle of the week! All in all, we were
full and happy. Today there is an abundance, but no
satiety.
An egg was a rare thing, especially during austerity. My
mother promised a whole egg to whomever would be a good girl.
Generally, mother would take an egg, add water and flour, fry
it like a latke and divide it up among the four of us
(we are four girls). Each one received a quarter of an egg,
felt full and was happy and satisfied. We bought the eggs
from Arabs who raised chickens in their yards.
We bought fruits and vegetables from the Arabs, who
transported them by wagon from Beit Lechem and Chevron. In
the Old City, they also managed to grow vegetables in their
courtyards. Their fruits — grapes, apples, apricots and
oranges, were superior. They also grew tiny grape-sized
apples called zar'ur, which were also delicious.
Before Pesach, tomatoes and cucumbers would appear, since
they didn't know how to grow them in the winter. We ate
radishes and green onions in the winter, mashing, adding a
little oil, lemon juice and salt, and this would make a very
tasty salad.
Olive oil used for cooking was bought in tin containers from
the Arabs. We also bought butter from them, since it is known
that butter can be made only from the milk of a cud-chewing
animal. We prepared olives, a staple in our diet, by
ourselves. These couldn't be eaten freshly picked because
they were hard and bitter. We bought them from the Arabs in
the late fall, after the harvest, pounded them on the floor
tiles and then pickled them in jars with salt and water until
they softened and the bitterness left. There were no
preserves or canned goods, only the jams we made ourselves.
We also made noodles and farfel ourselves. We were
busy all day around the house. Life was never boring.
We ate a lot of bamya or okra, a vegetable in a green
pod, short and hairy, with a `cap' on its head. We would
remove the cap and wash off the gluey substance that held
this stem in place. Afterwards, we cut them and dried them in
the sun on a tray. After they dried, we cooked the
bamya in tomato paste with spices. We ate a lot of
this dish because it was tasty and healthy since it contains
a lot of iron and other minerals and vitamins.
Even the caps served us. We dried them, too, played with them
and had a good time.
The food in those days was fresh and somehow, more
nourishing, so people were stronger. (Perhaps because we
worked hard and kept in shape and ate less junk food.)
Whoever tasted the fruits and vegetables, the bread and
chicken of times gone by knows the big difference.
[Next week: Home-made Jerusalem weddings of yore.]
