{"id":12,"date":"2026-04-07T13:15:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T13:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chabadnews.al\/?p=12"},"modified":"2026-04-07T14:33:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T14:33:50","slug":"how-volunteers-are-distributing-tons-of-shmurah-matzah-around-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chabadnews.al\/?p=12","title":{"rendered":"How Volunteers Are Distributing Tons of Shmurah Matzah Around the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the days and weeks before\u00a0Passover<\/span>, Jews around the country are rushing to clean their homes, prepare holiday meals, and run last minute errands. Yet Teri Karpe of Commack, N.Y., has a different item on her to-do list\u2014overseeing the delivery of hand-made\u00a0shmurah\u00a0<\/i>matzah<\/span>\u00a0to more than 1,200 homes in her community.<\/p>\n

This is Teri\u2019s third year managing, organizing, recruiting and assigning delivery routes to a group of around 50 local volunteers on behalf of\u00a0Chabad-Lubavitch of Mid-Suffolk<\/a>, where she has been dubbed the \u201cChief\u00a0Matzah<\/a>\u00a0Officer.\u201d Herself a recipient of\u00a0shmurah<\/i>\u00a0matzah just a few years ago, Karpe was inspired to take action. \u201cI knew I wanted to be a part of that,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd now I\u2019m running the program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last Thursday, she coordinated a late-night assembly line of 20 people from across three generations in the synagogue sanctuary.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone\u2019s in a rush these days,\u201d said Karpe, who was up past midnight assembling and packing boxes. \u201cIt\u2019s small things that make you feel good. That you could spread joy and be part of a loving community.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Passover Awareness Campaign<\/h2>\n

Chabad<\/span>\u00a0of Mid-Suffolk\u2019s delivery program is part of the\u00a0Chabad-Lubavitch<\/span>\u00a0global\u00a0Passover<\/a>\u00a0campaign, launched by the\u00a0Rebbe<\/span>, Rabbi\u00a0Menachem M. Schneerson<\/span>, of righteous memory, in 1954. The Rebbe declared that every Jew, wherever they are, should have round hand-made\u00a0shmurah<\/i>\u00a0matzah for the\u00a0seder<\/span>. That year, the Rebbe sent a package with three matzahs to Knesset member and future President of\u00a0Israel<\/span>\u00a0Zalman Shazar. In the accompanying letter, the Rebbe said that \u201cit is our custom to send\u00a0Shmurah Matzah<\/a>\u00a0to friends and relatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then,\u00a0Chabad<\/a>\u00a0emissaries,\u00a0yeshivah<\/span>\u00a0students, and laypeople have delivered boxes of\u00a0shmurah\u00a0<\/i>matzah to Jews around the world. The western Massachusetts\u00a0shmurah\u00a0<\/i>matzah route started in\u00a01954 by Springfield\u2019s Rabbi Dovid Edelman<\/a>, eventually grew to include thousands of names and addresses, and after Edelman\u2019s passing in 2015 was continued by the next generation. And the scale and scope of organized matzah delivery programs continues to grow.<\/p>\n

In Detroit, Mich., for instance, Chabad emissaries have spent the past several weeks preparing more than 170,000 packages of matzah for distribution, and have a goal of delivering 250,000 matzahs to enhance seders around the state. Chabad of Illinois imported over 5,000 pounds of hand-made\u00a0shmurah<\/i>\u00a0matzah, and is sorted and stored in the Chabad\u2019s warehouse space, and is then distributed by the more than 50 Chabad centers in Illinois.<\/p>\n

Director of Chabad of Mid-Suffolk Rabbi Mendel Teldon shared that as a young man, he would ride along with his father Rabbi Tuvia Teldon -\u2013 regional director of\u00a0Chabad-Lubavitch activities on Long Island<\/a>\u00a0and author of\u00a0Your Unique Purpose<\/a><\/i>\u2014 to deliver\u00a0shmurah<\/i>\u00a0matzah to 70-100 houses in the area. Years later, after assuming the leadership at the\u00a0Chabad center<\/span>, he decided to expand the deliveries. He shared how Covid-19 was the catalyst that took the delivery program to the next level, when they started a \u201cJudaism at home\u201d program to make sure the community had what they needed. The program grew from there.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are 40-50 volunteers who deliver matzah to their zone, which can be a whole neighborhood or just a few blocks,\u201d he said. \u201cWe now reach 1,200 homes locally. We ship matzah to community members who\u2019ve moved to Florida or elsewhere, and provide matzah in bulk to old age homes and youth groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the days and weeks before\u00a0Passover, Jews around the country are rushing to clean their homes, prepare holiday meals, and run last minute errands. Yet Teri Karpe of Commack, N.Y., has a different item on her to-do list\u2014overseeing the delivery of hand-made\u00a0shmurah\u00a0matzah\u00a0to more than 1,200 homes in her community. This is Teri\u2019s third year managing, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentaries","category-insights","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chabadnews.al\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chabadnews.al\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chabadnews.al\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chabadnews.al\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chabadnews.al\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chabadnews.al\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13,"href":"https:\/\/chabadnews.al\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/13"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chabadnews.al\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chabadnews.al\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chabadnews.al\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chabadnews.al\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}