More Than Just Matza

I went shopping for Shmora Matza today. I know, they have Shmora Matza at Shop Rite, but I went to Boro Park in Brooklyn, to the Shatzer Matzah Factory. Why shlepp all the way to Brooklyn for matza you can get here (albeit not as fresh)? Because I was accompanying my friend and teacher Rabbi Furman on his annual matza-buying pilgrimage. Rabbi Furman’s parents lived in Boro Park, and every year his father would go to Shatzer's to buy matza. Now, years after his father’s passing, so does he. It was a great way to spend the day.

What a place! A little whole in the wall. Behind a small, virtually unmarked door, we found a scene that could have taken place 100 or 400 or 800 years ago. A long and noisy room with a 30 foot table. Behind the table are men and women of all ages, from teenagers to their 70s, rolling out little brown balls of dough with thin rolling pins 3 feet long. In a corner of the room, a large mixing bowl where the dough is kneaded. Sitting beside the bowl are pitchers of water and bags of very costly wheat. In another corner, but really just 4 feet away, given the narrowness of the room, is a small man rolling small holes into the dough that has come from the tables. Another man ushers them into the oven , his arms moving rhythmically like a conveyor belt.

The whole process, from the time the wheat hits the water until the dough is baked must be only 18 minutes. That’s the length of time the Rabbis of the Talmud determined it took the dough to begin to rise, or become “Chametz”. I didn’t see any stopwatches around, but my guess is that they had been doing this for so long that they had the timing down pat. Rabbi Furman told me a story about how the famous Rabbi, the Chozeh of Lublin, made a whole store’s Shmora Matza tref because, even though they were made in just minutes, the tears of the workers who were pushed too hard by their employer made the finished product unfit for Pesach consumption. These folks looked like they were having a pretty good time, even thought the Rabbi watched them like a hawk.

It’s called Shmora (“Guarded”) Matza because its entire production is carefully overseen from beginning to end. The wheat is harvested just as it ripens and before rain can fall on it. The sheaved wheat is protected from all rain. The threshing is supervised so that no water comes in contact at any point, and the shipments are sealed in trucks very carefully. No wonder this matza costs $17/lb.!

But for me, of course, the matza will taste delicious not just because I bought it fresh, and not even because Rabbi Furman and I bought it together. (It was his 75th birthday!) Rather, tasting it will remind me of Rabbi Furman’s love for his father and his faithfulness to the traditions imparted to him by his dad. Hopefully, it will inspire me to create and maintain my own meaningful traditions with my own children, and they, in turn with theirs.