The Fifth Passover under Fire: How the Jewish Children of Dnipro Sent a Piece of Home to the Front

On March 24, 2026, another detail of the war became known, which rarely makes it to major international headlines, but says a lot about how Jewish communities in Ukraine live in the fifth year of the full-scale invasion. While the world’s attention shifts between different crises, Russia continues to pressure Ukrainian positions, including in the Donetsk direction, and the Jews of Ukraine are preparing to celebrate the fifth Passover under conditions of sirens, shelling, and constant uncertainty.

This story was told by מעריב Israeli on March 24, 2026.

Against this backdrop, it is not loud political statements that resonate strongly, but stories with a human foundation. Such was the initiative of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine: to the matzah sent to Jewish soldiers at the front, this year they added children’s drawings, stickers, and warm wishes. Not symbolically for a report, but as a real reminder to soldiers that they are awaited at home.

Passover at war: what exactly was prepared for the Jewish soldiers of Ukraine

After last year’s pilot project, when special small matzahs the size of a ‘kezayit’ were sent to the front line, in 2026 the initiative was made more personal. Students from Jewish schools in Dnipro joined in.

It was the children who took on the task of decorating the sets for the soldiers. The packages featured drawings made by their hands and short messages in Hebrew and Ukrainian. Somewhere near the symbols of Passover were tanks, somewhere — Ukrainian flags, somewhere — traditional festive motifs. It came out uneven, childlike, sometimes even naive, but that’s why it was genuine.

These works do not have a polished ‘picture for social media’. There is something else — a sense of a living connection between the home front and the front line. For soldiers who have been under pressure for months, such messages work stronger than any routine pathos.

Children’s drawings as a language of support

In their greetings, schoolchildren wished the soldiers a ‘happy holiday of freedom’, prayed for their safety, and wrote about their soon return home. These words are important not only in themselves. They return to the front-line person the feeling that they are remembered not abstractly, not in a news ticker, but in a specific family, school, community.

For the Israeli reader, this story is almost understandable without explanations. When a country lives in war, it is not official slogans that are especially keenly perceived, but any signs of home warmth — what holds a person from within.

Rabbi Meir Tzvi Stambler, head of the Federation and Chabad emissary, directly said that soldiers tired of the long war would be glad to receive such sets with children’s drawings. According to him, it will remind them that they are awaited at home, loved, and prayed for their success. And another phrase sounded especially strong: the community prays that it will be possible to reach true freedom this Passover.

Behind this action is enormous work throughout Ukraine

The story with gifts for the front is only the visible part of a large pre-holiday operation. In the same days, Chabad emissaries, with financial and organizational support from the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine, completed the distribution of holiday sets for 51,000 Jewish households across the country.

This is no longer a local initiative of one community and not a beautiful action for a single city. It is about a large-scale infrastructure that continues to operate in a warring country, despite disruptions, logistical risks, and constant threat of strikes.

That is why NANews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency considers this story not as a ‘touching holiday note’, but as an indicator of the resilience of Jewish life in Ukraine. When a country is at war, and communities still gather, bake, assemble, distribute, and conduct public seders, it is already a conversation not only about religion but also about the ability to maintain normalcy where it is almost gone.

What is included in the holiday sets

The sets distributed across Ukraine include everything necessary for celebrating Passover. They include:

• handmade and machine-made matzah from the Dnipro bakery ‘Tiferet Ha-Matzot’;
• wine and grape juice for the fulfillment of the commandment of four cups;
• a seder set;
• a Haggadah with a translation into Ukrainian;
• holiday and Shabbat candles;
• tablecloths and festive towels.

This is important not only from a ritual point of view. Such a set allows a family to celebrate the holiday fully even in wartime conditions, when the usual domestic stability has long been destroyed.

Why Dnipro remains one of the key centers

A special role in this story is again played by Dnipro — a city that over the years of war has finally established itself as one of the main centers of organized Jewish life in Ukraine. From here come not only humanitarian initiatives but also religious, educational, publishing, and logistical work.

When children from Jewish schools in Dnipro join in supporting the front, it shows an important thing: the community does not exist separately from the war, like a closed island. It experiences it together with the country and seeks its forms of participation — not only through help but also through meaning.

Fifth Passover under shelling and 41 cities where they will still gather for a seder

In parallel with the distribution of sets, the Jewish community of Ukraine is preparing to hold public seders in 41 cities. Thousands of people are expected to participate.

This is especially significant if we remember that the tradition of open public Passover meals in Ukraine after the fall of the Iron Curtain became a symbol of the return of Jewish life to the public space. And now, in March 2026, this tradition does not disappear even under the wail of sirens.

For the Israeli audience, not only the scale itself is important here. The contrast is important. On one side — the front, strikes, exhausted soldiers, another difficult year of war. On the other — children’s drawings, matzah, candles, Haggadah, preparation for seders in dozens of cities. Not because the danger has disappeared. But because the community decided not to give the war all the space of life.

What this story says about today’s Ukraine

It says that Ukraine continues to resist not only with weapons. Resistance is also at the level of memory, ritual, language, home tradition. When matzah with a child’s drawing from Dnipro comes to a Jewish soldier at the front, this is also a form of defense. Very quiet, but very precise.

And perhaps it is such stories that best explain what the fifth Passover under fire means. Not just to survive another holiday during the war. But to hold on to the very idea of freedom, even when everything around is arranged so that a person thinks only about survival.