The Ritual Slaughterer (Shochet)

She had help, usually a black lady kitchen maid, whose name was usually, Elizabeth, Mary or Lydia and a black gentleman by the name of John, but mostly she did the work. Their function, as far as I could see was so that they were people that “Ma” could shout at when things didn’t go right or when a dish got broken, or when the food got burnt.

There were many things, I learnt from bitter experience that could go wrong in ma’s kitchen and bring the wrath of Ma down like the shrieking of a shot hyena.                                                                       

Ma didn’t hesitate to let the culprit know how she felt. It was an anomaly of the era that criticizing was acceptable, in those funny days but complements were not so well received.

Nobody gave complements. If you thought some good thought about someone you kept it to yourself. If you have some criticism you spoke it out.

Today I realize that this was a very weird characteristic of life as I lived it. The result was that I always felt guilty, even if I wasn’t. I was guilty for breaking a plate, guilty that the car didn’t start. I came to the ridiculous, irrational conclusion that all bad things that happened were my fault, even things like bad weather. I learnt to live with guilt and I stored it up like a miser stores up gold.

If guilt was gold today I’d be multi-millionaire.

I really loved our kitchen. Even as I lay in my cozy bed in the middle of the night or early before sunrise I could hear the stove being opened and closed, the rhythmic kneading of the dough for another lemon cake or some “kichel” (a sort of Jewish cracker you used as a tool to scoop up the delicious chopped herring, one of my favorite dishes).

The really hard kneading was Mom preparing the dough for her famous “kneidlach” ( a ball like biscuit, baked to a deep brown color,  soaked in syrup that dripped off on to your fingers as you ate it.) A good Jewish mother earned her colors by making “kneidlach”. My Ma was a champion Jewish mother.

It might be considered a bit late in the day to give Ma complements, but if she was alive to hear them she’d tell me to stop babbling and go and do my homework.

The busiest times in the kitchen were the day before a festival. I’ll never forget the gorgeous aroma of meat roasting on the one side and a cake baking in the oven on the other. A big chunk of red Meat, blood draining off, was being soaked and salted on a big wooden board by the sink; ma was plucking out the feathers of a plump turkey, chicken or duck, whose flesh was still warm from a life recently curtailed by the slaughterer (shochet). The poor creature had once roamed happily in our back yard pecking at the corn I had scattered on the ground and saying “gobble, gobble”. Little did that chicken know what his eventual fate would be, but he sure tasted good thanks to Ma’s expert treatment.

It was usually my task to take these birds, while still alive to the ritual slaughterer, tied to handle bars of my turquoise Raleigh bicycle. Once I carried 4 chickens that way.

While the whole house slept the lights burnt in the kitchen showing that “Ma” was still working there until 3 o’clock in the morning. It was like the throbbing heart of the house.