Most of the Yizkor book excerpts I present each week are dramatic
ones: harrowing tales of survival, grim tales of death and struggles
of daily life. But I found myself touched by this affectionate
portrait of a father in this chapter >from the Yizkor book of Rokiskis,
Lithuania. In "My Father's Nigun" (melody), Shlomo Rubin remembers how
his father - someone who had no education beyond the cheder and at a
young age "had to hitch himself up to the wagon of life" - would wake
up early, and fortified by tea, "read the Psalms with such a touching
melody that engraved itself deep inside me." He was a man who saved
the best of the fish he sold >from his cart for his poorer customers.
And he was a man moved to copious tears in the synagogue, particularly
during the Day of Awe, when his cries sounded like they had been "torn

from the deepest cells in his heart - the pain that had collected in him

during an entire year."

URL: https://www.facebook.com/JewishGen.org/posts/2495202600501880?__tn__=K-R

Bruce Drake
Silver Spring MD

Researching: DRACH, EBERT, KIMMEL, ZLOTNICK
Towns: Wojnilow, Kovel