Blechs

Most people who hear the word blech (doesn’t rhyme with anything) think of a gagging sound that often accompanies the taste of something awful. For most Jews with a tinge of Orthodoxy in their bloodlines, the term blech represented a vital tool that allowed them to heat food on the Sabbath when cooking is not permitted. The word is a Yiddish one that translates to “tin” and by definition is a square or rectangular sheet of tin that is placed over the open stove burners and distributes the heat to allow for food warming since direct cooking is not permitted. When I think of the word, I think of my dad who, in addition to owning a “hardware” store, became an accomplished roofer and tinsmith. He went on to develop an entire business model around the creation of blechs for the holiday of Passover. Since preparation for cooking for Passover is more complex, requiring the cleaning of stovetops, ovens and in fact, any surface that may have come into contact with chametz (bread or bread derivatives), the need for various types of coverings for the holiday is paramount (some of the paper and cardboard options were covered in a previous post).

My dad was a self-made small business entrepreneur and at some point, he realized that the combination of the sheet metal work he was involved with for his roofing and air-duct business could be meshed with the needs of the Orthodox Jewish community of Williamsburg he was a member of. He began by making the standard rectangular blechs known as Shabbos blechs but then realized that there was a significant opportunity around the Passover holiday. While most competitors focused on external coverings, my dad decided that the was an opportunity for those who were seeking a solution for the inside of their ovens. The previous solutions (prior to the advent of self-cleaning ovens) included yards of tin foil and were labor intensive and pretty messy. My father's solution was simple - create a rectangular box with a front door and internal shell to place INSIDE the oven. It took seconds to install and remove at the end of Passover. With the help of my late sister Ruth, he began advertising the solution in a national Jewish magazine (“The Jewish Observer” comes to mind but I am not certain) and shortly thereafter began receiving orders from Jewish communities around the country. While I am not sure how successful this product line was given the cost of advertising and shipping, it probably opened my dad's eyes to these potential new opportunities on a larger scale. He began by creating stove-top coverings for Passover with holes whose diameter were the right size to allow the cooking flame to be undisturbed and added an additional component for covering the work- space adjacent to the stove’s burners. He then added a sink covering by taking a sheet of metal, cutting a large hole in it, and dropping and aluminum basin with drilled holed for drainage into it. He now had a full kitchen Passover product line – sink, stovetop, workspace, and oven. While these were products that were in great demand, each set of kitchen appliances had an array of different dimensions. Incorrect measurements of these parameters brought in by potential customers would result in products that did not fit, did not work, and would result in wasting time and materials.

His solution was a HOUSE CALL – a home visit where the required measurements could be completed in minutes and guarantee that the outcomes would be correct. At first, he made these measurement visits himself, but as the demand grew, he delegated them to my brother Irv. As a kid, I often accompanied both my dad and brother for these measurements. Hethen branched out beyond our local Williamsburg neighborhood and began reaching out to adjacent communities. I vividly remember riding the bus with my brother in the evenings after school, to visit apartments in Crown Heights, Brooklyn so that we could take stove stop measurements. Since we were not being paid, the only direct costs to the business were the bus fares and the cost of the sheet metal blanks. The business grew significantly, albeit for only a short period of time each year. A few years later, my dad had a game-changing brainstorm that really was indirectly influenced by my brother, who at the time was an Analyst at the Department of Housing and Urban Development working on Section 8 housing policy. As part of the political process and the strong influence of our local Young Israel Rabbi – Bernard Weinberger in the Section 8 program in Williamsburg, at least half of each of the new multi-story buildings was allocated to the Orthodox Jewish community. When the construction neared completion and after the kitchen sinks and appliances were installed, my dad was able to get into the buildings to measure the stove tops, ovens, sinks, and all adjacent workspaces. He quickly realized that there would be a single standard in a public housing building, and that all appliances and surfaces would have the exact same measurements. The only variation was whether the workspace was on the left side or right side of the sink. With that in mind he went to his sheet metal distributor and ordered hundreds of sink templates and stovetops. The sink templates were long rectangular sheets of tin with a circular hole so that a metal basin with an edge could be hung to act as the sink. My jobs included the drilling of holes in the basin so that water could drain and the bending of the edges of the large sheets of tin to ensure that users would not be cut. The equipment required to do this bending was an enormous heavy machine that was bolted to the floor of my dad’s workshop shed in our backyard. To this day, I cannot really understand how these machines were ever put in place without the use of cranes or other heavy duty moving equipment. The day soon came that my dad fully delegated responsibilities for a subset of customers to me, and my self-confidence soared. I knew that I had arrived and now when an individual came in from one of the new public housing buildings the only question I needed to ask was "what side of the sink is your worktable?" With that simple piece of information, I could create the entire set of required coverings from scratch. For me this was a tremendous opportunity to work closely with my dad without having to climb up to the hot, sticky, and scary roofs where he spent a good portion of his later years. It was also an opportunity to contribute to the income of the household, which allowed them to enjoy winters in Florida and summers at the Pioneer Country Club in the Catskills.

In the many years I did this work with and for him, there was only one unfortunate incident. During the final stretches of a busy workday, I took a break and bought an ice cream cone from Harry’s Candy store across the street on Lee Avenue. A customer happened to see me finishing my ice cream, and when my dad asked me to retrieve the man's custom order, I did. The man literally went berserk, because I had not washed my hands from the non-Passover ice cream before touching his Passover coverings. He required that my dad redo the entire order from scratch. He was right and I have never forgotten the additional work that my dad was required to do because of my error. He knew that I knew that I had screwed up and since he couldn’t dock my non-existent paycheck, he never said a word about it or reprimanded me in any way. That was my dad.

One of the last and fondest memories I have of my dad was a lunch meeting I had with him a few weeks before he died. He had been finishing up a major job at Group Health Association of NY (GHI) on 42nd Street, a job he was very proud to have obtained as part of a bidding process I helped him complete. I was working within walking distance, and we agreed to meet at the Hebrew National location in Times Square. Over a couple of hot dogs and a Coke, father and son had a lunch meeting in New York City. No other of the hundreds of lunch meetings in fancy restaurants and private clubs in New York City over the 50+ years of my career had greater meaning.

Today, the art of blech making has generally disappeared and the combination of self-cleaning appliances and composite materials has virtually eliminated the need for coverings. In fact, many families ignore the question completely by traveling to resort locations and rental homes during the holiday (guilty as charged!). For me personally, the word blech will always bring back great memories of working with my dad and at times with my brother. It was a unique opportunity that has lived with me since and will last forever.