One rouble and 1½ roubles per pound of flour is charged in Moscow for baking matzoth when the flour is supplied by the customers, and matzoth cost 5 roubles per pound and more. Orders for baking matzoth are accepted in the two big Moscow synagogues, the Choral Synagogue in the Spaso-Glinishevski Street, and the so-called Poliakoff Synagogue. The flour is brought to these synagogues, and the customers go there again to take away their matzoth when they are baked. The matzoth are baked, some in Moscow itself, in the neighbourhood of the Jewish cemetery, by a sort of matzoth-baking co-operative, and in Orechovo-Zuevo, a textile town situated about 90 kilometres from Moscow.
The synagogue Jews who take the orders for baking matzoth explain that the price for baking is so high because it costs about 15 roubles per pood to send the flour to the bakeries and to bring the matzoth back when they are baked. In addition, the price of fuel for baking is very high, and the rest goes to pay the people employed in baking the matzoth. In the case of people who are not able to pay so much, they state, less is accepted, and in exceptional cases matzoth are baked for poor Jews without any charge at all.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
