by Sudy Rosengarten
Everyone pitied us because Poppa was a shammos, often considered little more than the shul (synagogue) janitor, and we were still living on the "East Side" of Manhattan, the crowded world of "greenhorns" that young people tried to escape. Mornings, Poppa would rush to the Shearis Yisroel shul on Columbia Street, where his father had been shammos. He made the stove, prepared the prayer books and tidied up.
Unlike everyone else, Mamma saw nothing degrading in being a shammos. To her, cleaning a shul was no less meritorious than cleaning the Holy Temple; it was nothing short of a mitzva (commandment). To prove she really meant what she said, she shared Poppa's mitzva by washing down the ladies' room every Friday, in anticipation of the Sabbath. Even we children were included in the mitzva and assigned chores.
