Rolling in Unleavened Dough: FSU Jews learn Passover basics at Matzah Factory

With Passover rapidly approaching, Jewish communities around the world are making holiday preparations. For five Jewish communities in the Northern and Eastern Ukraine regions, this season brings with it the building of matzah bakeries—part of an educational project that has become custom over the past few years.

Baking traditional matzah with their own hands, Jews of all ages are initiated in the concepts of Pesach and symbolically reenact the pivotal time in history when Jews were delivered from slavery to freedom. For many Jews in this region who were long denied the right to celebrate Jewish tradition, taking part in the act of making matzah is one small but vital piece of rekindling their connection to their heritage.

Young and old work together at the matzah factories, bonding through the ages-old baking process. This year’s participants will include elderly JDC-sponsored Hesed clients, Hillel and Jewish day school students, Jewish children from state orphanages and from the newly-initiated Children at Risk program, young Jewish families of the Mazel Tov early education program, special needs children and adults, and Jews from periphery towns and settlements outside of Dnepropetrovsk.

The matzah factory will be open to all participants from March 20th through April 5th.

April 2005