The Heavens Are Empty - Avrom Bendavid-Val [14]
To tell you how we lit our candles on Hanukah in Trochenbrod, I can tell you as follows, and you will think it is funny. We took ordinary potatoes, cut them in half and made a small hole in each half, and put a little oil and piece of cotton, and then we lit it. The rich probably had candles, but the average person did not have candles and used potatoes instead. The tradition with handing out Hanukah gelt15 and playing with dreidels16 was the same as in this country. Also the tradition of making all kinds of latkes,17 especially raw potato latkes which were very popular. It was really a treat, and a lot of work supplying the latkes as everyone had good appetites and were not on diets.
About Sukkot, or Sukkos, the Feast of Tabernacles, the Jewish fall harvest celebration for which families build a small temporary hut for eating outdoors during the seven-day holiday period, Shmilike explained:
Everybody had a sukkah [temporary hut], which they made with their own hands. But our grandfather, Yuda Meir, had one that was sort of stationary, and it was only necessary when Sukkos came to put the finishing touches on it. Most of the time we froze in there, as the cold weather started earlier in Trochenbrod than here. Some of the sukkahs were so frail (they were made from corn stalks) that some of the animals such as cows, etc., would push in the walls and cause damage. In spite of all this, we enjoyed the holiday.
Baking matzah, the unleavened flatbread eaten during Passover, was a complicated matter at that time, according to Shmilike:
I want to explain how matzahs were baked in Trochenbrod. The people in Trochenbrod rented a house [in the town] for four weeks before Passover. Then they started to clean it thoroughly to make sure it was kosher. Then each family bought flour enough for their family and they hired girls and women to do the work. One man took care of the oven, and when one family’s matzah supply was baked it was carried in a bag made of linen hung from a long post and was delivered that way. Then they started on someone else’s matzah, and so on, until they had baked enough for everybody. This isn’t as simple as it may seem. The water that was used in mixing the flour was brought in before it got dark, for the next day, and it was then put in a barrel. It was brought up from a well, one bucket at a time.
You didn’t ask about the Passover wine, but I will tell you anyway. Everybody made their own wine of raisins.
About the Passover horseradish and also potatoes, they were grown in our own backyard and we had enough to use all year and also to share with others that didn’t have any. They were of the finest quality, the best in our town.
Morris Wolfson came to America from Trochenbrod in 1912. His account offers another window into life in the town as it flowed on the currents of expansion of the late 1800s into the early 1900s.
Every day my father, Wolf Shuster, labored over the shoes he made, and once every two weeks he went the twelve miles to the regional market in Kivertzy, where he sold his shoes to Gentiles. My family owned a cow that gave us milk. The cow, chickens, ducks, and produce from the vegetable garden made us almost self-sufficient. Every house had a garden that stretched back to the woods.
The three hundred or more Jewish families of Trochenbrod (there were no Gentiles in our town) lived almost completely separate from the Christians. The train that stopped twelve miles from our town was our only way to reach faraway places. And this was a luxury few of us could afford. One of my earliest memories was my first time out of our town when I was about four years old. I was sick, and since of course we did not have a doctor in our town I was taken on a train ride to Kiev to see one there.
Every boy attended cheder [Jewish day school] from ages four through thirteen, in Trochenbrod. Starting in the early morning we sat and studied Jewish books