At the second Seder 5775 (2015), after we ate the Matzah, Raizy’s father Rabbi Shlomo Galperin shared this memory of the Passovers of his youth in Tashkent Russia:
My grandmother Bubbe Reiza didn’t exercise her authority much, but when she did, she was really in charge, like a general. I saw this in the Passover preparations. When I was very young my father was in jail for his Jewish observance, and my mother worked long double-shifts at a vinyl records factory to earn a living for our family. Today you can have a small gadget with earphones and have all the music you want, but in those days music came on large vinyl records that were played on a patefon. The factory had strong smells and toxic chemical fumes from the vinyl and it was hard on my mother. So, my grandmother played an important role in raising me as a young child. She could not hear well and I was her guide going to the market or store. Later on in life I was responsible to go to the pharmacy to dispense her medicine on time and give her eye drops twice each day.
I remember how my mother would go to the market to buy chicken (sometimes a turkey) for the Passover holiday, and the main criteria was if it had enough fat to make Schmaltz, because there wasn’t any Kosher certified oil in Russia to cook with. Then this had to be brought to the Shochet (ritual slaughterer) which was usually my job. T he soaking, salting and koshering took place in our home. Very often I had the “honor” to hold the chicken while my mother would cut it open (to investigate the insides). If something looked questionable, my mother would usually immediately send to the Rabbi of the city with a question if it is Kosher.
Sometime after Purim families went out and got large sacks of wheat kernels. I remember how our dining room was cleaned very well, it took a few days. The table was cleaned thoroughly, then covered in thick brown paper (we had no plastics back then, nor any silver foil) and then with a tablecloth that was freshly washed by hand (years later we got a wash machine), dried under the sun and ironed, and another tablecloth on top of that.My siblings and my cousins all sat around, carefully sorting and sifting the kernels to make sure there was no extraneous material (of which there were plenty pebbles, wooden chips, feathers etc) and my grandmother supervised us. If any of us slacked off or got lazy in the inspection, she would let us have it. Only when it was fully inspected was it brought to be milled into flour.
The local Kosher butcher built a discreet Matzah bakery in his home and different families that could be trusted would come to bake their Matzah there. Later when they emigrated to Israel, this family built a large commercial Matzah bakery in Kfar Chabad, but back then it was a small informal operation in their home in Tashkent. My mother was the best Matzah roller. She had her way to very quickly roll it out super thin, and very consistent and those larger thinner Matzot were set aside for my grandparents. There was a rolling-pin with handles that was filled with nails (with the heads yanked off) to make the holes (baked as bumps) in the Matzah. Once for three days when I was 16 years old, I worked to put the Matzot in and out of the fiery red hot small wood and coal -fired brick oven, but that was no easy job. The heat from the oven was overwhelming from the front, and from behind the fans were blasting to cool it off.
I’m not sure why, but we didn’t use lettuce (maybe it was not popular then in Uzbekistan) as part of the Maror bitter herb at home, the way it is used today together with the horseradish. All we used back then was horseradish grated in a hand operated grinder. We always hand-grated it and somehow that creates a more potent result that a food processor does. I remember everyone forming. packing together golf-ball or snow-ball sized horseradish balls and eating them to fulfill the Seder obligation. The faces would turn red, we would cry and sneeze and clean out our sinuses, that’s I remember eating the bitter herb. It was a little taste of the feeling of the slavery in Egypt.
Two weeks before Passover the kitchen and some years the whole house was painted. They used a lime or chalk dissolved in water as the paint. Real paint was very expensive and there was limited availability of it in the stores. The lime or chalk paint wasn’t really paint but it gave the house a fresh feel. Even after it dried if you leaned or touched slightly you were covered with a white residue, but make no mistake: a freshly painted kitchen signaled that there was to be no more “Chomets” in the house, as Passover approached we could only eat bread in the hallway.
We made our own homemade wine stored in big bottles, to have for the Seder and to use for Shabbat and holiday Kiddush through the year, or however long it lasted. We also prepared large quantities of beets, potatoes, onions and carrots. My mother would go to the market and choose the best and freshest fish, usually carp, pike and bass, and I had to carry these live fish, kicking and flailing all the way home. At home it was cleaned and cut up and prepared for the holiday.
For the Seder we brought out our best dishes (that were packed away in the basement right after Pesach) and the table was set very nicely. We didn’t have silver candlesticks as many have today, but we had copper ones, which was the best precious metal we could afford. So much work and preparation went into making the Matzah, the food all from scratch as we had no available prepared or processed Kosher foods, cleaning the home etc, but the sentiment I remember the most from the Seder was that “we are doing this right, the way a Jew ought to do it”.
And Rabbi Galperin shared a few more Passover memories from his childhood in Tashkent Russia, on the 8th Day of Passover 5775 (2015):
Pesach was a holiday that required a lot of expenses and the poverty then was very real. My parents, as any other Lubavitch Hasidic family would sit down and make a budget of how many rubles they needed for Pesach. The salaries were barely enough to live on, never mind to celebrate an 8-day holiday. Most of the people borrowed money from acquaintances, then paid back over time.
One year, it was getting closer to Passover and there wasn’t enough money for the expenses. My father was trying to arrange to borrow money in time for the holiday. As the holiday approached and the time for shopping came, my mother asked my father how that was coming along. My father explained that he was lucky enough to borrow a sizeable amount of money for the holiday, but a newcomer came to town, a Jewish family who knew no one locally, and didn’t have money for the holiday. So he lent him the money he borrowed, and now needed to borrow anew. Thankfully, he was able to borrow again from someone else, and we had enough for Passover. But what left an impression on me was that my mother accepted that from my father, she didn’t question or argue against him generously helping out a newcomer, before worrying about their own Passover. It was a given that another Jew in need came first.
Everyone had responsibilities, had to help out, there was an endless list what to do. Before Passover my mother gave me the job of cracking open a very big bag of walnuts and filberts. I don’t remember having a nutcracker, the first time I saw a nutcracker was in America. I had a hammer and I cracked each nut, and put the nuts without the shells into a pail. One year while I was doing this my friend Lipa stopped by to borrow something . He asked me why I was cracking so many nuts. “After all, you don’t need that many nuts for Charoses!” By the way we actually used to prepare the mixture of nuts and apples in a mortar with pestle. I told him my mother told me to do it, so that’s why I am doing it. So Lipa asked my mother. My mother explained that she had in her home an extra Passover stringency to crack all the nuts needed to be used on the holiday before Passover began. My friend Lipa heard this, and then earnestly and naturally, said: “Oh, I was looking for an extra stringency to take up this year, I will begin to do this as well!” He said this with all sincerity and not one drop of sarcasm. Our resources were limited, but we were all eager to make extra efforts to sanctify the holiday to bring in to our daily life in some special way.
Every Jewish family has some kind of blackened small piece of meat on their Seder plate. This reminds us of the Paschal Lamb, the Korban Pesach, which we no longer observe without the Temple, but it reminds us of it. Many use a shankbone, the Chabad custom is to use chicken necks that are broiled and blackened. The idea is to remember the Paschal Lamb, while at the same time realizing that we do not have it nowadays and this is not a proper substitute. So yes, it is a form of meat, but chicken necks are in no way a stand in for the lamb. It is not eaten at the Seder, or at any time on Passover. Nowadays, we just throw them out. But back at home, we could not throw out meat, even such a small piece of meat like a few small chicken necks. So after the Seder nights my mother would put the chicken necks from the Seder plate into a beet soup to add flavor. Of course, we would not eat the chicken necks, because the tradition was not to eat them from the Seder plate, but at least they added some flavor to something.
My parents and grandparents were both very strict about Passover and also very understanding of others. Before the holiday my grandfather would take a spool of thread and wind it around the silverware that he and my grandmother would use, to make them distinct. Also their dishes were distinct, they used the older dishes that were cracked at the edges. No one else used those cracked dishes or marked silverware, only they did. In the non-Gebrokts tradition they were extremely careful about making their Matzah wet, even in the smallest way.
But we had all kinds of guests at our Seder. The table was small, but it was very full. There were people who did not have family, or those whose children no longer celebrated the holiday. Most of these people didn’t have the same traditions as my family, so they put Matzah in their soup and ate Matzah with other dishes my mother and grandmother served. And regardless of how strict and careful my grandfather was with his own plate, he never said a word about anything the guests did.
I’m not much of a singer, sometimes that skips a generation, but my grandfather Shmuel sang a lot on Shabbos and especially by our family Seders. I remember him singing Chassidic melodies throughout the Haggadah, and in between the steps of the Seder and also during the meal. Being the youngest and the first one to ask the “Four Questions” was uplifting for me. After I asked the questions, my siblings would follow, then my father and even my grandparents.
My memories of Passover was that the room was shining, it was simply full of light and very luminous.