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194 LUBOML
by peasants to weave cloth and make their own
clothing.
The machine stood in the lower room. A
horse was harnessed to a shaft in a stable next
door. It moved around in a circle, rotating the
machine. That is how the factory operated.
Next to the house a big place was reserved for
the peasants' wagons. Right after the High Holy
Days, this area was filled with wagons and with
horses freed from their harnesses. The front room
had big tables and long benches. The peasants
and their wives would be seated around these
tables, waiting their turn while making a meal out
of slabs of black bread with lard and washing
them down with vodka.
Some of the peasants would cross the street
to drop in on Chayke and drink tea. Chayke the
tshaynitshke [tea lady] would ladle out hot water
from a kettle and "put out the flame" in the
stomachs of the peasants, caused by eating bread
and lard.
The hubbub of peasants and machines lasted
from Sunday to Friday. Friday afternoon Avrom
Etyes' house took on a different face. The floor
was covered with yellow sand. The tables were
scrubbed and covered with snow-white tablecloths.
Candles were lit and the kerosene-lamps
burned brightly through their clean washed glass
chimneys.
Here, Binyomen held his Sabbath minyan,
where most of the surrounding neighbors came
to daven [pray] on the Sabbath: Sholem and
Yankef Cohen with their sons, Abba Klig, Avrom
Shmilyukes, Shimshen-Zalmen Yankef's,
Moyshe-Notl Gortenshteyn, the Kirnesees , Pinye-
Hersh, Chaye Dobes, etc.
Elye Horodler
My uncle was called Elye Horodler, because
his wife Paye was originally from the shtetl
Horodle, near the Bug River. He knew no other
kind of life than the one in which, being through
with slaving in his bakery, he would go to the
Stepenyer shtibl to pray and to study the sacred
books. No weather ever prevented his going there.
He was a quiet man, never making a racket, never
taking part in social activities.
My Aunt Paye always found time for two
things: to help the poor for the Sabbath and to
entertain company.
Later on their son Yankl Lerner introduced a
new way of making a living. He built himself a
house on the land occupied by the garden. There
he built a tanning plant. Huge tanks were buried
in the earth, with rims slightly above the ground.
Hides were soaked in these tanks in a liquid of
lime and oak-bark, and workers would stir the
hides with long steel tongs. The thick skins were
dyed brown, to be later formed into soles for
shoes. The thinner calf skins were dyed black.
The thicker hides were called yuchtn and were
used to make boots. The still thinner pieces were
used for odds and ends.
Merchants came from Lublin, Chelm and
and other cities to buy the leather. Yankl and his
brother Dovid (z"1) would take their wares by
horse and wagon to Hrubyeshov and Ludmir.
The trade would have brought in a fine income,
but the Polish regime saw to it that little was left,
barely enough to keep mouths filled. The rest was
taken by them in taxes.
Yankef-Leyzer Chesner
Early before dawn Jews ran to pray in the first
minyan. One of the earliest to arrive was Yankef-
Leyzer, a haberdasher.
Like all pious Jews, Yankef-Leyzer first of all
ran to render unto God his morning prayer and
then he would sit down to study a page of Gemara
(commentaries on the Mishnah).
All his life Yankef-Leyzer wore a long coat
like the other Chasidim. It is taken for granted
that he had a long beard and peyes (sidelocks1,
but his were somehow different from those of the
other Libivner Jews.
His beard began together with the peyes so
there was no distinct borderline between the
beard and the peyes, only a forehead and a pair of
eyes that peeped out from the forest of hair.
Sedate as he was while at prayer, in his store
Yankef-Leyzer was equally as distraught, for his
mind was always on his studies. He was more
immersed in the passage of the Gemara he had
read that day than in any item in his store. This is
why he ran around in the store as if in a daze when
a customer came in to buy something His oldest