American Jewish Historical Society “Weighing and Delivering of the Matzos or Unleavened Bread,” from Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly magazine, August 1877.
Even before this city became known as New York, Jews who lived here often operated on the assumption that they had to take care of their own. Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor of New Amsterdam, had insisted on as much as a condition of allowing Jewish refugees to settle here in the 1650s.
Two hundred years later, as Passover in 1858 approached, that expectation was still very much alive. Tens of thousands of Jews now called Manhattan their home, and they constituted perhaps 3 percent of the borough’s half-million residents. Those who were better off busied themselves gathering items like Holland cheese, nutmeg and gunpowder tea (click on the ad below to see details) for the holidays.
But, as the historic records show, many also worked to ensure that the poor would have matzo, a staple of any Passover celebration.
These never-before-exhibited records from the American Jewish Historical Society in Manhattan detail how the “Association for the Free Distribution of Matzos to the Poor,” a group of benefactors and Jewish organizations at the time, raised nearly $700 for their cause.
Robert Anderson and Mark Isaacs supplied the order, according to the report. (Mark Isaacs appears to be the name depicted in the above image of a matzo factory that appeared in Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly magazine some years later.)
The price was 4¾ cents per pound, much cheaper than the current going price — “this being the lowest offer tendered,’’ the records noted — and a total of 14,330 pounds were bought.
The order was distributed among 640 families for the benefit of nearly 3,000 individuals. Roughly five pounds per person were allotted for larger families; seven pounds per person for smaller ones.
At Shaaray Shamayim, a synagogue on the Lower East Side that doubled as a distribution center, recipients were “recommended by the members of the association or other reliable persons,’’ the report stated.
The records contain eight pages of names and addresses for many of the recipients, mostly German-Jewish families on the Lower East Side.
Entries contain details about who recommended the family and whether a recipient was widowed or had children. Caroline Fogel, a widow with five children living on Pitt Street, got 30 pounds, as did Simon and Esther Straus and their five children on Stanton Street. Mrs. Marcus Rosenthal got 20 pounds next to a comment suggesting that she, too, was struggling because “husband out of city.’’
“Jews Hospital” on 28th Street, a forerunner to Mount Sinai Medical Center, got 20 pounds of matzo meal at 6 cents a pound as well as matzo, the report also records.
Besides the $681.87 spent on matzo, $7 was spent on printing and $3 was spent on messengers, for a grand total of $691.87 expended on making sure the poor had matzo on what the Hebrew calendar recorded as the 7th of Iyar in the year 5,618 — or April 21, 1858.
Comments are no longer being accepted.