Passover at Aunt Sarah's

Growing up, first Passover was at Aunt Sarah's in Brooklyn.   Second was just the three Becker's at home.   Aunt Sarah was actually my great aunt...sister of my grandfather Savel from Slobodka, Lithuania.  She was married to Harry Abbott.  Her apartment was above her dry goods store.  It sold mysterious things for women like girdles.

The Becker crowd was pretty large.   There were probably 10-12 Becker cousins of my father's generation with their families.   The feeling was heavily European.  Accents were thick.   Clothes were dark.   I remember my father's cousin by marriage Ruby.  I was fascinated by his gold teeth.

I remember the year I became old enough to read the four questions.   I think it was solo that year.  I practiced and practiced (the modern melody.)   I sure was nervous.   The crowd of relatives was pretty loud.   I was very aware of how small my voice was.   Of course I was greeted after the ordeal with a great outpouring of love and praise.

The way this seder went was that everybody started at the same time, and occasionally came back together for important moments in the Haggadah like cups of wine, breaking matzoh, etc.   In between, it was each person chanting loudly in their own key, at their own pace.   It was polophony.   It was bedlam.   It worked.   I remember sometimes retreating from the verbal storm with some of my cousins to hide under the table.

Of course we plotted and ultimately stole, hid, and ransomed the afikomen.  Uncle Harry gave each of us a silver dollar.   This became a family tradition carried on by my father and I.   While my father died in 1992, I'm still handing out silver dollars he had hoarded at the house in Springfield.

When the kids got bored, we went downstairs to the store.   Best to break the boredom was the button maker machine.   You put a blank button in this big press type thing, layered cloth over the top of it, and pressed the foot pedal.   Magic, you had a cloth covered button.   I remember thinking my older cousins were so sophisticated.   It was as if one or two years in age had brought them all kinds of secret knowledge.

The menu never varied.   Aunt Sarah's matzoh ball soup was classic.   Big yellow fatty globs floating on the top.   Huge matzoh balls that could easily have been used for cannon balls.   I was always full after the soup.

The second night seder was at my parents with me, mom, dad, and grandfather Manny.   It was pretty American.   Can you believe the food I remember here was green peas.   I did always marvel that my father, who seemed so assimilated (though of course totally Brooklyn) was so effortless with his Hebrew.   And also that the melodies my grandfather used were different and seemed very old time eastern Europe.  He really had down that yiddish singing quaver that I can't describe in words.   The krecht in Klezmer derives therefrom.

Have you heard me describe Jews leaving Egypt?   the meaning of the four sons?   Nope.   I guess you judge what stuck from those Seders.