passover

Locals share
family holiday
traditions learned
at a young age.

Pesach Memories

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

W

ABOVE: Hyman and Rose Finkelman,
the author’s grandparents, handled
Pesach foods. Rose did mostly
everything; Hyman made the
horseradish.

ods and, because grandma was particular,
ay down the hall in the front
bedroom, Grandpa (Hyman
she could not count on them to do things
Finkelman) grated the horserad- her way. I was just right to be trained. I
loved it.
ish and mixed in just the right amount
of fresh-squeezed lemon juice and bit of
“What did I learn? I was sort of a sous
sugar. He offered everyone a taste, to get
chef. I could prepare vegetables and fruits
our opinions about adjusting the amounts. and could grate items for inclusion in
kugels — and watch everything and learn.
“Here,” he would say, “this will open your
passageways.”
I could make snow from egg whites. It was
He also prepared the charoset.
an honor.
Meanwhile, in the narrow kitchen,
“I guess I learned about respect for
guests and the integrity of the process,”
Grandma (Rose Finkelman) produced a
Greene says. “I also learned recipes I con-
feast for 15 or 20 for each seder night. No
tinue to use, and I remember working
one else was welcome in the kitchen.
And then one year, Grandma was ready
alongside Grandma as I do so to this day.”
for some help. Miriam Greene, my
Mintzi Schramm of Southfield
sister, remembers getting invited
had a different kitchen experience
into that kitchen before Passover,
in her childhood on the Lower East
more than 60 years ago.
Side of Manhattan as her mother,
“Grandma did all the cooking,”
Chana (Anna) Schnaidman, pre-
she recalls. “I turned 11 at about
pared the seder meals.
the time grandma got older or
“I came from a background
weaker and needed assistance. By
where we had no processed food,”
that time, her daughters and in-
Schramm says. “We ground our
Miriam Greene
laws already had their own meth-
own pepper using an old-fashioned

pepper mill. We did not use oil or sugar or
dairy, or chocolate from Barton’s. A guest
once brought chocolate from Barton’s and
my father put it away for after the holiday.
“My mother cooked everything with
schmaltz [chicken fat]. We had fleishigs
[meaty foods] for eight days.
“My mother worked hard,” Schramm
recalls. “She did all the cleaning the week
before Pesach, and all the cooking on the
last day. And I didn’t do anything. I was a
princess. Pesach was my favorite holiday
because I didn’t do any of the work.”
So, did Schramm learn anything about
cooking for Pesach from her mother?
“My mother wrote out the recipes for all
my favorite Pesach foods,” Schramm says.
“I still have those eight or nine recipes
in my mother’s handwriting. You can get
through any Pesach on those.”
Nehama Stampfer Glogower of Ann
Arbor inherited a recipe for sponge cake
from her mother, a recipe that calls for
extensive use of fresh eggs. This recipe led
Glogower to a memorable childhood pre-

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jn

April 6 • 2017

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