Rebbetzin Chana’s Memoirs: The Five Day Week
In this 15th installment of the series, Rebbetzin Chana describes how the Soviet Union’s (failed) attempt at creating a five day week caused a Jew to inadvertently violate the Shabbos.
The Soviet five-day-long week
Mr. Gansburg once had the following experience. This took place during the period when the Soviet government instituted a five-day week. The day of rest was not on Saturday or Sunday but every five days.
Mr. Gansburg’s cooperative once sent him as their specialist to organize production of a new product in a kolkhoz. His duties were highly responsible, having to manufacture completely new products. As a result, he was always busy, getting little free time.
He was the sole Jew in the kolkhoz.
The fifth day of his week once occurred on Shabbat. Not realizing it was Shabbat, he prayed the weekday morning prayers wearing his tallit and tefillin. Since it was his day of rest from work, he spent the day on such tasks as fixing his watch—since
there was no watchmaker in the kolkhoz, and he possessed that skill. [Thinking it was Friday,] he recited the Shabbat evening prayers after sunset, as he did every Friday evening. Next morning, he followed his usual Shabbat schedule in all respects.
Then, however, he noticed his gentile landlord crossing himself and complaining that there was no local church to attend on Sunday to praise G-d, and that he had no choice but to do all this at home. Even a bit of liquor, he grumbled, couldn’t be obtained there on Sunday!
This serious mistake had occurred because Mr. Gansburg had lost count of the days of the normal seven-day week. For a person like him who had such self-sacrifice to keep Shabbat, his violation of the Shabbat was utterly inadvertent.
Tearing bread ration cards before Passover
On Erev Pesach, the Jews who didn’t eat chametz on Passover would collect their bread ration cards for the whole week [of Passover], and then, after the holiday, they used them to obtain flour.
But Mr. Gansburg heard from my husband that Jewish law forbids deriving any benefit from ration cards dated for the week of Passover. In our home, we used to tear them up before Passover. Mr. Gansburg’s family consisted of seven people, some of whom [as noted] were of privileged status. This entitled them to receive white bread instead of black bread. White bread was so scarce that only the most privileged received it. They were also entitled to receive a double ration. Mr Gansburg’s children were physically very weak, and he made great efforts to obtain better quality food for them.
Without regard for all this, he secretly took the ration-card book out of his home and tore up all that week’s ration cards. This was a highly courageous act at such a time. He was the only one in his family to do this. But his children held him in such high esteem that they forgave him.
Besides his anguish on account of his children, he suffered greatly and ruined his health from agonizing over kashrut, always
apprehensive that perhaps some food was not at the highest level of kashrut. Often, though, he couldn’t afford to buy anything better. As a result, he starved more than he ate.
When he evacuated to a village in Bukhara, he found a G-d fearing shochet whose standards of kosher slaughter he found satisfactory. When his family prepared for him a meal including meat, his stomach could no longer digest such food, causing a fatal stomach disorder which took his life.
His family, who remained living there, informed us of his passing. The news affected us deeply.
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