Tag #140167 - Interview #77972 (max shykler)

My parents celebrated all Jewish holidays. We had traditional Pesach. On the eve of Pesach all children were looking for chametz at home. We conducted our search with a candle, a chicken feather and a paper bag, into which we put all breadcrumbs or pieces of bread that we found. Later we burnt it all. The family always bought enough matzah to last for all days of the holiday. We had a big family. My mother did all the cooking herself, although we had a housemaid. She made chicken, goose, and geese cracklings. We had stuffed fish on every holiday. Mother also made keyzl. She also made pastries from matzah flour. She crashed matzah through a sieve. She used fine flout flour to make pastries and made pancakes, latkes and dumplings for chicken broth from what was left in the sieve.

On the first day of Pesach the whole family went to the synagogue. In the evening we all sat down at the table for a family dinner. My mother had a special tablecloth for Pesach that she had embroidered before she got married. It was a white tablecloth with embroidered quotations from the Torah. We had high silver wine glasses that were part of my mother's dowry. On the first day of Pesach we all drank Pesach wine, even the children. There was one extra glass of wine on the table, but nobody drank from it. [This was the glass for the prophet Elijahu.] I, and later my younger brother asked our father a question [the mah nishtanah] in Hebrew. Our father replied in Hebrew. Father read the Haggadah out loud. The whole seder was conducted as it was written.