The Sabbath was the focal point of the religious life of East European Jewry. Signs of its imminent approach were already evident in the frenetic activity that characterized Jewish households on Friday mornings and in the spare lunch eaten early on that day, so as to leave a good appetite for the sumptuous evening meal. Lunch was followed by the weekly visit to the bathhouse, “upon returning home from which it was customary to taste the fish that had been prepared for Sabbath,” according to memoirist Shemu’el Rappaport (Barukh, 1980).
