Ludvipol: A Modern Shtetl
Jewish life Jewish Life
and Hanukkah gelt (Yiddish for money). Jelly doughnuts were our traditional Hanukkah fare. Purim was a very happy holiday, with special cakes and cook- ies, just like today. Kids ran around with decorative paper flags and made a racket with wooden groggers. People commonly drank wine at Purim, but not to the point of true drunkenness. For Passover, we had three seders, one on the first day, one on the second, and one on the last. The town had its own Passover bakery, where everybody bought their matzah. My Uncle Usher was part-owner of this operation, a sophisticated one for a small town. There were tools to mix the dough and special roller wheels to prick the little holes. The matzahs were round and six or seven inches in diameter. Each one was put into and taken out of the oven by hand. We also used to bake our own Passover kugels from vegetables or potatoes. We baked individual potato kugels in a pan with six little cups, like a muffin tin, and they came out like big muffins. We also made kugels from matzah meal. You could not go and buy ready-made matzah flour in a store, so we had to pound the matzah in a wooden mortar until it turned into flour. Then it was sifted. This flour was used for Passover, when regular flour could not be used. All kinds of things were baked from it, including cakes and pastries. I remember the bonfires we lit to celebrate Lag b’Omer and how people danced around them until late into the night. Other traditional holidays and events we celebrated included the night of the New Moon, when people would come out of shul and look up at the moon and recite the Kiddush Levanah (sanctification of the moon, also called the Birchat HaLevanah, blessing of the moon). After that, they would say, “Shalom aleichem ,”peace be unto you, to each other. The local Klezmer band played at weddings and other cele- brations. Bilinke was the short, stocky violinist, the tall trumpet player was named Shlaifer, and a young drummer, and sometimes people on saxophone, clarinet, or accordion, played along. Jewish
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