Commentaries
In the days and weeks before Passover, Jews around the country are rushing to clean their homes, prepare holiday meals, and run last minute errands. Yet Teri Karpe of Commack, N.Y., has a different item on her to-do list—overseeing the delivery of hand-made shmurah matzah to more than 1,200 homes in her community.
This is Teri’s third year managing, organizing, recruiting and assigning delivery routes to a group of around 50 local volunteers on behalf of Chabad-Lubavitch of Mid-Suffolk, where she has been dubbed the “Chief Matzah Officer.” Herself a recipient of shmurah matzah just a few years ago, Karpe was inspired to take action. “I knew I wanted to be a part of that,” she said. “And now I’m running the program.”
Last Thursday, she coordinated a late-night assembly line of 20 people from across three generations in the synagogue sanctuary.
“Everyone’s in a rush these days,” said Karpe, who was up past midnight assembling and packing boxes. “It’s small things that make you feel good. That you could spread joy and be part of a loving community.”
A Passover Awareness Campaign
Chabad of Mid-Suffolk’s delivery program is part of the Chabad-Lubavitch global Passover campaign, launched by the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, in 1954. The Rebbe declared that every Jew, wherever they are, should have round hand-made shmurah matzah for the seder. That year, the Rebbe sent a package with three matzahs to Knesset member and future President of Israel Zalman Shazar. In the accompanying letter, the Rebbe said that “it is our custom to send Shmurah Matzah to friends and relatives.”
Since then, Chabad emissaries, yeshivah students, and laypeople have delivered boxes of shmurah matzah to Jews around the world. The western Massachusetts shmurah matzah route started in 1954 by Springfield’s Rabbi Dovid Edelman, eventually grew to include thousands of names and addresses, and after Edelman’s passing in 2015 was continued by the next generation. And the scale and scope of organized matzah delivery programs continues to grow.
In Detroit, Mich., for instance, Chabad emissaries have spent the past several weeks preparing more than 170,000 packages of matzah for distribution, and have a goal of delivering 250,000 matzahs to enhance seders around the state. Chabad of Illinois imported over 5,000 pounds of hand-made shmurah matzah, and is sorted and stored in the Chabad’s warehouse space, and is then distributed by the more than 50 Chabad centers in Illinois.
Director of Chabad of Mid-Suffolk Rabbi Mendel Teldon shared that as a young man, he would ride along with his father Rabbi Tuvia Teldon -– regional director of Chabad-Lubavitch activities on Long Island and author of Your Unique Purpose— to deliver shmurah matzah to 70-100 houses in the area. Years later, after assuming the leadership at the Chabad center, he decided to expand the deliveries. He shared how Covid-19 was the catalyst that took the delivery program to the next level, when they started a “Judaism at home” program to make sure the community had what they needed. The program grew from there.
“There are 40-50 volunteers who deliver matzah to their zone, which can be a whole neighborhood or just a few blocks,” he said. “We now reach 1,200 homes locally. We ship matzah to community members who’ve moved to Florida or elsewhere, and provide matzah in bulk to old age homes and youth groups.”