Picking up Saturday’s Tshulnt from the Baker

One of Mayer Kirshenblatt’s paintings in which he immortalised the customs of the Jewish community in pre-war Opatów. ‘In warm weather,’ Kirshenblatt reminisced, ‘I would take Mother’s challahs and cakes to the baker’s oven, because it was too hot to bake at home. Friday afternoon, by about three o’clock, the baker would be finished for the day and the oven would still be hot. That’s when I would pick up the challah and cakes for the Friday night meal and bring the food to be cooked for the Saturday meals: coffee and milk for breakfast, and soup and tshulnt for the midday dinner. The tshulnt was a stew of beans, potatoes, and meat. […] Everything cooked slowly overnight in the baker’s oven, which retained the heat from Friday’s baking. You are not allowed to light a fire on the Sabbath, but cooking food in the radiant heat of the oven was allowed’ (M. Kirshenblatt, B. Kirszenblatt-Gimblett, They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust, Berkeley 2007). Małgorzata Bogdańska-Krzyżanek