In 1945, a 19-year-old boy from Marietta, Ohio, found himself in Germany, serving as a soldier in General Patton’s Third Army, assigned to the 94th Chemical Mortar Battalion. With Passover fast approaching, and feeling isolated and very far from home, he got word of a community seder being arranged in Belgium. He and other Jews in his battalion piled into jeeps and made their way to the meeting place, joining an enormous assemblage of soldiers who had gladly accepted the same invitation. Sitting at the seder, with matzah and the other familiar Passover ritual foods before him, the young soldier felt — for the first time in a long while — a sense of Jewish community. He felt a little less alone. For the hours of the seder, the war receded, and it felt like home.
Over the course of Jewish history, the seder has always had this transformative effect. As a people who have been oppressed, who have been displaced, who have long been "strangers in a strange land," we recount on Passover the ancient and core narrative of the Jewish people — our redemption from slavery to freedom. And we are lifted up, wherever we are and whatever our circumstance.
Which is why, this year, UJA has focused on enabling that Passover experience for more than 75,000 Jews from Ukraine. Bringing together a historic coalition of 20 nonprofit partners — from Chabad and the Orthodox Union to the World Union for Progressive Judaism and World Central Kitchen — we are distributing Passover-related food and supplies across 24 cities in Ukraine and nine additional countries housing refugees.
To break it down: UJA is providing $2.3 million, with support from the Jewish Funders Network, which is allowing our partners to host more than 20,000 people at seders, distribute 43 tons of matzah, deliver 22,000 Passover seder kits, and hand out 5,000 Haggadot. In addition, World Central Kitchen will be serving 15,000 Passover meals a day to refugees in Poland during the holiday.
UJA put together a similar initiative in New York for Passover 2020, during the worst days of Covid, albeit on a smaller scale. Though we were all confined to our homes, we recognized that those who were completely alone, vulnerable, or in financial need bore the brunt of isolation. So working with a broad range of community organizations, we identified those in need and sent out thousands of seder kits, meals, and boxes of matzah. I still remember how one recipient, a 97-year-old woman, called to thank me. She said that for the first time in her life, she was all alone on Passover and thought she wouldn't be able to have a seder. When she opened our package, she burst into tears, saying that in her more than nine decades of life, she'd rarely felt a greater sense of gratitude. The embrace of community made all the difference.
Now we bring that embrace — the same embrace that was so deeply felt by a 19-year-old WWII soldier and a nonagenarian New Yorker — to Ukraine’s Jews, whose lives have been upended.
And what of our 19-year-old soldier? His name is Robert Beren, and 77 years later, he still has vivid memories of that Passover seder in Belgium in 1945, and how much it meant to him. To this day, Robert even has the Haggadah he was given that evening. So when his daughter — UJA’s president, Amy Bressman — told him about our Passover initiative for the Jews of Ukraine, he made a gift to underwrite a significant portion of our efforts. The embrace of Jewish community being paid forward.
As we sit tomorrow evening to recall our exodus from Egypt, we will hold in our hearts the Jews of Ukraine, for whom the Haggadah story of oppression will have intensely new relevance. But God willing, so too, soon, will the story of liberation and redemption.
May peace come to Ukraine, and may we always feel the embrace of community at all our seder tables.
Shabbat shalom and chag sameach