There is no holiday that evokes nostalgia like Passover. When I talk about my Jerusalem Passover memories, it sounds like I am talking about a 1920s shtetl. When I was growing up after the Yom Kippur War, Israel still had a bit of the vibe and simplicity of a developing country. Nothing highlighted it like Passover.
I can still remember the excitement of getting new shoes in honor of the holiday. Twice a year, Rosh Hashanah and Pesach we got new shoes. Shiny black patent leather shoes. I couldn’t stop staring at them as they nestled in their box, pungent with the fresh scent of shoe leather.
Each day, leading up to the holiday, I would take a peak, in anticipation of wearing them.
When I got older, I graduated from the shiny patent leather to a velvet shoe. Perforated shaped raindrops designed the front. To my great grown up satisfaction, the Mary Jane strap across my foot had now migrated to a thin strap around my ankle, with a hint of a wedge heel giving it a tad bit of height.
I was still pretty young, though. The owner at Weill Shoes on Jaffa Rd. gifted us with a balloon when we purchased the shoes. Purchasing new shoes for the holiday felt like a momentous outing.
Then it was back to the bustling pre-holiday streets, as we would walk to the bus stop, often climbing past Bikur Cholim Hospital on Strauss St. An aroma of simmering chicken soup often flooded the street as we passed the hospital by.
Then there was the Passover cleaning itself. So much of so many of the neighboring apartments’ contents made it onto the front garden of the building — for cleaning. For a couple of days, it was like one big junkyard. Accompanying the outdoor cleaning of highchairs, books and other household items was a real ruckus. Most people didn’t own vacuum cleaners, and many neighbors in our building would hang their colorful rugs outside the railing of their balconies, beating the carpet with a huge woven rattan attachment to a bamboo looking stick. What a chorus it was. Blankets were aired and beaten to a pulp too.
I remember a man calling out one day “alta zachin alta zachin” (“old stuff old stuff”) as he wheeled a wagon behind him, waiting for us to fill it up with the shmattes and junk we wanted to get rid of. Household items were vetted. On another occasion, another man passed by calling out “hagalas keilim” (Passover-izing the year round kitchen items via immersion in scalding water). I don’t recall whether he was offering to provide this daunting service for others or was just passing by. I remember we always went up the hill to Pagi for the hagalas keilim, boiling the year round chametz items we would be using for Passover food prep.
As we ran errands in the Geula and Meah Shearim neighborhoods, it was more and more common to see these massive vats of boiling water on the sidewalks, flanked by the appointed people in charge, so as to maintain distance, keeping randomly approaching people away for their own safety.
In the adjacent neighborhood of Bucharim, the hot brick oven that year round churned out the fluffiest pitas would be transformed close to Pesach into a shmura matzah oven. People lined up for fresh round shmura matzahs as they came hot out of the oven in 18 minute intervals, so as to keep the matzah flat and kosher.
Speaking of lines, as the holiday drew closer, the snaking lines at falafel shops became longer and longer.
Then, the night Pesach was over, the entire city was engulfed with the scent of fresh baking bread from Angel’s bakery, where the lines for a fresh loaf of hot bread was the longest of all, as everyone waited at home for the precious loaf.
Then there were those stacked, packaged Papooshado cookies. They were so pretty, golden, shaped like a flower paper-cut, strikingly resembling the shape of the metal water faucets that were ubiquitous at the time. For Ashkenazim, these were verboten on Pesach. Sephardim, on the other hand, enjoyed these wine cookies, as they were called. Our next door neighbors were a French Moroccan family. Those delectable looking Passover cookies were a staple for them. Yet, on Passover, we couldn’t touch them.
Yet, there was always that in-limbo time right before the beginning of Passover when Ashkenazim can eat them, too. They are not chametz, so I did enjoy them then after all. To this day, they are one of the flavors and culinary associations and nostalgia of the holiday for me; although it’s been years since I have tasted those famous old-school Papooshado cookies. This particular Pesach bakery was started by a Greek family who had emigrated to Palestine, I believe. The family name is Papooshado, hence the brand of the cookies.
I remember a mortar and pestle that graced the living room shelf of a neighbor throughout the year, but in the pre-Pesach preparation, it was used to create the charoset.
Many of the families around me had the identical Pesach dishes, white milk glass with a little delicate daisy flower design close to the perimeter of the plate. It’s what many of the Israelis had. It must have been some kind of Passover promotion in one of the stores. Somehow we were different and never had those white glass plates with the daisy. My family was “American.” It was in silly details like these that you felt the difference of being an “American.”
Walnuts. They were a huge part of the holiday. No shelled walnuts were to be seen, only whole bumpy brown walnut balls whose shells rattled with the sound of the nuts nestled inside. The classic Israeli spring Pesach song we sang involved pocketfuls of overflowing walnuts. A children’s fairytale story involving Eliyahu Hanavi, Elijah the Prophet, and a magical golden walnut was a classic Israeli story embedded in our psyches.
When a few years ago I came across a silver walnut-shaped spice container for Havdalah, I just had to get it for Pesach. Over the years, there were times I would decorate the seder table with whole round walnuts in their shell, or sachets of whole walnuts, in homage to this Pesach nut. It served as snack, was churned into sweet cakes, used for games (rolling it like a puck into the cup that lined the wall cross the room), and that starred as a song and story of my childhood Pesach.
As I said, Pesach preparation was not a private household affair. The entire neighborhood and city was transformed into Pesach preparation mode, as the lead up to the holiday intensified.
Gerlitz, the bakery we frequented, whose shelves groaned under piles of delectable warm baked yeast cakes of all kinds, was packed as Pesach drew near. Demand was at its peak. Everyone ate in apartment building stairways and gardens around the city. As Pesach drew ever nearer, Gerlitz’ shelves emptied completely.
Water-filled buckets and brooms dotted the neighborhood as soap suds ran from outside apartment building vestibules.
Once the sunset of Pesach descended, apartment windows across the city were lit up, illuminating all the different families and gatherings celebrating the seder.
This year, in many different neighborhoods, out on the streets of Jerusalem, they continued to hold the Pesach celebration long past the cleaning and preparation, long into the night. Together with Chabad, the Jerusalem Municipality, hosted over 25 huge public communal seders. Tents were put up, beautiful tables set, Haggadahs and seder plates adorned the settings, lovely holiday meals were provided, as a proper seder was led. No sign-up required. The complete seder was just there for everyone and anyone who so needed or desired to join and partake in — including many Ukrainian immigrants. A true “Kol dichfin yetey v’yechol, let all who are hungry come and eat.”
I see some things haven’t changed from the little shtetl-esque Jeru-salem that it was when I was growing up there.
Not just Pesach preparation, but Pesach celebration itself, still very much lives on its streets.
Copyright © 2022 by the Intermountain Jewish News
