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As told to Rayzel Reich

I f you want to really conduct the Seder like Zeide Chazkele you should get three cute little dogs and let them play under your table.

That was the message I was so sorely tempted to send out to the greater Reich Family.

I was banging about in my kitchen trying to find someplace to put the frying pan I was holding juggling things going in and out of the oven and talking to Zeide with the phone clamped in my cricked neck.

“You should tell them about my father ” Zeide mused.

“Hmmm...?” I responded vaguely. I turned around with the frying pan and found its lid. A stack of cups tumbled down from on top of the fridge.

What did Zeide Chazkele have to do with Pesach? Sure there are many great stories about him that must be told. But like right now...?

“Uh your father Zeide? About Pesach?” Maybe I’d misunderstood. I picked up the cups. Oh no now both hands were full.

“Yes my father. When he brought three little dogs home for the Seder.”

I put the frying pan on top of the milchig drain board took the onions out of the oven dumped the cups on the tea bags and leaned against the fridge. I was all ears.

*

It was a self-appointed job.

“Poor people with no means to support themselves traveled from town to town ” Zeide tells me. They were beggars really; many had no family or some kind of mental or emotional illness. The Jewish towns cared for these people. Within each kehillah there was a framework to provide for them.

Poor people came to Dembitz by wagon Zeide tells me and found their way to the big shul.

“During the week they received food and lodgings. Reb Yeruchem Kliger was hired by the kehillah to make sure every poor man coming into town received bread.”

Reb Yeruchem Kliger! “Oh I know him Zeide!” I interject. Visions of young Zeide sitting up all night with his rebbe flash through my mind.

“That’s right ” Zeide says jovially indulging my memory of a previous chapter in his storybook.

“Reb Yeruchem would sit in the chassidishe beis medrash a small building near our big shul. When someone wandered in Reb Yeruchem would lift his head from the Gemara and offer a greeting. He had fresh loaves of bread ready and would cut a chunk off a loaf and hand it to the newcomer. Each person received a half maybe a quarter of a loaf each day. Sometimes a poor man would put on a different hat and glasses and try to get another half a loaf. And boy then Reb Yeruchem would yell at them...

“There was a separate building called a hachnassas orchim where the poor people slept. In addition to the bread they got in the shul they received meals in the hachnassas orchim as well. The rooms there were cleaned perhaps once a week. These people often had lice you know...

“They’d stay for two or three days walking around collecting from the townsfolk going back to the hachnassas orchim at night. The kehillah provided for whoever came to town.

“But for Shabbos you need to be with a family. With candles and Kiddush and people and song.

“My father made it his job a self-appointed job to make sure everyone had a place to go Friday night. The more attractive guests were snapped up quickly. Sometimes a talmid chacham or businessman was there and people would chap them up.

“Those that no one wanted came to us.” (Excerpted from Mishpacha Issue 655)