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156 LUB OML
View of the Great Synagogue from the northwest. The low building contains three little synagogues: from the south, the
tailors; the middle, the Psalm-sayers; the north, the Stepenyer Chasidim (Courtesy Polska Akademia Nauk, Instytut Sztuki)
It is worth mentioning one of the common
Jews who prayed near the stove where the cut
wood was piled up. His name was Abish the
tailor, and he was very pious. Whenever Elye
Mestsheches, the permanent prayer leader, was
incapacitated and could not read on a Sabbath,
the sexton would call on either the young man
Shmuel Fuks, or on Abish.
An d what can I say? The sweetness with which
Abish read the Torah with the right intonation
remains in my memory until today! It is still a
mystery to me why such a man as Abish had to be
stuck all his life behind the stove! Perhaps the fact
that he was a tailor condemned him to a lower
social status.
In the middle of the week, the prayers were
rattled off, because the worshippers were preoccupied
with worries about in.come and other
troubles! But on Sabbath the congregation lingered
over the prayers. The men would dis-
cuss politics or read a sacred book. On the
dawn of the Sabbath they read the Psalms; at
noon they went home for a drink kept warm
by hot sand on the pekelek (the upper part of
the oven), or else by being covered with rags.
And only then did the men go to Shachris
(Sabbath morning prayer).
Sabbath evening, as the shul grew darker and
darker, they celebrated ShaloshSe'udos (the third
meal). They seated themselves around the long
tables covered with table cloths and had a bite of
challah and a piece of herring; and they sang
zmires (Sabbath songs.).
Moyshe Tribeykish, the son-in-law of Elye
Mestsheches, had a very pleasant voice. He would
begin to sing and the others would join in.
Then Yoneh the shames (sexton or beadle)
would come with a lighted candle, and the congregation
would begin the evening prayer of
Ma'ariv.