a snapshot from the shtetl

As we approach Pesach 2025, we would like to share a wonderful excerpt from a very unique book: ‘Journey to a Nineteenth-Century Shtetl’ – the memoirs of Ykhezkel Kotik from his life in Kamenets (once part of Poland and which is today in Belarus). Kamenets is approximately 40 kilometres from Brest (or Brisk as it was referred to in Yiddish) and is where we are currently building a memorial on the site of the Jewish cemetery – more information here. Kotik’s memories are vivid and help us to understand daily life in the shtetls of the past. Here he shares his memory of the Passover preparations and the making of the shmurah matzah in Kamenets:

‘Simha-Leyzer, a Jew of unique qualities, was a great scholar, extremely pious and virtuous by nature. Fortune had smiled on him, and eighty years ago he won twenty-five thousand rubles in cash in the Saxonian lottery’. He divided the money in the following manner: five thousand rubles went to charity, because according to Talmudic law it is forbidden to give away more than a fifth to charity; three thousand rubles went for his daughter’s dowry, whom he married off to a famed scholarly genius from Bialystok. But that son-in-law died soon afterward, which cost Simha-Leyzer another six thousand rubles. With the rest of the money he purchased two stores built of stone in Brisk (Brest-Litovsk) , yielding an income of five hundred rubles a year. He also acquired a small estate in Kamenets with fertile land around it, nicknamed by the Jews “gold dust”, which provided him with a good income. His wife ‘Leyke’ took over the management of the fields so that he could sit and study day and night. I remember him sitting in the old study house after the prayers, often until eleven o’clock. I was very fond of him.

Scholars in their own right used to come to discuss the Scriptures and to ask him for advice on certain passages that they could not interpret themselves. After that he would walk home a fair distance, maybe more than a verst (a Russian measure of length, about 1.1 km (0.66 mile), eat breakfast, and continue his studies. He owned books worth five thousand rubles. Although he had a considerable library , even before his great winning, he added many more volumes to it afterward, all beautifully bound. He was naturally kindhearted and modest, and treated everyone as equal. Small children adored him as though he were Samuel the Prophet. He was soft-spoken, and anger was as alien to his nature as fire is to water.

Every summer at harvest time, he called on the lomdim (those engaged in the study of Jewish texts, particularly the Talmud and other religious literature) of Kamenets to help him prepare the Shmurah matzah. It is well known that this matzah is made from wheat that has not grown higher than necessary, and has been kept from any contact with water. The wheat was usually reaped, threshed, and ground by non-Jews. That in itself, was, according to our Simha-Leyzer, a blemish on its purity. He therefore bought a number of small, sharp scythes, enlisted some twenty lomdim, prushim (in the 19^th century this referred to Lithuanian Jews who left their wives and families devoting themselves to Torah study according to the doctrines of the Gaon of Vilna and his disciple Chaim of Volozhin), and young newly married scholars, and together with them went out into the field and taught them how to reap the wheat.

The cut stalks were tied into sheaves and stored for drying in a special barn. When they dried up, Simha-Leyzer and his team threshed them with sticks especially shaped for this purpose. They then transported all the grain to Simha-Leyzer’s home, where there was a table grinder consisting of two small grinding stones and a lever, all of which he had purchased for a few hundred rubles. Some of the men operated the grinder, others collected the flour into beautiful bowls, which they then emptied into the drawers of a large chest that has been punched through with holes. The flour was kept there until shortly after Purim, when Simha Leyzer called together the same team of scholars and students to bake the shmurah matzah. He had prepared special rolling pins made of glass, and the work went on amid great merriment. Before their work, they ate a sumptuous meal, during which they gave discourses on the Torah, and after they had completed their day’s work they again ate and returned to their Torah study. Throughout their work  a happy mood reigned over them and anyone not having witnessed the joy accompanying the reaping, threshing, and grinding of the wheat and the baking of it into matzot has never witnessed real joy in his life.

When the shmurah matzah was taken out of the oven, Simha-Leyzer divided among the scholars and students enough to last them throughout Passover. Since those portions were very large, they were able to sell some, thus earning a few rubles to cover their Passover expenses. That went on year after year and that was how a real Jew lived in those days: his charity, his way of performing good deeds, his splendour, all these without measure. Simha-Leyzer did not live to a ripe old age. He was sixty when he died.’

In Belarus today it is not possible to buy matzah anywhere at all in the country and so our team in Minsk helps to bring a consignment into the country ever year and distribute it to the Jewish communities. This year two and a half tonnes of Matzah was distributed thanks to our partners and our team in Minsk.

To help us complete the memorial construction this summer please make your donation – click here

Or to make a donation in the USA – click here

Journey to a Nineteenth Century Shtetl – the memoirs of Yekhezkel Kotik, edited with an introduction and notes by David Assaf is published by Wayne State University Press, Detroit in cooperation with The Diaspora Research Institute, Tel Aviv University. Available on Amazon or Wayne State University Press.

Quotation from the book with permission of Wayne State University Press.