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We must use different dishes on Passover. Or, those who don’t have other dishes boil them very well, they kosher and use them [the dishes they use for everyday use]. Koshering is done as follows: you place the smaller dishes in a much larger one, you boil them there, and in addition, using another stove ring or the fire inside the stove, you heat a piece of metal until it becomes red-hot and you throw that metal in the water, so that it boils with force. And those who have other dishes use them, you don’t have to kosher those, for they are special dishes for Passover. My mother had a second set of dishes for Passover. I still have, to this day, a second set of dishes. Usually, we stored the dishes for Passover in the attic. But nowadays I store them on a shelf – I don’t have an attic since I live in a block of flats.
You must clean the house, the bread must disappear, anything that leavens [the chametz]. [Throughout Passover] That which leavens must disappear from inside the home. There is a ritual for that. Two evenings prior to Passover – which is to say: for instance, if Passover was the day after tomorrow, this evening you should place morsels of bread [around the house], turn off the light and go collect all the bread morsels by the light of a lit candle. There are two passages that you must recite, one before and one after collecting the bread, and you burn the bread the following day. This is called belches humaza [bdikat chametz, the search for chametz]. And the following day you have to burn the bread you collected, no later than 10, 10 o’clock in the morning. You burn it somewhere outside, or if there is a fire burning in the house, you can throw it into that fire. You also recite something when you burn it. Anyone, a man – even a single person – could perform this. The head of the family or, if there was no head of the family, a male member of the family had to perform this ritual. And you aren’t allowed to eat bred after that [during the Pesach], you eat potatoes, meat, eggs.
You set aside everything that contained flour, pasta, rice – all these things that leaven. You aren’t allowed to keep jam in the house, either. It [Pesach jam] must be made using separate Passover dishes. And truly kosher jam is prepared only from green, unripe plums and cornel-berries – as these are sure not to have worms.
Those who were over-religious prepared it. Because if they knew they will have guests who were over-religious they offered them this kind of jam. My mother sometimes prepared jam from unripe plums, but she never prepared it using cornel-berries. She prepared walnut jam, black cherry jam. We still kept the jars inside the house, but they were placed somewhere where we didn’t go during these 8 days of Passover. People used to draw up sale-and-purchase contracts for the things that leaven. When I was a child, the synagogue helper would go to everyone’s house, record what you had, and leave. You sold them to someone who wasn’t Jewish. It was a sort of business, meaning that the rabbi, for instance, sold the things for 1 leu [Editor’s note: Romanian national currency] and the respective citizen told you, when you bought it back: ‘Pay me 1 leu and 20 bani, or 1 leu and 10 bani.’ The rabbi recorded the transaction, but the merchandise remained at home. But how else? Could he gather the merchandise from the entire city? Someone had jam, someone rice, someone wheat flour, corn flour. Formerly, each city had a rabbi, and he took care of this [selling the chametz locally]. But nowadays, since there is no rabbi… They still utilize [use] this method [nowadays as well, but] on a national level, the rabbi records it on a national level. He sends a fax to all cities in Romania informing you what you should send, and you send a fax to Bucharest. We don’t send them the entire list, we enter the names of 8-9-10 people from here, from Botosani, and that’s that. And he sells the things to a Christian, but the goods remain here, in Botosani.
We buy the matzah. Years ago, before the war, it was prepared here, in Botosani – under the supervision of the rabbi, of course. The flour from which they make matzah, which doesn’t leaven, must be observed so that the wheat doesn’t germinate – if the wheat started to germinate, the flour wasn’t kosher anymore. The flour was observed closely and it was ground at a special mill – the mill was cleaned prior to this –, it was ground and you made unleavened bread from it. There were several mills here, in Botosani.
You must clean the house, the bread must disappear, anything that leavens [the chametz]. [Throughout Passover] That which leavens must disappear from inside the home. There is a ritual for that. Two evenings prior to Passover – which is to say: for instance, if Passover was the day after tomorrow, this evening you should place morsels of bread [around the house], turn off the light and go collect all the bread morsels by the light of a lit candle. There are two passages that you must recite, one before and one after collecting the bread, and you burn the bread the following day. This is called belches humaza [bdikat chametz, the search for chametz]. And the following day you have to burn the bread you collected, no later than 10, 10 o’clock in the morning. You burn it somewhere outside, or if there is a fire burning in the house, you can throw it into that fire. You also recite something when you burn it. Anyone, a man – even a single person – could perform this. The head of the family or, if there was no head of the family, a male member of the family had to perform this ritual. And you aren’t allowed to eat bred after that [during the Pesach], you eat potatoes, meat, eggs.
You set aside everything that contained flour, pasta, rice – all these things that leaven. You aren’t allowed to keep jam in the house, either. It [Pesach jam] must be made using separate Passover dishes. And truly kosher jam is prepared only from green, unripe plums and cornel-berries – as these are sure not to have worms.
Those who were over-religious prepared it. Because if they knew they will have guests who were over-religious they offered them this kind of jam. My mother sometimes prepared jam from unripe plums, but she never prepared it using cornel-berries. She prepared walnut jam, black cherry jam. We still kept the jars inside the house, but they were placed somewhere where we didn’t go during these 8 days of Passover. People used to draw up sale-and-purchase contracts for the things that leaven. When I was a child, the synagogue helper would go to everyone’s house, record what you had, and leave. You sold them to someone who wasn’t Jewish. It was a sort of business, meaning that the rabbi, for instance, sold the things for 1 leu [Editor’s note: Romanian national currency] and the respective citizen told you, when you bought it back: ‘Pay me 1 leu and 20 bani, or 1 leu and 10 bani.’ The rabbi recorded the transaction, but the merchandise remained at home. But how else? Could he gather the merchandise from the entire city? Someone had jam, someone rice, someone wheat flour, corn flour. Formerly, each city had a rabbi, and he took care of this [selling the chametz locally]. But nowadays, since there is no rabbi… They still utilize [use] this method [nowadays as well, but] on a national level, the rabbi records it on a national level. He sends a fax to all cities in Romania informing you what you should send, and you send a fax to Bucharest. We don’t send them the entire list, we enter the names of 8-9-10 people from here, from Botosani, and that’s that. And he sells the things to a Christian, but the goods remain here, in Botosani.
We buy the matzah. Years ago, before the war, it was prepared here, in Botosani – under the supervision of the rabbi, of course. The flour from which they make matzah, which doesn’t leaven, must be observed so that the wheat doesn’t germinate – if the wheat started to germinate, the flour wasn’t kosher anymore. The flour was observed closely and it was ground at a special mill – the mill was cleaned prior to this –, it was ground and you made unleavened bread from it. There were several mills here, in Botosani.
Location
Botosani
Romania
Interview
Solomon Meir