Matzo Ball Memories, by Jackie Friedman

The Book of Ruthie

She is there sitting on my shoulder. She is there every Passover, scrunched in the folds of a damp dish towel thrown over my shoulder. She is shrouded in the moist cloth between folds of fabric that hold my memories.

Does she hear my grandsons chopping the nuts? Chop, chop, chop. Can she see me measure the matzo meal into the beaten egg whites? Do the airy spheres of fluff that float in the soup resemble the ones she made? Do the steamy vapors of the chicken soup, the magic elixir of Jewish life, rise up to meet her?

She comes to life for me in those steaming vapors of boiling soup. An unassuming, simple woman, small in stature but huge in heart, she follows me around the table. I set down a plate, stand up a goblet, lay down a book for the service at each chair. She will be with me when it is my turn to read. She is only there for me, for no one else knows her. But that is my secret. Ruthie is why I create this event. I like to think she orchestrates it from above.

Does she see my grandchildren build the Seder plate? I sure hope she does. The warmth of her table is woven into the cloth that covers mine. Every Passover she has been in my mind, from the cramped table she filled in a small apartment to the table where I sit in suburbia five decades later. She blended us all . . . relatives, neighbors, whole Jews, half Jews.

She knew the rule in Deuteronomy, “Welcome the stranger to your table.” It was instinct with her, kindness without borders. Water down the soup, always room for one more! She taught me well without knowing it. As I look across my table I see her, an ordinary woman who was extraordinary.

See you next year, Ruthie. Same time, same place.

The Seder in 602

The candles flickered, reflecting in the glassy mint-green dishes from many Duz detergent boxes. The matzo, bread of Jewish affliction, sat blanketed in a clean dish towel. The charoset, a mixture of chopped nuts, fermenting apples, and Manischewitz wine, looked unappetizing as always. Later we would make tiny matzo sandwiches, cementing the pieces together, Passover peanut butter sandwiches.

And Henry, our Moses, sat poised in the head chair, ready to lead us out of the desert. The stage was set. The performance would begin shortly, and we the willing players were gearing up.

It was America in the 1950s, a place of promises, where Jews were beginning to weave into the American culture. Many had run a generation before into the open arms of Miss Liberty, holding her book, her torch guiding them to the teeming shores of New York City. Now the yarmulkes, little pancakes of velvet, reflected a new history. Left over from weddings and bar mitzvahs they sat at each place on the table waiting to be popped on. They carried the history of family in America while covering those shiny balding heads. . . .

The wedding of Sue and Mike Schwartz. The bar mitzvah of Steven Goldstein. And for the truly Americanized, the bat mitzvah of Amy Greenstein.

This was their new history. Europe left behind — the pogroms, the ovens, the insults. 

Here we sang the songs aloud, dropped wine for each plague with tiny pinkies. It was really wine, not blood from the swords of the old country.

Here we sat, a puzzle of people who formed this extended family every year. Relatives, neighbors, hangers-on, basking in the warmth of that room, around that cramped folding table, knees touching, sharing wine-stained prayer books (never enough), sharing the food, sharing our lives and the promise that was America.

This was America of the 1950s, the real land of milk and honey. Moses should have come this way in the desert. When the Red Sea parted he should have swum toward Miss Liberty. We could have avoided all the crap that came between then and now. A lot more people could have been at that table.

Magic in that little apartment. Magic in the freedom.

What a country!

Jackie Friedman lives part time in East Hampton.