I was a little girl at the time. I have fond memories, albeit not the clearest ones, of the conclusion of Pesach. It was Jerusalem. We lived in a tiny apartment building. The proximity of neighbors was such that you felt like you lived on top of one another.
We were the bland American Ashkenzis of the building. For us, the pre-Pesach hype was the pinnacle of our Pesach hype experience. Once the holiday arrived, after the seder, it was all trips and dinners and usual days off of school fun. That was it. We could have our seders with chicken soup and knaidlach (matza balls), since we did not observe what is known as the gebrokts stringency (not to eat matzah or matzah meal cooked with, or soaked in, any liquid). Hence the permitted matza balls, which are mostly made up of eggs and matza meal boiled in broth.
As children you want to up the ante on stringencies. After all, there is a competing Pesach market out there in child-land about how strict your familys Pesach customs are or how late your seder runs, etc.
Upstairs from us lived the Bashs. They were chasidic Jews who, throughout Pesach, most certainly did not eat gebrokts. As my sister and friends would be playing on the staircase, when we saw the Bashs coming we would squeeze ourselves to the sides of the stairwell as they would pass our apartment door and continue on upstairs to theirs, leaving in their wake a holy aura, that for but a moment hushed us children until they passed through.
Came the eve of the final day of Pesach, however, and commotion in the building ensued. Strangers would be coming by the building going up to the Bashes second-floor apartment with beaters and bowls in hand. Whirring sounds, hinting of beating batters, reverberated in the stairwell, emanating from their apartment. There was an excitement in the air. For the Bashes, as for all chasidim, gebrokts becomes permitted on the final day of Pesach.
The rest of this article is available in the IJN’s print edition only. Contact Carol to order your copy at (303) 861-2234 or email carol@ijn.com.
