moscow | If all goes according to plan for Russia’s largest Jewish organization, it won’t be long before Israel-baked matzah becomes a luxury item in the former Soviet Union — nice to look at but not really necessary.
With its new matzah bakery getting ready for this Passover season, the Chabad-led Federation of Jewish Communities is hoping to gradually replace imported Israeli matzah with a domestic product.
“Some people will always want matzah from Israel because they think it’s somehow holier,” said Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, the FJC’s executive director.
The group’s effort to distribute more than 500,000 one-kilo boxes of matzah this Passover will cost more than $1.1 million. Considering that its own matzah is sold below cost or given away to those unable to afford the price of $1 per kilo — about 2 pounds — the FJC could enjoy massive savings if it can shift to mostly domestically produced matzah.
That potential for savings led Lev Leviev, the Soviet-born Israeli diamond mogul who serves as the FJC’s president and main private donor, to open Russia’s first industrial-scale matzah factory in the town of Istra, about an hour outside Moscow.
Still unnamed, the factory sits in a new building on one of the FJC’s many regional campuses. Equipped with machinery imported from Israel, it’s the largest matzah factory in Russia, but not the first.
Others have tried to launch matzah bakeries. Decades ago, when Jewish life was heavily suppressed by the communist regime, the Moscow Choral Synagogue operated a small matzah bakery in downtown Moscow. It stayed open even when thousands of Soviet Jews were being denied the right to emigrate and others were being sent to gulags for their activity in Jewish causes.
That bakery did not survive the economic freedoms of the post-Soviet era, when foreign Jewish donors made it more economical to import matzah than to make it closer to home.
The new factory produced only 150 tons in the limited inaugural run since it opened in November, and another 350 tons will be imported from Israel. By next year, Berkowitz expects the numbers to be reversed.
Production costs in Israel are approximately 50 cents per kilo higher than in Russia, and additional costs are incurred in the complicated shipping process.
One reason a cost reduction would be so welcome is the sheer scale of the FJC’s Passover distribution project. Jews from all regions congregate at central distribution centers to receive their matzah.
This year the FJC also has printed 50,000 Haggadahs and sent out 150,000 bottles of wine and grape juice. The group also has undertaken a massive advertising campaign that includes a billboard bearing the face of a smiling child who has come to be known as “the matzah boy,” right in front of Red Square.
Chabad insists the factory is not intended as a business venture. “Logistically we are somewhat like a business, but with one big difference,” Berkowitz said. “We don’t make any money.”
JTA correspondent Vladimir Matveyev in Kiev contributed to this report.