Sending Passover Matzah to Soldiers Stationed Overseas

In connection with the Aleph Institute, a Chabad-Lubavitch organization that caters to Jewish military personnel serving overseas, the Jewish Children's Museum in Brooklyn, N.Y., will be sending packages of matzah to forward bases in advance of Passover.

The museum, a project of Chabad-Lubavitch's Tzivos Hashem children's organization, will kick off the project, dubbed Operation: Message in a Matzah, on Wednesday. Ending on April 13, the initiative will see children bake their own matzahs from scratch and writing greetings to soldiers stationed abroad. For each matzah baked, the museum and the Bal Harbor, Fla.-based Aleph Institute will send one package of specially baked unleavened bread for use at the Passover Seder.

Army Sgt. Scott Humphrey, who has been deployed overseas four, remarked that "gestures like this make the time go by a lot faster."

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More than 500 children are slated to participate in Wednesday's event, where they will crack and mill the wheat, knead the dough, roll it out and bake the flat circles in an oven. They will be joined by members of the U.S. Army and the families of Capt. Andrew Shulman of Massachusetts and Capt. Ari Vogel of Connecticut, two Jewish soldiers currently serving in Iraq. The program will provide an opportunity for their children, and those of other soldiers, to send messages to their parents.

"The Jewish Children's Museum is very excited to partner with the Aleph Institute in bringing matzahs and these special messages to soldiers serving in Iraq," said museum spokesman Zev Steinhauser