Tag #122880 - Interview #101186 (Leizer Finchelstein)

For instance, an entire ceremony was performed on Pesach. It began with cleaning of the house some 2 weeks in advance, walls were whitewashed, beds were aired. Everything was washed. We had a trunk in the attic with special dishes for Pesach, which was lowered, washed and tidied up. The chametz was gathered and burned and people bought matzot. On Pesach, my parents bought unleavened bread baked right there in Iasi. Back then, the unleavened bread wasn’t delivered from Israel. There were a few places in Iasi where they baked unleavened bread. The unleavened bread was wrapped in a mat made from bulrush wickerwork, and every family bought as much as they could afford and depending on the number of family members. Every family prepared the flour for the unleavened bread themselves, the slices of unleavened bread were mashed in a steisl [Yiddish: fulling mill, mortar]. Then, the resulting flour was sieved and used to make latkes [Yiddish: a variety of apple fritters made from unleavened bread flour to which eggs and condiments are added, and which are fried in oil afterwards] or farfelakh [Yiddish: small pieces of unleavened bread dipped in egg and dried in the oven] for soup.