The Matzo of Hope: The war in Ukraine gives new meaning to the Passover ritual
Dnipro happens to be my maternal grandfather’s birthplace. Both my grandfathers escaped the Holocaust by dint of being drafted into the Red Army, while my paternal grandmother, five months pregnant with my aunt, narrowly escaped the Nazis in Zhytomyr when she was evacuated to central Asia. Jews have a long history in Ukraine. It was home, but a home of antisemitic restrictions, pogroms and eventually Nazi collaborators.
I first learned about the Matzo of Hope about a decade ago, and soon began adding it to our Seder. Jews are commanded to tell the Passover story anew each year, as if recounting own personal history of being freed from slavery. For us, that story is not far off our lived reality, with my parents telling my children about how our own family escaped a tyrannical empire.
At one point during the evening, we explain what the various ritual foods represent. We always include the Matzo of Hope, describing how people around the world once came together to demand our freedom, weaving North American-Jewish history into our Soviet roots. If we eat matzo to remember how we fled Egypt, the Matzo of Hope reminds us how we fled the USSR, and the many people who cared enough to make it possible.
Like many once-Soviet Jews, these past weeks have been consumed with thoughts of the war. It’s impossible not to note how relevant that Matzo of Hope has become again. Impossible not to think of people again fleeing a Ukraine under bombardment, or Ukrainian Jews marking Passover under the sound of explosions, where their grandparents and great-grandparents once also cowered from bombs and bullets.
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