Tikvah
Subscribe
MosaicImage of Mosaic
Editor's Pick

April 15, 2019

How Train Cars Filled with Matzah Made it to the Soviet Union in 1929

Thanks to a small group of dedicated rabbis.

In 1929, Stalin’s efforts to collectivize agriculture were in full swing, and the Soviet Union suffered some of the severest famines and grain shortages of its history. These economic conditions, combined with the Bolsheviks’ repression of religion, made it doubly difficult for Jews to obtain matzah for Passover. Having fled the USSR the previous year, and thus well aware of the circumstances there, Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, rebbe of the Lubavitch Ḥasidim, enlisted a number of prominent rabbis and communal leaders in a plan to send matzah to Soviet Jews. Dovid Margolin tells of their efforts:

Subscribe to Continue Reading

Get the best Jewish ideas and conversations. Subscribe to Tikvah Ideas All Access for $12/month

Login or Subscribe
Save

April 15, 2019

  1. Archaeology, the City of David, and the Future of Jerusalem

    The only way to protect Jerusalem’s heritage is to ensure that it remains under undivided Israeli authority.

  2. How and Why Hamas Founded CAIR

    Couching its rhetoric in slogans like “social justice,” “due process,” and “resistance.”

  3. How Much of a Difference Do Individual Leaders Make in Middle Eastern History?

    The king is dead. Does it matter?

  4. German Intellectuals’ Dangerous Choice of Athens over Jerusalem

    Worshipping the Greeks at the expense of the Jews.

  5. How Train Cars Filled with Matzah Made it to the Soviet Union in 1929

    Thanks to a small group of dedicated rabbis.