My Sack Full of Memories. Zwi Lewin
only on the women’s upper level may well have been for security. Inside, the photographs show handrails were so coarsely finished they would have risked splinters in any hand that touched them. Outside was a barn door, sealed as barn doors usually were, by yet another hefty piece of timber. A forbidding building from the outside, yet it was renowned for its cantor and choir.
The Vishey choir would be invited to other nearby towns in Lithuania to perform. In the synagogue, the Torah (the Scroll with the Holy Scriptures) was kept behind the bi-fold doors of the Aron Kodesh (the Holy Ark). The doors and surrounds were hand-carved with a motif of branching vines with abundant stylised bunches of grapes looking rather like pineapples, which was unlikely the intent of the carver. An imposing double-headed Russian eagle topped the Aron Kodesh, holding a sword in one hand and wearing the imperial crown on its head, a not-too-subtle reminder to the congregation of whom one was expected to revere.
Next to the synagogue was the school and library. The synagogue suffered once more from the problem of building with timber in a climate where in winter only log fires could keep you warm, or there was a hostile gentile population with matches and evil intent. Not surprisingly, there was a Jewish volunteer fire brigade in Vishey.
The synagogue burnt down once more in 1924, when my mother was eighteen. It was rebuilt in 1927 with a new design, still made of logs, but better finished, and the gable roof was made of tin. It was a substantial building, for the new prayer hall was twelve metres long and eighteen metres wide with twelve windows on the longer walls and three on the southern and northern walls. A brighter and more welcoming building with the capacity to accommodate the whole community had been created. The men entered through a doorway in the centre of the western façade, while the women went up an external staircase to the upper level. Today, it remains intact, though green-painted weatherboards have covered the logs, and it is now a Baptist Church called ‘The Way of Life’ with no sign to indicate its previous incarnation.
The Baptist Church that was the Vishey Synagogue
Vishey Synagogue as seen from Lazowski home
Of greater interest is the fact that the synagogue was located on the opposite side of the lake from the Lazovski home. Both on the water’s edge, the two buildings had an uninterrupted view of each other and were separated by just a short walk across the bridge. Every Shabbat the Lazovski girls would be dressed in white and would walk together hand-in-hand to the synagogue.
In 1923, when my mother was seventeen, the first census took place in Lithuania, confirming that there were now 531 Jews in Vishey, over 50 per cent of the population. These were from 200 Jewish families spread over a few blocks on either side of the lake. They would have known every member of the community. By the 1930s, most of the Jewish youth belonged to Zionist organisations that flourished in Vishey, for there were at least four Jewish youth groups. The town was becoming progressive and a break was occurring between the older Orthodoxy and the new secular Zionism. Many of the young were enthused by the visit of Ben Gurion to Lithuania in 1933; by the start of the war one hundred of the families from Vishey had migrated, mostly to Palestine. They included my mother’s youngest sister, Bruria. They were the fortunate ones.
Being the oldest daughter, my mother had to grow up quickly. She would have had to look after her two younger brothers and three much younger sisters. At eighteen, she would have known how to cook, to prepare cholent and kugel in covered pots to be taken to one of the two bakers in the town, who on the Friday afternoon would have fired up their ovens so as to slow-cook the Shabbat lunch. Her pots would join the others of the town, as cooking was forbidden on Shabbat, and in winter a hot meal was especially appreciated.
My mother carried these recipes with her for the rest of her life as cooking became her vocation. She was taught to roll and plait the dough for challah, prepare the carp for gefilte fish and how to keep the house. School days were long over and she could soon look forward to life as a farm girl, helping her father when not needed in the house.
Her parents, however, had other plans.
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At eighteen, my mother was brimming with life, for she was always active and willing to stand up for herself, but there were certain tasks that were not the responsibility of a young woman. The small Jewish community had its shadchen (matchmaker), whose role it was to find a suitable husband for such a girl.
My mother would have been something of a catch, the granddaughter of Rabbi Meir Kannengiser, her mother’s father who had passed away some years earlier, but whose status would have counted and, of course, the long-lost judge. Yichus is the Yiddish word for the status a good family brought you.
The process of choosing a suitable husband for a girl was left to her parents and the shadchen, who would between them balance status, knowledge of the Torah, and the ability to afford to care for their daughter and provide for a future family when assessing the prospect. Decisions not made easily, but it was the way they, their parents and grandparents had met and married.
To marry for love was considered foolish, for such feelings might overcome practicality and be unlikely to be accompanied by a dowry. Love wasn’t a concept much considered, as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof bemoans, waiting twenty-five years after their marriage before asking his wife if she loves him.
And so it was that my mother, Gitel, was to get married. First, a marriage agreement ceremony known as a t’noyim would take place. It was at this function that she was to meet her future husband for the first time. A t’noyim was much more than an engagement party, instead being an important moment of commitment accompanied by a signing of a document. This confirmed the terms of the marriage, including the wedding date and any dowry. The finality of this commitment was emphasised by the famed Rabbi of Lithuania, the Vilna Gaon, in the eighteenth century, a time when a more conservative rebellion was occurring against the Chassidic movement which it was felt was devaluing learning by being open to all. The Vilna Gaon advised that the breaking of a t’noyim commitment was a greater sin than divorce.
The mothers of the bride and groom symbolically broke a ceramic plate, often hand-painted for the occasion, together, as if to emphasise, as Shakespeare would say, ‘what is done cannot be undone’.
Let us imagine the t’noyim. It was an afternoon tea at the Lazovski home when my mother was to be introduced to her future groom for the first time. The two families would have been there, but whether Chaim and Mina had a larger party with other guests I cannot be sure of, for they were not into overt celebrations. What I do know is that when my mother peeked through the curtains into the room and saw her husband-to-be, all she later said was … ‘I immediately knew he wasn’t for me.’
I suspect she thought he was too old.
Once the plate was broken, there was no backing out. A bride who didn’t go ahead with the wedding from then on would be scorned, shunned by her family, and unlikely to ever marry. This my mother knew as she let the curtain fall and crept away.
The afternoon was getting late. Most likely the groom was asking his parents what was happening, for he too was keen to see the bride his parents had chosen for him. Rivka, the next oldest girl, may have been asked to go to get Gitel, whose attack of nerves was out of character for such a level-headed girl, or else my grandmother Mina may have excused herself from her guests and gone to fetch her.
An open back door allowed my mother to flee across the unmade road, unseen by anyone, up the gentle slope to the woods at the back of town, and from there she vanished. It is said she walked through the woods, swam across a river at the porous Lithuanian border and made it into Poland some twenty or so kilometres away.
This, by a woman I never knew could swim.
Perhaps, looking back on the family dynamic I have outlined, there is a simpler explanation. Her mother, Mina, may have supported her in the decision to leave, for it was likely that the highly