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In describing the daily life of our town, it is
worthwhile to mention the bathhouse, which
played such an important part in the life of the
city throughout its history. The dependence upon
the mikveh [ritual bath] by a great majority of the
population was tremendous, both on Mondays
and Thursdays, when those ultra-Orthodox Jews
who were meticulous in observance came to
immerse themselves for ritual purposes, and even
more so on the eves of Sabbath and festivals, when
great numbers of the townspeople, young and old
alike, flocked to the place to bathe themselves in
hot and cold water.
Those of a delicate nature or of an aesthetic
bent (among the intelligentsia) shrank from having
to stand naked in the presence of the huge
crowd that came on the eves of Sabbath and
holidays. They preferred to come on a regular
weekday, usually Thursdays, when there were
fewer visitors, the place was cleaner, and they
could even take a bath for a special fee paid to
Itche, the attendant.
Even in summer attendance at the bathhouse
did not let up, for the town was quite far from any
river or lake and there were only a few shallow
ponds in town that served as a laundry for the
village women in summer and, in winter, as the
source for ice that was put into the cold cellars and
lasted until the end of summer.
With time, the importance of the bathhouse
rose even more because a deep-water well was
sunk in it, whose clear waters could be easily
obtained with a hand pump (der plimp). Everyone
who lived in the vicinity of the bath got their
water from the well and no longer had to depend
on the shallow well water that was never particularly
tasty or clear and that had to be obtained
THE PUBLIC BATHHOUSE
By Yisroel Garmi (Grimatlicht)
163
with a great deal of effort, and often a great deal of
stress, if the rope broke and the bucket dropped.
From early morning until late at night it was
always busy around the pump and anything that
broke was fixed immediately.
This well was in much better condition than a
second one that was dug after some time in the
center of the marketplace and whose pump broke
shortly after; it was soon abandoned. On chilly
autumn evenings, anyone who passed through
the market would hear the sound of water, a
gloomy, mysterious sound, that rose up from its
spout.
The third pump, on Chelm Street (it had a
wheel), worked well, but it did not have the water
volume of the main well next to the bath.
Due to the bathouse's location, close to the
center of town in a heavily populated area an d
not far from the synagogue, it served as a kind of
convenient farewell point during funerals. The
route of funerals usually went through the alleyways
near the bathhouse, and those among the
mourners who, for whatever reason, could no
longer continue to the cemetery left the procession
here and were able to wash their hands at
the pump [done according to Jewish tradition
after contact with death].
The bathhouse was in an old, large, wooden
structure with two entrances: the first on the
southeast side for men and the second on the
west side, to the special mikveh for women.
It had a dark exterior and it appeared as one
large black mass that frightened those who passed
by at night. During the week it seemed deserted
and devoid of life, except for the early morning
hours on Mondays and Thursdays, when a few
regulars came to immerse themselves in the steam-