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The countdown began exactly two months before Passover. Ma checked the dates on the Jewish Echo calendar, which hung on a rusty nail under the mantelpiece, where matchboxes, letters, and china orna- ments were crammed together in no particular order.

The Jewish Echo, now defunct, was the weekly Jewish newspaper, published in Glasgow. The calendar was Ma’s guide for Holiday dates as well as Sabbath candle-lighting times. By the time of the High Holidays in September, the pages were well thumbed and grease- stained. Since dusk in the north comes later in summer and earlier in winter, Ma adjusted candle-lighting times accordingly, rationalizing thus: “As long as I light candles, God doesn’t mind what time it is.”

The Echo was her only connection to the Glasgow Jewish commu- nity. As she scrutinized the births, marriages, and deaths published each week, she could be heard to exclaim, “oh my, Annie Smith has passed away. We used to go together to the Locarno dances every Saturday night.” or, “Ettie Goldstone has had a baby. . . . That must be Ronnie Goldstone’s daughter-in-law.”

Planning ahead was essential. Deliveries were unreliable. The steamship St. Magnus, carrying supplies from the Scottish mainland, arrived in Shetland only twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays. And if the weather was stormy, deliveries could be delayed. Shetland sea captains were highly skilled, but none would risk the North Sea cross- ing from Aberdeen while fighting one-hundred-mile-an-hour gales. “That would be madness,” to quote a feisty captain of the 1930s. Besides dealing with this uncertainty over getting food on time, Ma divided her days between working in the shop and cooking for the family.

Two days before the Holidays, Ma had extra help. There were no freezers, so cooking could not be done very far ahead. Thankfully, in early spring, Shetland weather is cold, so food was stored outside in a meat safe, a wire-mesh box hung high off the ground, or in our unheated, enclosed back porch. Putting together the Passover order was a family affair and the beginning of weeks of joyful anticipation. “Go fetch a writing pad and pencil,” Ma instructed me. Jostling each other to be next to her, we dragged kitchen chairs across the linoleum floor. “I want to sit here.”

“No, I was here first”—this from Roy as he was pushed off the chair.

This went on until Ma intervened. “Ethel, you sit on one side and Roy you can sit on the other side. ”

Pencil in hand, she began to compile the list. At first, it was not very detailed. In the 1940s the only Passover items available for the eight-day holiday were matzo meal, matzos, and wine. And from 1940 to 1945, food was rationed so that coupons in the ration books were saved for special occasions. Lerwick shops stocked sugar, butter, flour, jams, and other basic necessities. But Michael Morrison’ s delicatessen in Glasgow, still in existence, carried foods we tasted only on holidays: sharp and tangy, sweet and sour, exotic and exciting.

Ian Morrison remembers, as a teenager, packing the jars to go to Shetland. “Everything had to be wrapped in two or three sheets of newspaper; then each jar was placed in the box, separated by card- board. That way, if one jar broke, the contents wouldn’t mess up the remaining jars.”

The list became longer as each of us added our favorite “Jewish foods.” Ma yearned for pickles and sauerkraut, which she used to buy in Glasgow whenever she needed to, so half a dozen cans of each was the standard order. Dad insisted on two five-pound wursts (salami). As soon as they were unpacked, the long, fat, garlicky sausages were attached with wooden clothespins to a line strung across the back porch, which served as a natural refrigerator, the temperature in April rarely exceeding fifty degrees. For a Passover snack, Dad sprinted up the steep wooden stairs leading from the back shop, through the kitchen, to the porch. Pulling a silver penknife from his trouser pocket, he cut off a hunk of wurst and ran back to the shop again, savoring small bites on the way. Customers never complained if, at times, he reeked of garlic. And if our supply of olive oil was low, six one-gallon cans were also ordered, Ma never tiring of informing us once more, “I was cooking with olive oil long before it became fashionable.”

Finally, there was the matzo order—fifteen boxes. “How much can one family eat?” came a call from Michael Morrison before mailing the first of many packages to “the Greenwalds in Shetland.” Ma began to explain, “I need a box for Granny Hunter, one for the Laurenson family in Hamnavoe, one for the Mullays who live at the top of the lane . . . ,” before the exasperated deli owner finally hung up on Lerwick 269, one of his best customers. Most of the matzos were delivered to our Christian neighbors, who anxiously waited for the unleavened bread, symbolic of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt—and, in their eyes, we were indeed the Chosen People.

When I was eight years old, my birthday fell during Passover. Determined that I should not feel deprived, Ma placed a surprise order. Along with the enormous brown-paper-wrapped boxes containing the Passover order, there was a small package. “open it,” said my mother. I tore off the paper, Ma helping with scissors, and I gasped. Inside, framed in a froth of white tissue-paper, nestled a magnificent, layered, chocolate nut cake. It had been packed so carefully that the swirly rosettes of chocolate frosting, each crowned with a toasted hazelnut, had retained their shapes perfectly— miraculously surviving the four- teen-hour ocean journey in the ship’s hold. Memory being enhanced by nostalgia, this remains the most glorious birthday cake I have ever had.

We ate fish every day, but meat only occasionally. Like every island household, we stored a barrel of salt herring to carry us over the winter, when the weather was too rough for the fishing boats to go out. We stored our herring in the garage, covering the barrel with a slatted, easily removable wooden lid. It was my job to brave the wind and rain, sprinting from the back door of our house to push open the rickety garage door to “get a fry.” of course, that didn’t mean the herring would be fried. It is the Shetland expression meaning “enough to feed the family,” in our case, a family of five. Ma rinsed and soaked a few herring, as needed, to make pickled herring, chopped herring, and, occasionally, when fresh herring was out of season, to make potted herring (rolled and baked in a vinegar–bay leaf mixture).

one month before Passover, she put up a ten-pound jar of pickled herring. First, the fish was soaked in cold water to leach out the salt. Then, in a single slash with a razor-edged knife, the head and back- bone, with all the tiny bones attached, were removed, later to be tossed outside to delighted seagulls. The fillets were cut into bite-sized pieces, then packed into an empty ten-pound glass sweetie jar, layered with thick onion slices (after the sweeties were sold, there was no further use for the jars, except in our house). Finally, vinegary brine was poured over the fish to cover it completely. Bay leaves, peppercorns, and fronds of dill floating throughout helped give a piquant flavor, which mellowed over the weeks. The lid was tightly screwed on, and the jar set on a shelf high above the jams and jellies in the back porch. The pickled herring was perfectly marinated by Passover. To make chopped herring, Ma drained a couple of handfuls of pickled herring and hacked it on a big wooden board with a broad-bladed messer. She mixed in chopped onion and hard cooked eggs before spooning the sharp, savory mixture into a bowl. Good plain food—no apples, sugar, may- onnaise, or preservatives added to mask the taste of homespun ingredients.

Two days before Passover, our kitchen was the scene of frenzied activity: Ma, Granny Hunter, and “the girl,” darting around like hens vying for their daily grain feed. Ma directed culinary operations while she mixed and whisked—never measuring. “Keep that stove stoked . . . bring in more buckets of peat . . . top up the kettle; we need more boil- ing water.” Her cohort cooks followed directions explicitly. The Rae- burn stove devoured huge quantities of coal and peat to keep up the oven heat. To boil water, needed to scrub all the pots and cooking uten- sils, they carried water from the cold-water sink to a stout aluminum kettle on the hob.

Before the chicken soup could be started, chickens were plucked of feathers, then singed over a gas flame, to be sure not a scrap of feathers remained. Nothing was wasted, Ma insisting, “Chicken feet have all the flavor.” Accordingly, the scaly feet were thoroughly scraped and scalded in boiling water before they were added to the pot, along with an assortment of root vegetables.

Fresh beets—boiled, cooled, and peeled—were grated on the coarse side of a grater to make sweet and sour borscht. Ladled over a chunky potato from a Dunrossness croft (where the soil was said to help produce the mealy texture) the ruby-red soup, flecked with soured heavy cream, was my father’s favorite meal. He would sit back in his chair, licking his lips, pronouncing it the best—a meichle. Ma’s favorite combination for gefilte fish was halibut and hake, delivered to the door by a neighbor fisherman. He had usually gutted them, but Ma had to skin and bone them. “Pull away the oilcloth,” she ordered whoever was around, usually me. “Now hold the grinder steady while I clamp it onto the kitchen table.” The grinder was ancient, made of heavy cast iron, but Ma handled it with enviable ease as she pressed the fish through the funnel and into the blade.

We always served two varieties of gefilte fish. one big pot con- tained oval-shaped balls of the chopped-fish mixture, simmered with onion skins; the rest of the mixture was formed into patties and fried in hot olive oil in an enormous black iron skillet. Not just for Passover, fried gefilte fish topped with a dollop of salad cream (Scottish mayon- naise) and eaten at room temperature was a weekly Sabbath dinner.

Instead of the rich buttery cakes usually baked each Friday morn- ing, Passover cakes were feathery sponge cakes, each made with a dozen new-laid eggs, beaten to a foam with a hand whisk. Baked and cooled, the cakes were sprinkled with sugar, then snugly wrapped in greaseproof wax paper; wine biscuits, coconut pyramids, and cinnamon balls were stored in tight-lidded, round, five-pound tins, recycled from Quality Sweet chocolates, another item making up the conglomeration of goods sold in Greenwald’s shop. The last of the bottled plums and gooseberries were transformed into sweet compotes and matzo fruit puddings.

Everything was stored on shelves in the back porch. Food poison- ing was unheard of. In April, the temperature in the unheated porch was rarely more than fifty degrees. The “girl from the country,” the maid, did the menial jobs like scrubbing the floor, then laying down newspapers, “to prevent the floor from getting dirty,” as Ma ordered. As for eight days of matzos, it was no hardship. We slathered each sheet with fresh, salty Shetland butter, then covered it with a thick layer of Ma’s homemade, heather-scented, blackcurrant jam.

Although we usually ate all our meals in the kitchen in front of the peat fire, at Passover we dined in the “front room,” the parlor, where lace-curtained bay windows overlooked the fields across the one-lane road. The room was large enough to seat family and guests comfort- ably. The drop-leaf oak table was set with a white lace tablecloth and the best china and glassware (we didn’t possess crystal). our close friends dressed up in their Sunday-best church clothes. Rebe, a few years older than I, arrived in a new black and yellow tartan kilt, her white satin blouse with a frilly collar peeping out under a black velvet jacket. I was insanely jealous and pestered my parents until, the follow- ing year, I was given a similar outfit—not quite the same, but I was happy. Children and adults were silent as my father, in his heavy Russian-accented Shetland dialect, recited parts of the Haggadah, first in Hebrew, then in English. I repeated the four questions, and my mother explained the symbolism of the foods on the Seder plate. Each year, discussions became more animated, as our devout Christian guests added their comments and views, always in a respectful manner.

our Passover Seders continued, even though the peaceful existence of the Shetland community was shattered by the onset of World War II. My parents had an added fear. Norway, only two hundred miles east of the Shetland Islands, was under German occupation. It was obvious from the bold signage above the shop, announcing the name Greenwald, that Jews owned the store. A German invasion would have meant certain death for our family. Fortunately, the islands being well protected, that never happened. With Lerwick’s natural harbor a stra- tegic base for naval operations from 1939 until 1945, thousands of troops, including more than three hundred Jewish men and women, were based throughout the islands. They far outnumbered the local community.

In 1941, Ma decided to organize a Passover Seder for the Jewish soldiers, knowing our flat could not hold all those who would have come to celebrate with us. “These poor souls must have a Seder. If there are too many for our house, then we’ll hold it at the camp.” This became her annual mission. It took an enormous amount of dedicated plan- ning. She called the Commanding officer (Co) in Lerwick to explain.

“Could we have a hut for the evening?”

listened to her plans.

“What else can we do to help?”

“Well, for a start, can we use part of your kitchens?” and, she wheedled, “maybe a couple of

helpers. You know, we’ll be cooking for about three hundred people.”

with you.”

Ma gave a sigh of relief. “That’s one hurdle taken care of. I wasn’t sure if he would agree.” The military’s Nissen hut was at the north end of Commercial Road, on the edge of town, but Ma had an army truck with a driver at her disposal. “Just call when you need it,” assured the Co. “He’ll be there in five minutes.”

Ma spent days on the telephone, calling Glasgow and London for donations.

“Just send it to Jean Greenwald, in care of the Commanding officer, Shetland Naval Air Station. It’ ll find me,” she said—adding scornfully, after she had hung up, “Ignoramuses. They have no idea where Shetland is.”

Boxes of matzos, matzo meal, pickles, and olive oil arrived. A kosher wine merchant in London agreed to send wine. When the cases were finally unloaded in the camp kitchen, Ma poured a fingerful to taste. She knew good wine. Describing it as “putrid,” she ran to the sink, spit- ting it out. Furious, she immediately called the liquor store. She screamed into the telephone, with Dad shushing her in the background.

“Don’t think that because we’re in Shetland you can send us infe- rior wine. This wine is sour . . . it’s undrinkable. I will not serve this to the men and women who are fighting for you and your family . . . you should be ashamed!”

A fresh shipment arrived on the next boat, along with a letter of profuse apology.

“I had chutzpah,” she later told us. “But I wasn’t asking for myself. These soldiers were away from their homes and giving up their lives to protect us. The least these shopkeepers could do was to donate the Passover wine.”

A team of army cooks and women friends worked together to pre- pare a complete Seder meal, with Ma supervising. They cooked up enormous amounts of chicken soup and Knaidlach, chopped herring and gefilte fish (even in wartime, fish was plentiful), roast chicken and potato kugels, sponge cake and dried fruit compotes. These dishes were reminiscent of the Seder meal they would have had if they had been able to celebrate with their families.

But most thrilling for the soldiers and for our family was the arrival of Great Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Israel Brodie, the day before the first Seder. Ma had arranged for him to come to Shetland to conduct Passover services. The rabbi presented her with two leather-bound Holiday prayer books, signed by him, in appreciation of her tireless work on behalf of the Jewish troops stationed in Shetland in World War II. Now newly bound, the books are a family heirloom. For many of the Holidays, rabbis from England and Scotland made the journey to con- duct services in the most northerly point of the British Isles. This con- tinued under my mother’s direction until 1945, when the war officially ended and troops were demobbed (demobilized). But the friendships lasted for years, many of the men and women returning with their fam- ilies to see the Greenwalds, who had given them a Jewish home away from home, and to say thank you.

Three thousand miles across the Atlantic in Philadelphia, my Passover table is set with fine china and crystal. An Israeli Seder plate, of hand-wrought silver, contains the symbolic foods, and my husband Walter conducts our Seder with warmth, compassion, and humor. But the Seders that instilled a lasting pride in my heritage and laid the firm foundation for my Jewish identity were held in Lerwick, on the remote Shetland Islands, where the Greenwald family, in the midst of Christian culture, held fast to their faith.

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