Page 85 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Idling in Pelcovizna
it has the only oil lamp, without a book to read—and even had there
been books, they could not have read them, never having learned the
rudiments of language—there must be work to occupy them or they
will fight and call each other names. The greatest benefit God
bestowed on women, besides breeding children, is knitting; and a
special benefit to the women in our small towns was the gift of
slicing goose feathers. Knitting stockings for the whole family was
quite a job, yet it was not enough to occupy the women the whole
long evening. Geese are cold-weather fowl; they become fat and full
of feathers and down in the wintertime. Beef was very expensive, but
geese were cheap, good and tasty, and in a cold climate feather beds
are very comfortable.
So people bought a goose for Sabbath, saved the fat—which is
delicious—and saved the feathers. The down is very fine and
expensive, so in the long winter nights all the females of the house
sat around a big bowl and cleaned the feathers, slicing the down from
the quills. It would have been an encumbrance to keep all the
feathers saved through so many years, but in a family with many
children someday to be married off, the matriarch saves them for all
the future mamas and papas. To an outsider it might look like a
tedious job, but the women have a way of talking about all things in
the world. When through with the gossip they tell stories heard from
others, stories about gruesome witches and such hair-raising stories
about ghosts in cemeteries that it made the younger children huddle
together near Mother for fear of those ghosts—which those women
described in such a simple and believable manner.
The men of the old type were no better than the women when it
came to superstitious beliefs. In the bet hamidrash where we studied,
especially in the long cold winter nights, some of the elderly men
who could not understand the Talmud would huddle around the coal
stove and tell each other stories similar to the women’s tales. I,
having traveled on the railroad and seen Wisoka and Makova, as well
as having learned to read the Polish newspaper, laughed at those
stories and mocked those old men and hurt their feelings. They
threatened me and predicted that I would become a proselyte, a goy,
and would go to hell. When my father went on Sabbath day to the
synagogue, they would complain to him about my conduct. My father

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