Posted on 03/29/2021 7:47:53 PM PDT by nickcarraway
When it comes to consuming matzah, the Jews of the former Soviet Union are in a league of their own.
At the top of the chart are Azerbaijan’s 8,000 Jews, who this year are expected to consume 10 tons of the unleavened bread cracker that Jews eat on the week of Passover to commemorate their ancestors’ hurried flight out of Egypt.
That’s a provision of 2.7 pounds per person — a ratio that’s nearly three times what’s on stock for the average soldier in the Israeli army.
In Russia, home to about 155,000 Jews, the rate of consumption is somewhat lower than in Azerbaijan, about 2.4 pounds per person. The ratio in the similarly sized Ukrainian Jewish community drops to about a pound of matzah per person, but that’s still higher than the average per Israeli soldier.
“There’s a special emotional attachment to matzah here that you don’t find elsewhere because for decades under the antisemitic persecution of the communist years, Passover was probably the safest way to stay connected to Judaism,” Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, who was born in Italy, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Pound for pound, Russian-speaking Jews buy much more matzah than what we know in other communities. A lot of people keep eating matzahs long after Passover.”
Two matzah retailers told JTA that estimates for consumption in Western countries, including the United States, France and the United Kingdom, are difficult to make as those countries have multiple importers and producers. The supply in Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet countries “is more centralized,” according to one of the retailers, Rabbi Meir Stambler.
Zoya Avadayev discusses cooking Jewish dishes with Rabbi Tsadok Ashurov in Krasnaiya Sloboda, Azerbaijan, July 21, 2018. (Photo/JTA-Cnaan Liphshiz) Zoya Avadayev discusses cooking Jewish dishes with Rabbi Tsadok Ashurov in Krasnaiya Sloboda, Azerbaijan, July 21, 2018. (Photo/JTA-Cnaan Liphshiz) In Azerbaijan, Jews regularly buy matzah to consume for many months after Passover, said Zamir Isayev, the rabbi of the Georgian Jewish Community of the Azeri capital of Baku. Among his community of Mountain Jews, an ancient group that has lived in Central Asia for at least a millennium, “Passover is a time of great devotion, and eating matzah is part of it.”
“Passover is a holiday that is celebrated inside the family and requires no special objects except the matzah, which is just a cracker. So it was relatively safe to practice,” Lazar said.
The holiday’s message of deliverance from slavery also resonated especially with the oppressed Jews of the former Soviet Union.
This year, Lazar’s Chabad-affiliated Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia for the first time sent out 30,000 sets of matzah and other staples of the seder meal to Jewish households due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Whereas making matzah was legal under communism, Lazar said, the regulations on selling and storage made it impossible to keep its kosher for Passover certification.
In Azerbaijan, Isayev said, “you could make the matzah, but were only allowed to sell it in a regular bakery. Next to the bread, which of course meant Jews couldn’t consume it as kosher.”
To get kosher matzah, Jews across the former Soviet Union would come to underground supply points — typically private residences — for a few pieces.
The Ukrainian capital of Kyiv had an underground matzah bakery that operated secretly for four decades until the 1990s. The oven was built by a Jewish engineer. Patrons would bring their own little paper bag of matzah flour and the staff would use it to bake the matzah.
The bakery has since been modernized and expanded under Ukrainian Chief Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich. Until 2014, it supplied 200 tons of matzah annually, mainly to Russian-speaking countries. But demand plummeted that year following the territorial conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has paralyzed bilateral trade.
Workers knead dough at the Tiferet Hamatzot factory in Dnepro, Ukraine, Dec. 8, 2014. (Photo/JTA-Cnaan Liphshiz) Workers knead dough at the Tiferet Hamatzot factory in Dnepro, Ukraine, Dec. 8, 2014. (Photo/JTA-Cnaan Liphshiz)an Russia has its own matzah factory, but “it’s never enough and we need to import from Israel,” Lazar said.
Dnepro, a city in eastern Ukraine, has another factory, Tiferet Hamatzot, that specializes in shmurah matzah, a handmade product that some Jews favor because its standards of production are even stricter than ordinary matzah.
“I think there’s a special pride and satisfaction that goes into getting matzah here,” the city’s chief rabbi, Shmuel Kamenetsky, told JTA.
In Dnepro, many local Jews buy matzah, which in the former Soviet Union is available only in a handful of kosher stores and at synagogues, “to give it to their non-Jewish friends as something exotic and interesting,” Kamenetsky said.
The late Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, often recalled how his father, Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, who lived in Dnepro, clashed with Soviet authorities over matzah. The elder Schneerson obtained permission to produce kosher matzah.
“But it made him enemies, and that’s the reason he was arrested ultimately,” Kamenetsky said.
Levi Yitzchak Schneerson was exiled from Dnepro in 1939 and died in Kazakhstan in 1944.
“Ultimately, Russian-speaking Jews risked their lives to have matzah,” Kamenetsky said. “So it’s no wonder they like it a little more than other Jews.”
I eat lots of matza burgers from the A&W.
Sometimes they have a 2 for $10 special.
We bought three kilos (2.2 pounds each) of matzah, and don’t eat it any other way than straight, or with a little salt or butter on top. Not just any matzah, either. These are hand made using flour carefully guarded against moisture from the moment it was reaped until it came out of the open-hearthed, stone, wood-burning oven. My wife had to have mizrahi (eastern matza), which is more tender and easier to chew, on account of her dental troubles. But we had three kilos total, close enough to those allegedly prodigious matza-eating Russians. They don’t impress me.
Ohhh, please. Don’t cite globalist sources.
Thank you!
The report completely lacks perspective. The norm even in the U.S. is for a family to buy at least five pounds of matzah, even for one or two people, because that’s how most distributors send them to the supermarkets, with the cost per pound when buying the set of five one pound boxes far, far less than buying individual one pound boxes. Often the price of two one pound boxes bought separately could be as much as the cost of the set of five pounds. Lots of recipes can be made from them and they are tasty even when spread with just sweet butter. Yes, matzah stays fresh a long time in those individual one pound boxes and comes in handy the rest of the year for snacking.
Since these Jews likely have the opportunity to purchase matzah only once a year, they buy a large quantity, some or much of which will be on hand in their homes to snack on and use as bread substitute the rest of the year. The assumption that they are eating all the matzvah during Passover only has no basis. Are they thrilled to be able to do so, after Soviet prohibitions on matzvah? For sure.
It’s been debunked, genetically, in Israel, too.
Not that there isn’t a bit of intermarriage at any time. Happens.
Interestingly, all Ashkenazi Jewish people are genetically the equivalent (at most distant) of 5th cousins. Our closest genetic relatives are Sephardic Jews (from the second Diaspora group).
And our second closet group are — Palestinian Arabs, followed by Arabs in general, with whom most males share the same distant paternal ancestor.
The fact that you wrote “Khazarian” shows that you have been indoctrinated by retarded conspiracy cites. For starters, “Khazarian” isn’t the right adjective. It refers to the empire, not the ethnic group, An ethnic Jew, Slav, or Greek would be called Khazarian if they were subjects of the empire. The proper word is Khazar. And there is no evidence that any of the Jews you cited have any Khazar ancestry. I do. So please, call me a commie. I dare you
The word you were looking for is “sites”. Not “cites”. Educated people understand the difference.
Isn’t free speech a wonderful human right?
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