I always look forward to being able to meet and speak to veteran rabbonim. Therefore when I heard that Rabbi Yisrael Epstein (name changed) was going to be spending time in my community over Yom Tov visiting with his married daughter I seized the opportunity.

Rabbi Epstein served as a rav in a number of congregations before retiring to Eretz Yisrael about 15 years ago and I was thrilled to meet him and hear about his years in the rabbinate. He recalled how difficult it was to obtain reliable kosher meat and how on Pesach every household made their own mayonnaise and flavored seltzer.

“There were no disposable plates or spoons or knives. A family that wanted to keep Pesach properly had to either kasher all their utensils or buy new ones” Rabbi Epstein recalled.

I asked him about obtaining shmurah matzoh and he said that was especially difficult in the early years. In fact many times they made do with one box of machine shmurah matzoh and everyone just had the minimal shiur needed for the sedarim. Then I asked if he could recall one particular incident. He hesitated and his daughter who was also in the room suddenly spoke up.

“Papa why don’t you tell Rabbi Eisenman about the Pesach of 1957?” Rav Epstein’s eyes sparkled as he recalled the Pesach of 1957 and he began his story:

“We were living ‘out of town’ and that year I was only able to obtain one box of machine shmurah. The rest of our matzoh was regular matzoh. The shmurah matzoh was in a white box while the other matzos were in blue boxes. As the rabbi of the small community I used to buy extra boxes of matzoh in the hopes of convincing more members of the community to at least eat some matzoh on Pesach and everyone knew they could get a box of matzoh for free at my home. Baruch Hashem I gave out 20 boxes of matzoh some years. It wasn’t shmurah matzoh but according to many poskim in difficult situations one can use it at the Seder for the mitzvah of matzoh.

That year in the middle of selling the chometz on Erev Pesach there was a knock at the door. I asked my daughter (he points to his daughter who’s attentively listening) if she could answer it. She returned and told me that Mr. Goldberg was at the door asking if he could still get a box of matzoh. I was thrilled. Of course he could! Happily I told my daughter who was six at the time to ‘give Mr. Goldberg a special box of matzoh.’

My daughter went to the boxes and seeing there was only one ‘special’ box gave Mr. Goldberg my one and only box of shmurah matzoh. Mr. Goldberg not knowing any different thanked her and left.

That afternoon when I went to open the boxes for the Seder I noticed that the white shmurah box was nowhere to be seen. I asked my daughter if she knew where it was and she proudly told me “Yes Papa you told me to give Mr. Goldberg a ‘special’ box of matzoh and there was only one special box the white box so I gave that to Mr. Goldberg! Right Papa?”

At first I was so upset! My one and only box of shmurah!

Rabbi Epstein paused and at this point his daughter finished the story.

“Papa remember what you said? You said ‘My teirerah tochter (dear daughter) of course you did the right thing you gave Mr. Goldberg the special box of matzoh meant for him and we will have the special matzoh meant for us.”