What is the origin of this custom? This must be fairly recent and "Lubavitch-specific", because my grandparents, who were very observant, always had matzah ball soup and fried matzah with eggs for Pesach.
Answer
This custom is known as gebrochts (Yiddish for "broken"); or "matza shruya" (soaked matza) in modern Hebrew. It's prevalent in many Hassidic and Hassidically-influenced communities, though many first encounter it with Lubavitch.
The custom arose out of concern that there may be a packet of dry flour in your matza. If that flour never reacted with water, then when you break your matza into your soup or the like, the flour+water could become chametz in a few minutes. (Whereas if you mix flour thoroughly with water and bake it fast enough into matza, it can no longer become chametz.)
The custom has been around several hundred years; it appears, for instance, in the Shulchan Aruch HaRav, a code of Jewish law by the first Lubavitcher Rebbe (author of Tanya) about 200 years ago.
Many families -- certainly Sefardic Jews, and many non-Hassidic Ashkenazic ones (especially from places closer to Germany or Lithuania, not Romania or Hungary) never adopted such a custom, such as your family -- and mine.
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