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At Pesach we bought matzah, because it was difficult to make it at home. We bought 10 kg bags with matzah at the synagogue in Rashkov. We needed lots of matzah for the five of us. We didn’t have any bread at home at Pesach. My mother made everything from matzah flour.
Before Pesach we cleaned the house. My sisters and I searched for breadcrumbs walking through the house with a candle. They were to be burned. Our mother always whitewashed the house before Pesach. We took our everyday utensils onto the attic and took a box with festive dishes and utensils down.
My mother sent me to have a few chickens slaughtered by the shochet in Ochedar. My mother and my older sister Haika were cooking the food. My sister was helping my mother and learning to make traditional Jewish food. Gefilte fish was our favorite food. My mother made boiled chicken, chicken in jelly and stuffed chicken neck with liver and flour.
I was responsible for crushing matzah in a copper mortar. Then this crushed matzah was sieved. My mother made sponge and honey cakes from fine matzah flour and pancakes from the matzah flour that remained in the sieve. Our mother also made strudels with jam, raisins and nuts and pudding from matzah and eggs.
Nobody worked for eight days at Pesach. On the first day of Pesach my parents went to the synagogue in Rashkov. On the other days of Pesach all Jews got together for a minyan in our house or Ide-Leib’s.
On the first night of Pesach our father conducted the seder. My mother put a white tablecloth on the table with embroidered quotations from the Haggadah. My father said prayers in Hebrew. I asked him the traditional questions. I began to study Hebrew only at the age of five, but I had learned these questions even before this age.
Before Pesach we cleaned the house. My sisters and I searched for breadcrumbs walking through the house with a candle. They were to be burned. Our mother always whitewashed the house before Pesach. We took our everyday utensils onto the attic and took a box with festive dishes and utensils down.
My mother sent me to have a few chickens slaughtered by the shochet in Ochedar. My mother and my older sister Haika were cooking the food. My sister was helping my mother and learning to make traditional Jewish food. Gefilte fish was our favorite food. My mother made boiled chicken, chicken in jelly and stuffed chicken neck with liver and flour.
I was responsible for crushing matzah in a copper mortar. Then this crushed matzah was sieved. My mother made sponge and honey cakes from fine matzah flour and pancakes from the matzah flour that remained in the sieve. Our mother also made strudels with jam, raisins and nuts and pudding from matzah and eggs.
Nobody worked for eight days at Pesach. On the first day of Pesach my parents went to the synagogue in Rashkov. On the other days of Pesach all Jews got together for a minyan in our house or Ide-Leib’s.
On the first night of Pesach our father conducted the seder. My mother put a white tablecloth on the table with embroidered quotations from the Haggadah. My father said prayers in Hebrew. I asked him the traditional questions. I began to study Hebrew only at the age of five, but I had learned these questions even before this age.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Boris Slobodianskiy