One month from today it will be Purim, and by then Passover foods will be appearing in supermarkets. Of the variety of brands of matzah available, you might find Horowitz-Margareten. The company’s story began in Miskolc, Hungary, where Regina Horowitz (1863–1959) met and married Ignatz Margareten. The two left their native land for American in the 1880s, writes Yvette Alt Miller:

Regina and her husband opened a grocery store on Willett Street in the Lower East Side. . . . In the evenings, Regina attended night-school classes to learn English. In time, she and Ignatz would have six children. In addition to cleaning their home and making their grocery store kosher for Passover, Regina and her husband decided to bake matzah. Initially, they baked matzah only for their family. But they saw matzah baking as a public service, ensuring that New York Jews could have kosher matzah during Passover.

Regina and Ignatz’s matzah proved wildly popular. Customers trusted their high religious standard and enjoyed their delicious matzah. Within a few years, Regina and Ignatz gave up their grocery store and began baking matzah full time.

By 1932, . . . the company grossed about one million dollars, a staggering amount that Regina surely never dreamed of when she first settled in New York. Regina became a company director and was involved in every aspect of the business as it grew. . . . Workers dubbed her the “Matzah Queen” and respected her high standards and patience with her colleagues. When radio advertising took off in the 1940s, Regina advertised her matzah on air, speaking Yiddish and English.

For more than a year, the Iran-backed Houthis have been launching drones and missiles at ships traversing the Red Sea, as well as at Israeli territory, in support of Hamas. This development has drastically curtailed shipping through the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, driving up trade prices. This week, the Trump administration began an extensive bombing campaign against the Houthis in an effort to reopen that crucial waterway. Burcu Ozcelik highlights another benefit of this action:

The administration has a broader geopolitical agenda—one that includes countering China’s economic leverage, particularly Beijing’s reliance on Iranian oil. By targeting the Houthis, the United States is not only safeguarding vital shipping lanes but also exerting pressure on the Iran-China energy nexus, a key component of Beijing’s strategic posture in the region.

China was the primary destination for up to 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports in 2024, underscoring the deepening economic ties between Beijing and Tehran despite U.S. sanctions. By helping fill Iranian coffers, China aids Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in financing proxies like the Houthis. Since October of last year, notable U.S. Treasury announcements have revealed covert links between China and the Houthis.

Striking the Houthis could trigger broader repercussions—not least by disrupting the flow of Iranian oil to China. While difficult to confirm, it is conceivable and has been reported, that the Houthis may have received financial or other forms of compensation from China (such as Chinese-made military components) in exchange for allowing freedom of passage for China-affiliated vessels in the Red Sea.