Since 2002, the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk has been home to one of the most important matzah factories in the former Soviet Union. Despite the looming threat of Russian invasion, its ovens are still running. Dovid Margolin explains the historical significance of matzah baking for post-Soviet Jewry:

For generations, matzah baking in the Soviet Union was a hidden, secretive affair. . . . Nevertheless, from the onset of Communist rule in the early 1920s until the regime’s demise in 1991, matzah remained a [Passover] staple for millions of Jews in the Soviet Union. Whether baked in the relative privacy of home or purchased at the local synagogue in exchange for government rations, matzah remained one of the last connections to Judaism [for many Soviet Jews]. . . .

During Soviet times, Jews living in smaller cities and settlements were unable to bake their own matzah, and therefore had to receive shipments from bigger cities such as Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev. After the breakup of the Soviet Union and the independence of its republics, these shipments continued; Dnepropetrovsk for years received its matzah from Moscow. When it began baking its own matzahs in 2002, it naturally exported them to Russia for sale.

Today, that is no longer possible. Matzah production may not have been affected by the ongoing war between Ukraine and [Russian-backed] rebel forces a few hundred kilometers to the east, but there has been a breakdown in trade relations between Russia and Ukraine as a result of [the war]. That means that while Ukrainian matzah is shipped around the world, this year it will not be available for Passover use just across the border in Russia. . . .

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.