The evening and the morning prayers, Sabbath, iPassover Passover, or Pesach, is the key Jewish holiday celebrated as a commemoration of the liberation of the Jewish people by God from slavery in Egypt., Yom Kippur…. Someone’s birth, someone’s death. The inevitable course of time, the images of the Eternal and of the Fleeting…. A clock on the table, a clock on the wall, tools, monocles, children in their father’s workshop…. A clock is a treasured object for a common resident of a stetl, and a clock master is one of the most eligible young men.
But how can one learn the exact time otherwise? Listen to a Shabes klaper, a Sabbath clapper… He went around the houses and clapped on the window shutters with a special little hammer, announcing the coming of Time – the time of Sabbath, the time of Prayer, the time of Holiday, and the time of Grief…. This position was not paid for but it allowed the opportunity to be present….
