The American Manischewitz Company announced this year that it would be tripling its usual donation to Chabad-Lubavitch to provide matzah to the Jews of the Ukraine, Lithuania, and Belarus. According to Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, the director of Chabad of Lithuania, Manischewitz is donating 60,000 pounds, almost 1 million pieces of matzah – to ensure every Jew who wants matzah for the weeklong Passover holiday will receive it. Chabad officials in Lithuania add that many of the local Jews live on a poverty level and cannot afford matzah which sells for an average $6 a box.
Steven Grossman, of the B. Manischewitz Company, noted, "Our founder, Rabbi Dov Behr Manischewitz, was born in Lithuania and immigrated to Cincinnati in 1886. He started out by supplying matzah to newly arrived Jewish immigrants who were heading west to seek a new and better life in America. It was very important to Rabbi Manischewitz that every Jew, even those in transit, be provided with matzah at Passover. I am sure that he would feel that our partnership with Chabad in Lithuania is bringing his life's work full circle."
In a related holiday effort by yet another Jewish religious organization, the Orthodox Union's Joseph K. Miller Torah Center in Kharkov, Ukraine, will be hosting four different sedarim (ritual meals) on the first two nights of Passover, with an attendance totaling almost one thousand people each evening. In addition, the Center will offer a fifth seder in a small community near Kharkov, with about 100 people expected to participate. More than one thousand pounds of matzah are being shipped from Kiev, while the rest of the Passover foods will come from Israel, both for the Center-run sedarim, as well as for distribution to families for use in their own homes.
Meanwhile, back home in Israel, the world's largest matzah was baked at the Children's Museum in Holon on Monday. The children, supervised by a rabbi, broke the Guinness record by baking a matzah measuring 1.58 meters by 1.75 meters (71.8 in. by 79.5 in.).
Steven Grossman, of the B. Manischewitz Company, noted, "Our founder, Rabbi Dov Behr Manischewitz, was born in Lithuania and immigrated to Cincinnati in 1886. He started out by supplying matzah to newly arrived Jewish immigrants who were heading west to seek a new and better life in America. It was very important to Rabbi Manischewitz that every Jew, even those in transit, be provided with matzah at Passover. I am sure that he would feel that our partnership with Chabad in Lithuania is bringing his life's work full circle."
In a related holiday effort by yet another Jewish religious organization, the Orthodox Union's Joseph K. Miller Torah Center in Kharkov, Ukraine, will be hosting four different sedarim (ritual meals) on the first two nights of Passover, with an attendance totaling almost one thousand people each evening. In addition, the Center will offer a fifth seder in a small community near Kharkov, with about 100 people expected to participate. More than one thousand pounds of matzah are being shipped from Kiev, while the rest of the Passover foods will come from Israel, both for the Center-run sedarim, as well as for distribution to families for use in their own homes.
Meanwhile, back home in Israel, the world's largest matzah was baked at the Children's Museum in Holon on Monday. The children, supervised by a rabbi, broke the Guinness record by baking a matzah measuring 1.58 meters by 1.75 meters (71.8 in. by 79.5 in.).