senior lifestyle
Matzah Balls, Four Questions
and a Postwar Celebration
T he matzah ball debate was along
the topics at Fred Strober’s child-
hood seders, which off er plenty of
memories to this day.

Strober, 74, of Elkins Park, remem-
bers how large the seders were. His
mother and her sister were married to
his father and his brother.

“Thirty to 40 people would gather at
Aunt Betty’s house for Pesach. The two
families, the Strobers and the Rivlins,
were very close,” Strober said.

Strober, a soon-to-be retiring lawyer
who belongs to Congregation Rodeph
Shalom in Philadelphia, recalled that
he was the youngest boy, so he asked
the Four Questions. His mother made
him take an afternoon nap because he
would be up so late.

“That was the highlight of my year,”
said Strober, who grew up attending
an Orthodox Hebrew school fi ve days
a week at Congregation Shaaray Tefi la
in Far Rockaway, New York. “I would
practice and practice as if it were my
bar mitzvah to make sure that I did it
well in front of my family. I was very
nervous, but they were very adoring,
and I looked forward to the adoration
and being the center of things during
their seder.”
The proper consistency of matzah
balls was a lighthearted point of
Fred Strober
contention between the Rivlins and the
Strobers. The Strobers’ hard matzah
balls were young Fred Strober’s
favorite. “My family members were of all polit-
ical persuasions that by the end of the
seder I thought we’d be throwing the
balls at each other,” he quipped. “But I
say that somewhat in jest.”
The food his mother prepared “was
absolutely unbelievable. Everybody
looked forward to the meals. Her fried
matzah for breakfast sticks in my mind.”
Meantime, at Bill Fox’s house,
the matzah balls were either called
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22 APRIL 6, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
Bill Fox
feathers — the light, fl uff y kind —
or bombs — the chewy, heavy kind.

Fox’s mother, Anne, would make both,
to accommodate everyone’s personal
preference. “We had great discussions every
holiday about whether the bombs were
chewy and heavy enough and whether
the feathers were light and fl uff y
enough,” said Fox, 80, of Pikesville,
Maryland. Family bonding, rituals and songs
— for many Jews, some of their
fondest childhood memories are of the
Passover seder.

“Passover was the best holiday for
me as a child, and it is today,” said
Fox, an auctioneer, lawyer and former
securities fi rm executive. “We were
surrounded not just by our immedi-
ate family, but by our uncles, aunts,
cousins, etc.”
Fox’s father always led the service
and loved to sing, said Fox, who is
a past vice chairman of Beth Tfi loh
Congregation in Pikesville and active
in pro-Israel organizations.

“There was a favorite cantor who was
world-renowned at the time, Moishe
Oysher. My dad had an LP, and at
Photo provided
Ellen Braunstein
Courtesy of Fred Strober
Seniors Recall the Passover Seders of Their Childhoods