Nine writers recount their search for chometz — and what they found

I

was raised on stories about my grandparents. These stories never got boring, because we instinctively knew this was us — who and where we came from, what made us who we were.

We never tired of hearing how all the kids would gawk as Bubby Basya’s rich relatives drove down in their shmancy automobile from Long Island to Delancey Street to visit, and how she ingeniously finagled tzedakah out of them for whichever mosad or needy families she was collecting for just then.

Or how Zeidy Avraham Reuven walked off a job site for the city because he wouldn’t work past chatzos on Fridays; how a customer took one look at the man at her door and yelled, “I asked for a plumber, not a rabbi!” and slammed the door in his face; how Zeidy Rothblatt could be maavir sedrah by heart because he’d leined the parshiyos so often.

And on the other side, although my grandmother couldn’t speak about the war or her family who perished in 1941, over the years we were able to piece together bits and pieces, filled in occasionally by Zeidy. He spoke freely about his own parents, grandparents, and siblings Hy”d, and his experiences in multiple concentration camps. These stories built us, strengthened us, bound us to our roots.

“Tell us about when you came to America!” was an all-time favorite, in heavy competition with hearing tales of the East Side of old.