You would think, wouldn’t you, that if both your parents are obsessive cleaners, the preparation of the house for Passover — going into every nook and cranny to make sure there were no crumbs or morsels — would be an enjoyable doddle. Sadly, when I was a child the cleaning for Passover was never a pushover. The lead-up to Pesach in my parents’ home was always (and continues to be!) stressful. With a zealous fervour, in the weeks prior to the festival, they have always launched themselves into a frenzied cleaning of every drawer, wardrobe, cupboard, shelf, cubby hole, cushion cover and space. No errant crumb is safe, no matter how tucked away behind the fridge, or how small and well hidden it might be. Not even a pocket in a tucked-away cardigan is unexamined. My parents are meticulous and thorough. Sherlock Holmes could learn a thing or two from them.
Pots and pans and crockery are brought out of storage and exchanged for our regular chametzy things, which are stored away in their place. What can’t fit into storage is stuffed in a kitchen cupboard, which is then sealed up with so much tape that a burglar might think they must surely have the family jewels hidden away in there, rather than their mugs, plates and pots.
In the weeks before Pesach when I was young, my mother would drastically wind down how much chametz she bought; finished breakfast cereals would not be replaced and all the processed foods just disappeared. Our milkman, who usually delivered three pints a day to us, would be cancelled for two weeks and instead my mother would send me to Breuer and Spitzer to buy the (too creamy) ‘Kosher for Passover’ milk. If we ate any bread in the days before Pesach, it was done almost furtively, by the kitchen sink, as if we had to be ready to quickly destroy the evidence if the chametz police made a sudden raid. Gradually, our house would fill up with so many boxes of matzah we could have built another house out of them. My parents shopped for Pesach as though they were preparing for a siege. Panic buying for lockdown? My parents have been doing that every Pesach for their whole married life.
Although I never enjoyed all the chaos and upheaval getting to a state of total cleanliness, that feeling — as though our home itself was ‘kosher for Passover’ — was bright, light and deeply special. Everything gleaming, shiny, koshered or covered up gave a sense of sanctity and newness. Despite the extortionate prices my parents had to pay for all the special food, they didn’t scrimp in the slightest. In fact, our house would be twice as full of food as usual and there’d be an abundance of confectionary and treats we rarely otherwise had. Chocolates, pralines, nuts, jellies, fizzy drinks: my mother bought them all for Pesach.
My mother has always been a tremendously good cook. She would make her own charoset, and it was delicious — so good that friends would ask for some too. Best of all though, my siblings and I were obsessed with the chocolate and red wine matzah cake my father made. Every year, as soon as the first Seder night was over, he would set about taking over the kitchen for several hours to make a production line of his speciality chocolate matzah cake. Litres and litres of red wine (kosher for Passover, of course), dozens of bars of Pesach chocolate, multiple boxes of matzah, and my dad’s magical recipe would, after many hours of toil, produce the most delicious cakes I have ever tasted. When my parents left London to emigrate to Israel 20 years ago, I tried to recreate my dad’s Pesach chocolate cake. Sometimes it was edible. Just.
With my dad’s chocolate cake, you start off with a small slice because, well, you know, all that wine, matzah and chocolate can’t exactly be good for you. But then it’s so wonderful, so compulsively moreish, you go back for more and more. After all, isn’t a bit of dark chocolate good for your heart, really? Oh, and isn’t a bit of red wine even more good for your health? Oh, and isn’t it a great mitzvah to eat lots of matzah?… Soon, the matzah cake has disappeared entirely from the plate and, coincidentally, your clothes feel tighter.
Fortunately, my parents moved back to London ten years ago so that my dad would be able to make me my Pesach chocolate cake every year. Although if you were to ask them why they emigrated back there, they’ll probably give you some cover story about needing to be near all their grandchildren. Not true: me and my dad know it’s really all about the chocolate cake.
My parents are rather elderly now. My mum is in her late 70s and disabled, and my dad is in his late 80s and a bit frail. Not surprisingly, cleaning for Pesach has been very difficult for them in recent years, and so, rather than go through the rigmarole and upheaval, they’ve opted a few times to go away on an all-inclusive, kosher for Pesach stay in a hotel to Spain. I can certainly see the appeal: instead of spending weeks scrubbing, cleaning, washing, shopping, scouring, worrying, fretting and preparing, you simply pack a case and go off to sunny Spain where everything’s done for you. So I now give them my full support to go away, but obviously only on the proviso that my dad makes me some chocolate cakes first.
This year, like last year, we have Covid-19 and lockdown and my poor old parents can’t escape to Spain from the labours of Pesach. So in one of the few benefits of the coronavirus, as we are all in a bubble together, I’ll again be able to sit at the table with my parents and my children on Seder night, singing the same Pesach songs I’ve loved since childhood, listening to my dad pray, setting a place for Eliyahu HaNavi, hiding the matzah from the youngest child, enjoying the banter between my mum and my kids and, of course, reminding my dad he has cake-to-make duties.
Two years ago my dad became really ill and spent over a month in intensive care. With a bleed on his brain, the doctors told us things were very, very bleak.
We feared and prepared for the worst but, somehow, he miraculously pulled through and after a few more weeks in hospital was finally able to go home.
We always sing “L’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” (“Next year in Jerusalem”) at the end of the Seder, but, to be honest with you, I don’t mind where I’ll be next year as long as we’re all together, celebrating another Seder, another year. As long as we’re all still here, together despite the coronavirus.
Here, with each other, and with the chocolate cake.
