Selected text
On Passover my mother prepared the dishes: she took them out of the cupboards where we kept the special dishes for Passover and she cleaned them. She had separate dishes for Pesach, all families had them. And before Passover all the things that contained leaven would be gathered and burned. Usually, my father would do this. He would put a piece of leftover bread or pasta, well, whatever else there was, inside a bowl, place a piece of paper on top and set it on fire. But it was mostly symbolic; it would burn for a short time, then be extinguished and then be thrown away. The significance of this was that you were cleansed of food that had leaven.
As for the large amounts of flour that people had in their homes – nowadays they no longer do, but in those days people kept large quantities of flour in their homes – the sacks were tied tightly, sealed and placed somewhere out of reach: in a larder, in a depot, in a lumber room. In any case, it was laid down you shouldn’t have any bread – you wouldn’t buy it, you wouldn’t bake it. It wasn’t so when I was little, but I heard it told by others: in order to have nothing to do with this [things with leaven], you would draw a contract whereby you sold it to someone and that someone accepts to give it back to you when you gave them the money back, but neither the sale, nor the purchase would take place [actually]. These customs didn’t exist anymore when I was born.
Passover lasted eight days. During the first days my father attended the service at the synagogue. During the first two days seder was celebrated.
In the old days it wasn’t held at the synagogue [at the community canteen], it was celebrated at home. But there were two seder evenings. Now they hold the seder evening at the synagogue as very few people are able to or know how to celebrate it at home, which is to say they can’t read Hebrew, there aren’t enough persons to perform it. The families aren’t that numerous, and to start performing an entire ceremony for a person or two…
The meals were mostly made of chicken, soups in general. That’s what Jews ate the most: chicken soup, fried chicken. They made sweets using unleavened bread and unleavened bread flour. They ate a lot of potatoes, cooked in all sorts of ways, for the sake of diversity. The same goes for eggs. When you sat down at the Passover table, eggs had a place of honor together with a piece of meat, vegetables, each representing certain traditions.
My father organized that special ceremony for Passover at home. It was like a theater play, a certain ritual, everybody tried, tasted each dish on the table, filled a cup of wine, raised their cup whenever the ritual specified it – they read the Haggadah, as they call it in Hebrew, the Passover story, the religious one: ‘Why is Passover celebrated? What happened in those days?’ It was my youngest brother who asked the four questions [the mah nishtanah]. And this dinner lasted long into the night, for they read something from the book, tasted the food, then they read some more. We were little back then, it was like a theater play for us, like a theatrical performance.
They filled a glass for the prophet, they opened the door – it was the father who opened it – when they reached the respective chapter. Everybody – all religions – are waiting for the Messiah. They waited, it was as if He came, tasted it, liked it, and left.
They hid a slice of matzah [the afikoman] and the tradition was that whoever found it received a present from father. And my father hid it somewhere where you could find it, of course, so as not to interrupt the ceremony because we couldn’t find it. We found it and started negotiating. My father said to us: ‘Give me back the slice, why did you steal it from me?’ ‘I will, but will you give me 5 lei?’ ‘What do you mean 5 lei? I can buy three loaves of bread for 5 lei!’ ‘There, give me 3 lei and …’ Money, it was money he usually gave us.
The first time he performed the seder ceremony after we returned from there [from Transnistria] I was of school age, I must have been six. When we were little we didn’t realize he was performing this ceremony. And he hid the slice of matzah, we forgot all about it, you see, he had told us beforehand how it was going to be, he had told us to simply find it, that he would see, he would give us a present, something, he would give us some money. But we forgot. We found it [the afikoman] and we secretly went into another room while father didn’t notice, as we did everything in secrecy, and ate the slice of matzah. We weren’t really hungry, but there wasn’t so much matzah as nowadays, and father would buy only a few slices, as was the custom. We didn’t have much money, for it was just after the war, there was widespread poverty. It wasn’t like today, when you go and buy a whole box, or two, or three. And when we returned [from the other room], Gather said: ‘Well, let us see the afikoman’ – that’s what it’s called. And we looked at one another, we exchanged some glances… ‘Come on, let us see it, that is the rule, you must show it! We will give you something for it.’ ‘Well, we ate it!’ There was no question of reward anymore, we had taken it ourselves.
We didn’t sing at the end of the evening, father sang and intoned – it is intoned using a certain song. We didn’t recite, because we were little, and afterwards, as we grew up, we didn’t attach that much significance to it. My father observed all the rules, we read a book, we did this and that in the meantime. Until his death, Father always observed seder on Passover. But in those years when it was performed at the canteen, he attended it at the canteen.
As for the large amounts of flour that people had in their homes – nowadays they no longer do, but in those days people kept large quantities of flour in their homes – the sacks were tied tightly, sealed and placed somewhere out of reach: in a larder, in a depot, in a lumber room. In any case, it was laid down you shouldn’t have any bread – you wouldn’t buy it, you wouldn’t bake it. It wasn’t so when I was little, but I heard it told by others: in order to have nothing to do with this [things with leaven], you would draw a contract whereby you sold it to someone and that someone accepts to give it back to you when you gave them the money back, but neither the sale, nor the purchase would take place [actually]. These customs didn’t exist anymore when I was born.
Passover lasted eight days. During the first days my father attended the service at the synagogue. During the first two days seder was celebrated.
In the old days it wasn’t held at the synagogue [at the community canteen], it was celebrated at home. But there were two seder evenings. Now they hold the seder evening at the synagogue as very few people are able to or know how to celebrate it at home, which is to say they can’t read Hebrew, there aren’t enough persons to perform it. The families aren’t that numerous, and to start performing an entire ceremony for a person or two…
The meals were mostly made of chicken, soups in general. That’s what Jews ate the most: chicken soup, fried chicken. They made sweets using unleavened bread and unleavened bread flour. They ate a lot of potatoes, cooked in all sorts of ways, for the sake of diversity. The same goes for eggs. When you sat down at the Passover table, eggs had a place of honor together with a piece of meat, vegetables, each representing certain traditions.
My father organized that special ceremony for Passover at home. It was like a theater play, a certain ritual, everybody tried, tasted each dish on the table, filled a cup of wine, raised their cup whenever the ritual specified it – they read the Haggadah, as they call it in Hebrew, the Passover story, the religious one: ‘Why is Passover celebrated? What happened in those days?’ It was my youngest brother who asked the four questions [the mah nishtanah]. And this dinner lasted long into the night, for they read something from the book, tasted the food, then they read some more. We were little back then, it was like a theater play for us, like a theatrical performance.
They filled a glass for the prophet, they opened the door – it was the father who opened it – when they reached the respective chapter. Everybody – all religions – are waiting for the Messiah. They waited, it was as if He came, tasted it, liked it, and left.
They hid a slice of matzah [the afikoman] and the tradition was that whoever found it received a present from father. And my father hid it somewhere where you could find it, of course, so as not to interrupt the ceremony because we couldn’t find it. We found it and started negotiating. My father said to us: ‘Give me back the slice, why did you steal it from me?’ ‘I will, but will you give me 5 lei?’ ‘What do you mean 5 lei? I can buy three loaves of bread for 5 lei!’ ‘There, give me 3 lei and …’ Money, it was money he usually gave us.
The first time he performed the seder ceremony after we returned from there [from Transnistria] I was of school age, I must have been six. When we were little we didn’t realize he was performing this ceremony. And he hid the slice of matzah, we forgot all about it, you see, he had told us beforehand how it was going to be, he had told us to simply find it, that he would see, he would give us a present, something, he would give us some money. But we forgot. We found it [the afikoman] and we secretly went into another room while father didn’t notice, as we did everything in secrecy, and ate the slice of matzah. We weren’t really hungry, but there wasn’t so much matzah as nowadays, and father would buy only a few slices, as was the custom. We didn’t have much money, for it was just after the war, there was widespread poverty. It wasn’t like today, when you go and buy a whole box, or two, or three. And when we returned [from the other room], Gather said: ‘Well, let us see the afikoman’ – that’s what it’s called. And we looked at one another, we exchanged some glances… ‘Come on, let us see it, that is the rule, you must show it! We will give you something for it.’ ‘Well, we ate it!’ There was no question of reward anymore, we had taken it ourselves.
We didn’t sing at the end of the evening, father sang and intoned – it is intoned using a certain song. We didn’t recite, because we were little, and afterwards, as we grew up, we didn’t attach that much significance to it. My father observed all the rules, we read a book, we did this and that in the meantime. Until his death, Father always observed seder on Passover. But in those years when it was performed at the canteen, he attended it at the canteen.
Period
Location
Romania
Interview
Saul Rotariu