Thousands Visit Model Bakery

In the weeks before Pesach, the Traveling Model Matzah Bakery brought the excitement of Pesach to thousands of children, young and old, in a fun and delicious way. The program started by bringing all the supplies: including the oven, right to the doorstep of dozens of Hebrew schools, day schools and yeshivas.

The Traveling Model Matzah Bakery was put on the road with the help of half a dozen Tzivos Hashem staff, 770 bochrim, and Crown Heights yungerlite. Schools of all backgrounds were each transformed into an old world Shmura Matzah Bakery, complete with sacks of wheat flour, rolling pins, sheaves of wheat stalks, mixing booths, millstone wheat grinders, backdrops, displays, Miriam’s well, a ‘brick oven’ and more. Even Moshe and Pharaoh made an appearance!

Wearing bakers hats and aprons, threshing real stalks of wheat and winnowing the chaff from the wheat kernels, grinding and sifting the grain, kneading, rolling and perforating the dough, the students were put through a breathless 18 minutes of hectic matzah baking from scratch. While the Matzah baked in the stone hearth oven, everyone took a seat for a concluding mini Seder review, complete with saying ‘Lechaim!’ on the cups of grape juice and eating their own hand-made crispy crunchy matzah.

The Tzivos Hashem Crafts Workshops version of the traditional Matzah Bakery stresses the use of handmade Shmura Matzah for the seder. However since the ‘matzah’ the children actually make is chometz, each participant is provided with an individually boxed, full-sized, delicious Shmura Matzah that is Kosher for Passover to take home, together with the Four Questions and a pictorial Seder guide.

For more information about the Model Matzah Bakery and other hands-on workshops, visit JewishChildren.com