ST. GEORGE, UTAH — A particular form of unleavened bread is being readied for distribution in a quiet nook of southern Utah, the place the native rabbi estimates as many as 2,000 Jews dwell amongst a inhabitants predominately affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, popularly often known as the Mormons.
Rabbi Mendy Cohen, the 28-year-old Chabad Lubavitch “emissary” who leads the outreach right here, will place particular person items of “shmurah,” or “watched” matzah in a field labeled “A Time to Present.” He’ll then provide these, free, to Jews who’re .
The eight-day Passover vacation, bracketed by formal meals often known as a seder, facilities on the forsaking of any product made with yeast or that has risen within the baking course of. Therefore, the unleavened bread — which commemorates the rapidly ready flatbreads consumed by the Hebrews leaving Egyptian slavery — is a focus of the observance.
Why is that this matzah totally different from all different matzahs? Rabbi Cohen says the reply lies within the unique means unleavened bread was ready.
Shmurah matzah, he mentioned, “is the normal matzah, that dated again to the best way they used to make it years in the past.”
The “watched” factor, Rabbi Cohen defined, refers back to the wheat grown and used for the unleavened bread. From the time the grain is harvested till it’s floor and baked, the wheat is “watched very rigorously” to ensure no water causes any fermentation.
Whereas the commercially produced matzah typically stocked in multipacks at D.C.-area groceries is “100% Kosher” for the vacation, he mentioned, those that produce the shmurah matzah “wish to be additional cautious as a result of Passover is a really, very particular vacation.”
Lubavitchers, who observe the teachings of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, additionally imagine the shmurah matzah is each the “bread of religion” and the “bread of therapeutic.”
Rabbi Cohen mentioned “When you’ve got struggled with perception or religion, this [matzah] will allow you to and to reconnect to your self and to your soul, in addition to therapeutic, non secular therapeutic and bodily therapeutic.”
There’s additionally a historic factor for the Lubavitch neighborhood. Rabbi Schneerson’s father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, led a Lubavitch neighborhood in what’s as we speak Dnepr, Ukraine, when the nation was a part of the Soviet Union. The communist authorities didn’t like Rabbi Levi’s actions and finally despatched him to a distant village in Kazakhstan; he died in 1944 within the Kazakh capital of Almaty.
When the youthful Rabbi Schneerson grew to become the chief of the Lubavitcher motion, he took a particular curiosity in selling the baking and distribution of shmurah matzah, the bread that led to his father’s arrest by Stalinist forces, Rabbi Cohen mentioned.
Immediately, “tens of millions” get to obtain shmurah matzah due to the initiative launched by the person they name “The Rebbe,” he mentioned.
The specifically ready unleavened bread “represents our heritage and our historical past. And it’s very particular to have the ability to hook up with that,” Rabbi Cohen mentioned.
Equally poignant, he famous, is that April 12 was the one hundred and twentieth beginning anniversary of the Rebbe, sparking the Lubavitcher motion to ramp up distribution of the shmurah matzahs.
Rabbi Cohen famous that the unleavened bread was manufactured in Ukraine and exported earlier than the conflict began. He mentioned the group would additionally make particular efforts to distribute shmurah matzahs to these Ukrainian Jews who have been unable to flee the preventing.
Together with the present-day observance of an historic feast, Rabbi Cohen mentioned Passover has an added which means for Jews as we speak.
He famous that “when God instructions us to do a sure commandment, it’s all about reliving that second in historical past” and connecting to the non secular which means of the pageant.
“The thought of Passover is to have the ability to be liberated from these hardships which might be holding you down from being your free self,” Rabbi Cohen mentioned. “The message of Passover is to have the ability to liberate your self and let you know you’ve the facility, the potential and the power inside you as a way to go that additional mile and liberate your self out of your private setbacks.”
