Matzah Thins, Inside Chareidim Matzah Bakery

Matzah Thins

Inside Chareidim Matzah Bakery

By Faigy Kahn

One Pesach I spent the first days of Yom Tov with my grandparents at a hotel, and an elderly couple had a few boxes of super thin matzos. Being a very slow chewer, in addition to having difficulty with matzah in general, I was very intrigued by the almost transparently thin matzos. I mustered up my courage and shyly asked if I could try some. “If you knew how much these cost you would really be ashamed,” the husband said with a huge smile. As I bit into the matzah he generously offered me, I did not feel like I was eating matzah. It tasted as if I was eating a light cracker as thin as a potato chip, easy to chew and swallow. I realized If I had a box of these matzos, it would not be such a struggle to eat all the shiurim by the Seder. The box cover said Chareidim Matzah Bakery and I made a mental note to remember it by the time next Pesach came around.

4312 New Utrecht Avenue is home to Chareidim Matzah Bakery, creators of the paper-thin matzah. The inside looks just about like every other matzah bakery. There are tables for kneading, rolling, hole making (redeling). On the other side of the room, workers are washing the bowls and other utensils, and in the front of the room the matzos are draped on the poles and go into the ovens. I came here to speak with the owner and manager, Pessy Weber. She has very little time since she runs the entire operation. “I get here by six AM to make sure everything is in order before baking begins at 8:30 AM,” Mrs.

Weber tells me. “I take care of the bookkeeping, hiring, ordering, making sure we have all our supplies. Baruch Hashem, it is hard but very rewarding work.” The bakery was founded by her husband in 1984. “Shlomo Zalman had previously worked for a few bakeries and was prompted to open a Belzer matzah bakery in Brooklyn. After consulting with a few people including the Belzer Rebbe shlit”a, he went forward with the bakery plans.” Though they saw immediate success, there was not much differentiating it from other more established bakeries. “Other than the fact that we are Belz, we offered the same product as the other bakeries.”

As a woman, though, Mrs. Weber has a different vantage point than the other people working at matzah bakeries. “Women in general have trouble with standard shmurah matzah. I figured that in order to differentiate ourselves and to create a loyal and exclusive customer base we should attempt to make our matzos thinner and easier to swallow and digest.” The response to the new-style matzah was overwhelmingly positive. “We got feedback from people people of many backgrounds telling us how much they love the matzah. Those with gastrointestinal issues told us that they had an easier time digesting the matzah. Others told us that although they couldn’t chew regular matzah, they were able to eat ours. Patients in the hospital let me know how much it helped them. Some who have celiac disease claimed that they were helped, too. Then there were people who simply loved the texture of our matzos.”

When I ask why nobody has copied their trademark thin matzos yet, Mrs. Weber is quick to explain the difficulty behind making these matzos. “They are much more difficult to roll out. there is more loss than with regular matzos during preparations as well as in the oven. We have to be more careful when we pack them up because thin matzos are much more fragile. As opposed to other bakeries we pack matzos by number of matzos rather than by weight. We put ten matzos in every box, which weighs about nine and a half ounces. Training in workers is harder because we use a different, more difficult process. We can’t just hire people from other bakeries and put them in the assembly line, so to speak. Each run takes a little more time, and the extra time from all the runs adds up, which means we can’t produce as many matzos as other bakeries, even if we expand our facility. All these reasons make our matzos more expensive than others.”

Mrs. Weber had, at that point, begun running day-to-day operations of the bakery because her husband fell ill. “He passed away when our youngest was only six years old,” Mrs. Weber tells me, without any self-pity. She knew that she couldn't feel sorry for herself and that she had to continue working to support her young family. “Baruch Hashem, we have the best children. My schedule is unforgiving but they made it easy for me. Nobody complained or acted out. Each child helped the next and they made it work. I know that each parent says that about their children, but I have the story to prove it,” she says with pride in her voice. I attempt to steer the conversation towards the novelty of a woman overseeing a Chassidish matzah bakery, but Mrs. Weber dispels that notion and tells me, to my surprise, that she has never encountered any issues. “There are many

shai los that come up. No Rav or Rebbe has ever refused to meet with me or given me a hard time. I go to the farms to attend wheat cutting in the summer. There are numerous Rabbonim and Mashgichim present and they discuss all matters with me without any hesitation. The yungeleit who work for me treat me with the utmost respect. There never have been any obstacles or issues when it comes to that.”

The wheat cutting ordeal is amongst the most arduous of the many complicated and difficult ones in the matzah baking process. “We have to check the weather to make sure it is nice and dry. When we get there, we need to check the wheat and be certain that it is it is in perfect condition for us to be able to cut it and store it safely without allowing it to get moist.” Mrs. Weber laments the times they went to a field and

found that the grains were unusable. One year they had to go to a field near Buffalo. “We go there with Mashgichim, Rabbonim and others to inspect everything and make sure it was kosher for us to use, only to find it completely unacceptable. We had to scramble to find another supplier, which is easier said than done. We process about 160,000 pounds of wheat every year.” After cutting, t h e wheat is stored in burlap bags in a dry location until the baking season begins. It has to be shmurah from the time of cutting until the time of baking. “We start soon after Sukkos. We do all our milling in-house and usually have a week's supply of flour ground. Halachically, there must be at least three days between milling and making matzah.” Mrs. Weber arrives at the bakery at 6 a.m., the first dough begins at around 8 a.m. and they bake until 8 p.m. “We have about 50 people working, between volunteers and yungeleit. Each run can last a maximum of seventeen and a half minutes. After we finish making our matzos, we have chaburos who come and bake until late into the night.” Over the last few years production has become more difficult. “We suffer from the same labor shortage as everyone else. It is very difficult to get people to work. Since Covid we have produced much less matzah than usual. Material costs have also increased immensely, which is why we have had to increase our prices.” Mrs. Weber lauds her relationship with her customers who are who are truly loyal to her. “It is not only because we deliver a product like no other, it is also because they know us and trust us. Trust is a major factor. They know that we aren’t increasing our prices because we are looking to increase our profits, it is only because we were forced to.” Mrs. Weber is a dynamo. She works all day, and doesn’t ask for help. She hires the workers, finds volunteers, orders supplies, deals with customers and does the bookkeeping. Frankly I am surprised that she doesn’t do the kneading, rolling, and baking herself. I ask her how she can do everything, and if it doesn’t get to be too much for her. “When you are enthusiastic about what you do, it is not really work,” she states. Though it is an old trope and cliché, she truly exudes the mark of a person who takes great pleasure in what they do. She quickly adds, “Don’t get me wrong. It is exhausting. But loving what you do and knowing that people appreciate your product gives plenty of satisfaction and motivates me to keep going.”