30 Friday, April 18, 1986
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
-PASSOVER
When Matzah
Freed A Georgia
Chain Gang Convict
The history of matzah didn't end
with the deliverance of the
Israelites. Treasured by Jewish
soldiers in the field, denied to
concentration camp inmates and
changed by mass production, its
symbolism has remained central to
the Passover celebration through
history.
BY DR. DAVID GEFFEN
Special to The Jewish News
Matzah, the well known Passover
food, has an interesting past. Did you .
know, for example, that matzah has
not always been uniformly thin and
crisp, as it is today? In fact, originally
matzah was round, possibly inspired
by the passage in Exodus 12:39 where
mention is made of "uggot matzot".
"Uggot" can have the double mean-
ing of cakes or circles. Hence, until the
19th century, most matzah remained
round. In all the illuminated Haggadot
and many of the early printed ones,
matzah is always round.
This unleavened bread has also var-
ied in thickness. In some North Afri-.
can countries, this tradition is main-
tained; there, matzah is made so thick
that it must be crumbled in order to
be eaten.
In Talmudic times, some matzah was
decorated with figures. It was not un-
usual, according to the Talmud, to see
matzot in the shape of doves, fish, ani-
mals and flowers. Matzah was even
formed in the shape of chains, to recall
the bondage in Egypt.
The intervention of the rabbis ended
tree ornamentation of matzah. They
argued that the extra thickness and
other embellishments could cause
delay in baking, thereby resulting in
fermentation, or "hitmetz." Thinner,
unadorned matzah became the rule. 'lb
ensure a thinner matzah, perforations
were made in the dough with a toGthed
roller so that the dough did not rise
during baking. Drawings of matzah
•
bakeries during the Middle Ages show
how the various tools were used for
preparing the best possible hand-
baked matzot. The dress of the workers
may 'have varied from country to coun-
try, but, basically, all produced the
final, individual matzah in much the
same way.
Communities normally provided
supplies of matzot for their members,
but in time of conflict the soldiers were
not forgotten. During the Civil War,
efforts were made to provide Jewish
soldiers in the Confederate and Union
armies with Passover provisions.
One such incident is recalled in the
memoirs of Joseph Joel, a Yankee sol-
dier. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, he
enlisted in 1861 and was assigned to
the 23rd Regiment of the Buckeye
State. After various campaigni against
the Rebel forces in West Virginia in
1861, Joel's unit settled in for the win-
ter at Fayette, near the foot of Sewell
Mountain. When the Jews in the unit
realized that Passover was approach-
ing, they got the commander's permis-
sion to send someone back to Cincin-
nati "to buy matzos."
"We were anxiously awaiting to re-
ceive our matzos," Joel wrote, "and
about the middle of the morning of
'erev Pesach; a supply train arrived in
camp, and to our delight seven barrels
of matzos. On opening them, we were
surprised and pleased to find two Hag-
gadahs and prayerbooks. We were now
able to keep the 'seder' nights, if we
.
could only obtain the other requisites
for that occasion."
With "Yankee ingenuity" they for-
aged in the neighboring countryside,
obtaining two kegs of cider, a lamb,
several chickens•and some eggs. For
horseradish, they substituted a weed
"whose bitterness exceeded anything
our forefathers 'enjoyed"'
Unable to find the ingredients for
the "choroutzes," they decided to use
the closest replica to the actual thing.
"We got a brick, which rather hard to
digest, reminded us, by looking at it,
for what purpose it was intended." On
that Passover in 1862 in West Virginia,
a seder was held with the matzot the
only fully legitimate ingredient.
Mass production of matzot began to
change with the invention of the mat-
zah machine. From a mid-19th century
pamphlet comes a description of an
early machine: "It was something like
a washing-wringer and all that it prac-
tically did was to roll out the roughly
kneaded dough. The long strip was
then cut into cakes with a big circular
cutter used rapidly by hand, the same
power, by the way, being used for tur-
ning the rollers of the wringer. The first
matzos made by steam were in the
nature of a sensational novelty."
In the small Jewish community of
Wilmington, Delaware, which had
under 100 Jewish families in the
1880's, two references to the sale of
matzah have been preserved. In Febru-
ary and March 1881, Every Evening,
one of Wilmington's daily newspapers,
carried an advertisement from the J.P.
During the Civil War,
efforts were made to
provide Jewish soldiers in
the Union and
Confederate armies with
Passover provisions.
Alhnond Company, located at 8th and
Market Streets. "We have Matzos
Passover Bread" was written in bold
type. Allmond was then the mayor of
Wilmington; however, he was not
Jewish and only appeared to be filling
a need among his customers.
Seven years later, no local merchants
sold matzot. But Philadelphia was
close by and, with its large Jewish com-
munity, provided the best source of
supply. The headline for an Every
Evening article of March 26, 1888
declared "Matzos and the Peculiar
Observances of lbday."
"Celebration of the Jewish Passover,"
the article noted, "commenced at 10:30
o'clock this morning. The head of each
household has taken care to provide
himself with an eight days' stock of
unleavened bread." An exact descrip-
tion of this food item was offered:
"This is in the form of large thin wafer-
like biscuits, somewhat resembling
sailor biscuits, about ten inches in dia-
meter and one-sixteenth of an inch
thick.
"They are manufactured in Philadel-
phia," the story continued, "and sent
here in long rolls of 60 or.100 in each
package. They are called matzos and
are made without leaven or yeast. They
are entirely tasteless, being composed
of flour and water."
Tasteless or not, Jewish communi-
ties around the world did whatever was
necessary to make matzot available.
Witness the memoirs of a Jewish sol-
dier serving with the Russian army in
the 1904 Russo-Japanese War for evi-
dence of the power of matzot. "On
arriving at Harbin (China) on. March
1904 (Erev Pesach) at 2 p.m., we had
still to eat chometz and did not expect
to see matzos. Whence could they come?
. . . All at once I heard the voice of our
captain calling, 'Jews! Jews!' I jumped
up, frightened, put the book in my
pocket and ran up to the captain as
fast as I could. But what a pleasant
surprise. He gave me a box of matzos
of about 4 pounds, remarking that that
was for the Jews serving in our
company.
"There were thirteen of us, and we
thereupon went to look for a place
where we could quietly celebrate Seder.
It was impossible to do this in the
soldiers' wagon, as our Christian com-
rades had their bread everywhere.
After much • begging, the captain
granted us a corner in the horse wagon,
gave us hay and straw, and we com-
menced to settle down."
It is possible to understand the rapid
advances in matzot making through a
drawing of a matzah bakery that ap-
peared in the American Hebrew in
spring, 1908. The artist was M. Wein-
berg, who had moved to the United
States in 1907 after a distinguished
career in England. His sketches of the
members of the London Jewish com-
munity may be found in the Jewish
Chronicle and in the Jewish World.
Unfortunately, only this one drawing •
from Weinberg's American sojourn has
survived. A stickler for detail, his
visual presentation of the matzot-
making process is most instructive,
especially since there are no other
known drawings of an East Side mat-
zah bakery.
This bakery in New York, which
turned out more than two million
pounds of matzot a year, was located
in an old tenement house. On the first
floor, a large machine ground meal
made from the cracked and broken
'remnants of matzot. That grinding
and the constant preparation of flour
throughout the building covered all the
workers with a "white mist of floating
flour. The processes of kqeading the
dough, cutting it into manageable
pieces, perforating it with a small
spiked wheel and then slicing it into
squares for baking were done with
,