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The Chassidic masters point outthat the two names of Pesachrefer to two different sets of

memories. “Chag HaPesach” relates toour memory of Hashem’s grace in Hisskipping over the doorposts (pesach) ofJewish homes during the final plague inEgypt; “Chag HaMatzot” refers toHashem’s memory of our mesirus nefesh(self-sacrifice) during the culmination ofthe Exodus, when we followed Hiscommand with such speed that ourbread did not have time to rise.

The Diaspora has afforded manyoutstanding Pesach moments of mesirusnefesh, some famous, some relativelyobscure. None perhaps as obscure as themesirus nefesh of our brothers and sisterswhile celebrating Pesach in difficultenvironments and during trying timesthroughout American history.

The Revolutionary War: TraditionalJews Share the Birth Pains of theNew Republic

Life in the American colonies washard during the second half of the eigh-teenth century. It is well documentedthat many Jews were patriots and partic-ipated significantly in the AmericanRevolution. Some of these Jews include:

• Merchants such as JosephSimon, shochet (ritual slaughterer) andfounder of the Jewish community ofLancaster, Pennsylvania, who suppliedarms to the Continental Army.

• Financiers of the Revolutionsuch as Hayyim Solomon, who, whenfaced with a difficult financial dispute in1784, brought the first recordedAmerican case before a rabbinic court ofarbitration (beit din).

• Vocal patriots such as GershomSeixas, chazzan of Shearith Israel (alsoknown as the Spanish and PortugueseSynagogue in New York), who, after animpassioned pro-revolutionary speech,closed the synagogue and took the sifreiTorah to Philadelphia.

• Soldiers such as Sheftall Sheftall,who performed the first documentedchalitzah in America (in Philadelphia in1764), and was honored with “specialassignments” as a Revolutionary Warsoldier.

Relatively unknown are their stir-ring accounts of Pesach preparation andobservance. Jewish functionaries andleaders, who as American patriots fledthe British invasion, were faced withadditional hardship. Aaron Lopez, “theMerchant Prince of New England,” fledNewport to Portsmouth, Rhode Island,and still managed to send one hundredpounds of flour to Newport so thatmatzah could be baked for the commu-nity. In his correspondence to the presi-dent of Shearith Israel in 1784, Seixaswrote of the “great hardship for a manto be without his family on Pesah” as aresult of the war.

The Gold RushFrom the beginning, industry and

commerce were the engines that gener-ated the development of this country.The prevailing wisdom that the pursuitof making a living was the overwhelm-ing factor in the assimilation ofAmerican Jewry is only partially true.Although many Jews felt that shemiratShabbat, kashrut and halachic Judaismwere incompatible with financial suc-cess, there exist numerous accounts ofindividuals who succeeded in the busi-ness world while maintaining traditionalobservance.

The merchant class of the devel-oping frontier boom towns was often

Pesach

The AmericanPesachExperienceBy Yaakov Horowitz

Rabbi Horowitz is the OU rav hamachshir ofthe B. Manischewitz Company (RAB Foods),and is founder of the Bostoner Bais Medrash ofLawrence, New York, and the AmericanJewish Legacy, the only national organizationin the United States committed to the preser-vation of American traditional Jewish life.

The American Jewish Legacy is actively seekingphotos, artifacts and archival material docu-menting the American traditional Jewish expe-rience. If you have information to share, con-tact www.ajlegacy.org.

heavily Jewish. The business districts of California, including Sonora, Grass Valleyand Nevada City (among others), had traditional Jewish communities that heldPesach and yom tov services at various times during the Gold Rush. Religious arti-cles and foodstuffs such as matzah and wine were imported from San Francisco.Noted historian Robert Levinson relates the following:

Nevada City was the home of numerous Orthodox Jews, which included theAaron Baruh family who maintained separate dishes for Passover and ordered matzosfrom San Francisco. So that the entire community would have kosher meat for Passover,the Reverend Samuel M. Laski of San Francisco acted as shokhet (ritual slaughterer).He came to Nevada City to slaughter the animals in an Orthodox manner. The prepa-rations for the holiday of Passover in the Jewish communities of the Mother Lode werealways elaborate. In Sonora, Julius Baer recalled that his parents conducted the PassoverSeder at home and that, in anticipation of the holiday, “Dad used to buy 25 to 30pounds of matzoth.” In Mokelumne Hill, special preparations were also made forPassover, but owing to the remoteness of Mokelumne Hill and the great distance fromSan Francisco, special holiday foods did not arrive as planned. “My father used to tellme that any celebration of Passover was observed by the time the matzos arrived inMokelumne Hill.” However, Aaron Harris, who resided in Yosemite Park in the 1870sand 1880s, wanted to celebrate Passover at the proper time. So that his observancewould not be late, as it was in Mokelumne Hill, “the matzos were always ordered theprevious year [from San Francisco] so that they would arrive in time for the Passover.”—The Jews of the California Gold Rush, Judah L. Magnes Museum, 1994.

It is interesting to note that although very few matzah bakeries exist todayoutside the greater New York area, many matzah bakeries once existed in such out-of-the-way places as Portland, Oregon; Helena, Montana, and San Francisco.

These were often large commercial enterprises that baked significant quanti-ties of matzah, not to be confused with the documented histories of individualsbaking their own matzot, a tradition practiced throughout American historywhether it be by Sampson Simpson of Shearith Israel in Colonial New York or byAvrohom Isaac Trager in Columbia, North Carolina, during the Civil War. Tragerran a farm where kosher hospitality was always found. He left many Orthodox gen-erations active in both Jewish and communal activities throughout the North andSouth. (See Milton M. Gottesman, Hoopskirts and Huppas: A Chronicle of the EarlyYears of the Garfunkel-Trager Family in America, 1856-1920, [New York, 1999.])

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Photo courtesy of Gefen Publishing House, 1992

Matzah table, preserved at Touro Synagogue,used for the preparation of the dough for thematzot during the Revolutionary War era.Photo courtesy of Morris A. Gutstein, TheStory of the Jews of Newport (BlochPublishing, 1936)

Aaron Lopez, Colonial“Merchant Prince of NewEngland,” founder of TouroSynagogue. Photo courtesy ofMorris Gutstein, To BigotryNo Sanction, A Jewish Shrinein America 1658-1958 (BlochPublishing, 1958)

The Civil WarDuring the Civil War, Pesach and matzah were not only important to indi-

viduals on both sides of the conflict in a personal way, they were also a prominentfactor in bonding Jews and Jewish congregations who were adversaries, as demon-strated by the following colorful anecdote:

Myer Levy, a Union soldier in an occupied Confederate Virginia town, saw a lit-tle boy eating matzo during Passover and asked him for a piece. The child ran insideand shouted “Mother! There’s a ‘damnyankee’ Jew outside!” The mother emerged and, to[Levy’s] relief, invited [him] to the family Seder. —Bertram Wallace Korn, American Jewryand the Civil War (Philadelphia, 2001).

Civil War historian Robert Rosen further illustrates the concept of howmatzah brought former enemies together.

As the war drew to a close, the dispirited Jewish communities of Savannah,Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond reached out to the Northern Jewry for desperate-ly needed aid. They wrote appeals to national Jewish journals and newspapers such asthe Jewish Messenger, published in New York by Samuel M. Isaacs; The Israelite,published in Cincinnati by Rabbi [Isaac Mayer] Wise; and The Occident, publishedby Rabbi [Isaac] Leeser in Philadelphia.

In February 1865, the Jews of Savannah wrote to these Jewish periodicals seekingmatzo: “Many of the inhabitants, formerly wealthy are now in extremely straitened cir-cumstances; and besides have entirely lost the means of baking for the ensuing Passover.”Isaacs of the Messenger recalled the generosity of Savannah’s Jewish community in itsheyday and asked his readers to lay aside any enmity they might harbor and come totheir co-religionists’ aid. The response was overwhelming: three thousand pounds ofmatzo was sent from New York and two thousand pounds from Philadelphia. There waseven a proposal in New York to establish a charitable organization to assist SouthernJewry. “This is no time to look back upon petty differences that may have arisen betweencommunities,” the Jewish Record urged. “Nor can any one now allude to political dis-

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Aaron Baruh, Gold Rush pioneerand Mother Lode Jewish commu-nity leader. Photo courtesy ofDoris Foley, Nevada City

Matzah receipt from P. AlexanderMatzo Bakers, San Francisco,1875. Photo courtesy of WesternStates Jewish Historical Journal

Photo courtesy of Western States Jewish Historical Journal

Many matzah bakeries once existed in out-of -the-wayplaces such as Montana. Photo courtesy of WesternStates Jewish Historical Journal

Matzah advertisement: The Original PioneerMatzoth Bakery, San Francisco, 1875. Photocourtesy of Gefen Publishing House, 1992

Emanuel Blochman, GoldRush matzah baker, SanFrancisco, 1880. Photocourtesy of Western StatesJewish Historical Journal

cussions or angry passions.…Let all of us join in tendering toour brethren a part of thatwealth with which the God ofIsrael has blessed us. —RobertN. Rosen, The JewishConfederates (South Carolina,2000).

The PrairieThe American West and

prairie were the last places onemight expect to find tradi-tional Jewish observance.Surprisingly, there are manyaccounts relating to tradition-al Pesach experiences similarto that of Sophie Trupin from Wilton, North Dakota. Bornin Russia in 1903, Trupin immigrated to the empty plainsand prairie of North Dakota in 1908.

In her own words:My mother kept a kosher home, observing every holiday.

This was never easy, but here it was even harder than it had beenin the Old Country. Several days before Passover, when the melt-ing snow had run into the narrow valley at the south side of thehill we lived on, my mother, sister, and I set about getting ourhome ready for the holiday. Mother whitewashed all the wallsand scoured the floors. She made the utensils kosher for Passoverwith scalding hot water. A stone was first heated in the rangeuntil it was red hot. It was then put into a very large pot of boil-ing water, making the water sizzle and hiss. The utensils wereboiled for some time in this water. In addition, every piece of fur-niture was carried down to the slew and scrubbed and allowed todry on the bank where the young grass was just beginning toappear. —Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the UpperMidwest

This story is not unique. In 1890, Rabbi

Binyomin Papermaster was sent by Rabbi Yitzchak ElchananSpector from Kovno, Lithuania, to serve as the rav and shochetof North Dakota. When he arrived in Grand Forks, he founda group of very traditional Jewish European immigrants whowere of Chassidic descent. They afforded him an amusing andmemorable introduction to his many years of service as rabbiin the Prairie States. To quote his son:

During the first Passover my father was put to a rathersevere test, religiously speaking. In later years he delighted inretelling this experience. As he had arrived only a few days beforePassover, his time was taken up with last minute preparations forthe holiday: providing kosher meat, killing of fowl, providingmatzos and other Passover necessities, and he also attended meet-ings of community leaders. As the day prior to Passover was a tra-ditional fast day on behalf of the first born, father was both tiredand hungry … father quite naturally expected the host to conductthe Seder service ... finally losing patience he inquired of the hostwhy he did not proceed with the Seder.… Pulling up an ordinarychair, [my father] waited for everyone to be seated and then pro-ceeded to the ritual of the Seder.…Having been accustomed to

Confederate soldier Isaac J. Levy and the letter he sent tohis sister Leora describing his Passover Seder in Adam’sRun, South Carolina, April 1864. He was killed in thebattle of Petersburg, August 21, 1864 , at age twenty-one.Photo courtesy of Jacob Rader Marcus Center, AmericanJewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio

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European immigrant hoopskirt entrepreneursAvrohom Isaac Trager and his scholarly son-in-law, Moses Garfunkel. Photo courtesy of theAmerican Jewish Historical Society, New YorkCity; Newton Centre, Massachusetts

Trager farm and hoopskirt advertisements.Courtesy of the American Jewish HistoricalSociety, New York City; Newton Centre,Massachusetts

Lieutenant Colonel Marcus M. Spiegel,Jewish Union officer and brother of the

founder of Spiegel Catalog Co. Photocourtesy of Jacob Rader Marcus Center,

American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio

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Chassidic ceremonials the host anticipated that therabbi would don a white robe, hose, streimel, etc....The younger people were delighted, while theolder and more Orthodox members eithergrumbled or openly denounced him for sowanton a disrespect for [Chassidic] tradition.At services the following morning an extralarge congregation was in attendance and abuzz of excitement prevailed. Taking advan-tage of the situation and the attendance thatmorning, the rabbi decided to make his posi-tion clear in his sermon. He repeated the prom-ise that he had given Rabbi Isaac Elchanan tobring Judaism as he had been taught at the yeshiva tothe community where he settled, and stated that hewould never deviate from the laws as expounded by[traditional Jewish] authorities.… He pointed outthat in addition to those laws there were cus-toms in Jewish life which varied throughoutthe world.…He promised to do his utmost toadjust himself to their ways and practices.…—Western States Jewish Historical Journal

Outside of Rabbi Papermaster’s serviceas rav and mohel for the entire region, hisresponsibilities included visiting Jewish com-munities on both sides of the Red River ofNorth Dakota, east into Minnesota and westinto Montana. He provided them withkosher meat and fowl, supplies for Passover,prayer books for the children and tefillin forthe boys.

The Pesach Message –World War I andWorld War II

Historical records of Seders duringWorld War I and World War II documenthow the observance of Pesach in general, andthe Seder in particular, seemed to have pro-vided special strength to participants intimes of war. The holiday’s message hasinspired non-Jews in these conflicts as well. Lieutenant General MarkW. Clark, commander of the United States Fifth Army, addressedJewish soldiers attending a Seder in Naples, Italy, in April 1944:

Tonight you are eating unleavened bread just as your forebears ateunleavened bread. Because the Exodus came so quickly the dough had notime to rise. There was a time of unleavened bread in this war. The timewhen it looked as though we might not have time to rise—time to raise anarmy and equip it, time to stop the onrush of a Germany that has alreadyrisen. But the bread has begun to rise. It started at Alamein. It was risinghigher when the Fifth Army invaded Italy. It is reaching the top of the panand soon the time will come when it will spread out … and the victorywill be ours. —Rabbi David Geffen, American Heritage Haggadah, GefenPublishing House (Jerusalem/New York, 1992). �JA

Rabbi Binyomin Papermaster, nineteenth-centuryNorth Dakota rabbi. Photo courtesy of WesternStates Jewish Historical Journal

The Sioux Falls chapter of Hadassah provided Seders forservicemen at the nearby airbase during World War II.Photo courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of theUpper Midwest

World War I train Seder: In April 1919 a Seder was held ina Pullman car on a siding in the railroad yards of Detroit,Michigan. Soldiers returning from Europe were on their wayto Camp Grant, near Chicago, to be discharged. When itbecame clear that they could not get to Illinois in time for thebeginning of Pesach, the Jewish Welfare Board arranged aSeder for them on the train route, and obtained a rabbi toofficiate. Photo courtesy of the Jewish Welfare Board in WorldWar I, New York, 1920

Lieutenant GeneralMark W. Clark, WorldWar II Commander,United States FifthArmy, www.olive-drab.com.

Sophie Trupin, Jewish prairiehomesteader, circa 1900,www.storiesuntold.org/women/trupin_detail.html.

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