Friendship Circle Teaches Passover Lessons

STAMFORD — After Rabbi Chezy Deren mixed some matzo dough, Daniel Radin, 16, and his friends rolled it and used the edges of the pins to make signature perforations in the unleavened bread.

Zach Kfare, an 18-year-old senior at Westchester Hebrew High, leaned over his friend Radin, with whom he has spent time for several years through the Friendship Circle, a group started by Chabad of Fairfield County that pairs teenagers with special needs children for social outings and educational activities.

“What I like about Daniel is that I can see that he just has a great heart,” Kfare said.
More than a dozen children and teenagers who belong to the circle took part in an early Passover celebration Sunday at Chabad of Stamford on High Ridge Road, preparing matzo and charoset, a special paste made of apples, pears and grains that is traditionally served during the Passover seder.

While making matzo, teenagers sat or stood next to the children, teaching them to roll the dough.

This year, the eight-day festival of Passover is to begin the evening of Monday, April 18, a holiday in which observant Jews celebrate the story of Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt.

Besides figuring prominently in the story of the Exodus as the food eaten by Jews fleeing Egypt, Deren said the unleavened cracker-like matzo bread maintains modern significance in the context of Passover. Eating matzo helps Jews, especially those in the United States, celebrate their current freedoms, Deren said, while providing a symbol of their continuing struggles against obstacles or “mizrayim” that hinder their spiritual progress or reaching their potential.

Matzo also gives Jews a chance to reflect on people throughout the world who are suffering from oppression, which in an abstract sense impacts everyone and mars the freedom of all, Deren said.

“Even Jews who live in this country where we are blessed with many freedoms of religion, speech and others there is always a reflection on a better time,” Deren said. “If there is oppression and suffering in the world, then my freedom is not truly complete.”
Before the Passover celebration Sunday morning, two groups of children from the Friendship Circle visited two downtown hair salons, Salon Shahin and Odyssey Hair Designs, to get haircuts, part of an ongoing program in which children are taken to doctor’s offices, restaurants, or other establishments to become more familiar with day-to-day routines and life skills.

In another room at the temple, children painted matzo bags with Hebrew letters and the image of four goblets representing the custom of drinking four cups of wine that Jews drink during the Seder in remembrance of God’s promises recorded in Exodus Chapter 6, verse 6 — to take them out of Egypt, deliver them from slavery, redeem and protect them, and to make them his people.

“In the Holocaust Jews were living under a most extreme form of oppression and exposed to God knows what,” Deren said. “It’s a reminder that even at the darkest moments, the day will yet come.”

Tatiana Barton Radin, a Stamford resident and Daniel Radin’s mother, said Zach and the Friendship Circle have provided a close group of friends for her son, who is autistic and might otherwise have difficulty making friends.

Recently, a group teen vollunteers were at the Radin home to help Daniel celebrate his 16th birthday.

“It’s been a tremendous benefit to Daniel and given him friends he might otherwise not have had,” Radin said. “Every week there is a time where he has someone to just hang out with, and it’s an amazing opportunity.”