History for the Curious – The Jewish History Podcast:
For Soviet Jews, matzah represented a longing for freedom – one we take for granted. This episode tells the hidden story of those heroes who risked everything to keep Pesach alive behind the Iron Curtain, and of the global networks that brought matzah into the USSR by every means, under the watchful eyes of the NKVD.
Jewish life in the USSR was strongly policed. Starting with Stalin in 1925, Judaism was actively hunted down. But every spring, Jews in Moscow, S. Petersburg, and Odessa, as well as in far‑flung provincial cities, risked surveillance, arrest, and labor camps to fulfill this mitzva on Seder night. Clandestine matzah bakeries sprang up, with children posted as lookouts.
In 1929, the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe succeeded in bringing 10,000s of matzos into Russia. In later years, there would be the suitcases stuffed with contraband food moving through international airports, carried by tourists, businessmen, and non-Jewish acquaintances, given to them by people in the free world who never stopped caring for their fellow Jews.
Interviewed are Rabbi Dovid Eliezrie, author of Undaunted, and Rabbi Shmuel Lew, senior Shliach in London, England.
This is the story of how a fragile food became a symbol of spiritual defiance, and how a festival of freedom was observed under totalitarian rule.
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“Undaunted” by Rabbi Eliezrie is available on Amazon for purchase
