Youngsters Get a Taste of Passover

“I am making the matzo to fulfill God’s commandment to eat matzo on Passover,” each child says as the unleavened bread is rolled out.

By the time the special bakery in the Abraham and Sonia Rochlin Chabad House in Westwood closes on Thursday, an estimated 3,000 Jewish schoolchildren will have baked their own handmade matzo in the 2,500-year-old tradition begun by the Israelites when they fled Egypt without waiting for their bread to rise.

“We want our children to experience the flavor of Passover while they learn its history,” Rabbi Boruch S. Cunin, director of West Coast Chabad, said. “We want them to realize that matzo doesn’t come in boxes.”

The children of Israel, the youngsters are told, baked their bread in the sun as they walked away from slavery under the Pharaohs toward the Promised Land.