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An app that can generate 64,000 kosher cheesecake recipes aims to prove AI’s value for Orthodox Jews
(JTA) — Sara Goldstein’s regular cheesecake recipe is like the rest of the kosher food she makes and shares on her Instagram account — “straightforward, and I wouldn’t say too adventurous.”
But she tried something special this year ahead of Shavuot, a Jewish holiday that begins Thursday night, when dairy foods are traditionally on the menu. In honor of the holiday, she whipped up a bourbon caramel cheesecake, with candied pecans on top.
Goldstein’s baking shakeup was spurred by an online tool that, using artificial intelligence, allows users to mix and match ingredients that can be made into more than 64,000 different cheesecake recipes. For Goldstein, a chef and kosher recipe developer who lives in Lakewood, New Jersey, CheesecakeWizard.AI offers a welcome challenge.
“You have to be extra creative in the kosher world because it’s very limited,” she said. “And I think it definitely opened people’s eyes to what’s possible. I mean, saying there’s 64,000 combinations that are kosher — it’s really, really cool.”
The app’s creator, Brooklyn marketing executive Avi Bree, doesn’t just want to push the bounds of what gets served on Shavuot tables. He’s also looking to prove to clients his value in a world of AI-generated press releases — and to show his fellow Orthodox Jews that ChatGPT and other AI tools can be a boon to Jewish observance, not a threat, despite concerns about internet use in his community.
“Not everybody who is going to go to this website is actually going to actually bake the cheesecake,” Bree said. “They’ll futz around with it, and they’ll push a couple buttons and it’ll make us all meshuggeneh trying to come up with the craziest flavor.… While they’re doing it, the company that’s sponsoring it, their logo and their name is there.”
The app asks users to select their crust, filling and topping preferences, then uses artificial intelligence to spit out a recipe to match. An image integration feature called Midjourney allows users to see computer-generated pictures of what their cheesecakes might look like — from carrot-cake crusts to maple and sweet potato filling to savory toppings such as an olive tapenade.
Since its launch last week, Cheesecake Wizard has been used by about 12,000 people to generate 45,000 recipes — though it remains to be seen how many actual cheesecakes result. Bree said that like Goldstein, he had been drawn to the “boozy options” in the Cheesecake Wizard interface and hoped that when the holiday begins Thursday night, he’ll get a chance to partake.
“After a very long week of work, I’d like to sit down on Shavuos eating cheesecake, and having a splash of bourbon on top would definitely, you know, add a little more enjoyment to the holiday festivities,” he said.
Bree’s experiment with AI started last spring, when clients began to drop him because, they said, they could use the new technology to create their marketing materials instead. He decided to explore the new terrain. Passover was approaching, and Bree’s first venture was a day-trip generator, inspired by the hassle Orthodox families can face when deciding what to do in the middle of the weeklong holiday, when Jewish schools and workplaces are closed.
Avi Bree created a cheesecake AI generator to show his Orthodox community the value of AI. (Courtesy Bree)
CanWeGoNow launched on the first day of chol hamoed, the period of the holiday when travel is allowed, and quickly crashed as the link ricocheted across WhatsApp groups that are the primary form of communication for many Orthodox Jews. Bree called his wife from synagogue and said he needed to scrap their own family’s plan to take their six children to an amusement park. He had to spend the time getting the site back up.
“I said, ‘Pessel, the bottom line is I stepped into something that might be amazing,’” he recalled. “I generally don’t work on chol hamoed, but if there’s a loss involved, the rabbinical leaders say you can work. So I said, ‘If I don’t take care of this, the whole thing’s going to fold.’”
Ultimately, 20,000 people generated tens of thousands of trip ideas in the United States, Israel, England, Australia and even Mexico, where hundreds of people at a kosher-for-Passover hotel got wind of the app.
Bree lost money on the venture, but he gained confidence that AI could catch on in his community, despite some of his Orthodox peers’ ambivalence toward new technologies. Now, he has relaunched his marketing firm to focus squarely on using AI to reach Orthodox audiences. (Its name, MarketAIng, makes the gambit visible.)
“The Jewish community is always a little bit behind, let’s just face it,” he said. “Our tradition is what kept us going all these thousands of years, so anytime something new comes into the picture, we’re always a little more wary and always a little more concerned. So AI really hasn’t made inroads yet.”
Bree’s latest effort hit a turning point while he was in synagogue, which he referred to as “a mini-networking event” that he attends three times a day for prayers. A self-described ultra-Orthodox Jew, he had been casting about for a kosher corporate partner for the cheesecake bot. An acquaintance named Akiva overheard him lamenting his lack of connections to a fellow worshiper after evening services.
Akiva said his wife worked for a kosher dairy-products company called Norman’s. A few WhatsApp messages later, Bree was in touch with executives there — and now the company’s name and logo appear on the website, and its products are inserted into the cheesecake recipes that the tool generates. Goldstein has also promoted the company on her social media posts about Cheesecake Wizard.
The sell wasn’t totally straightforward, Bree said. An executive “was a little bit nervous because of the internet aspect,” he recalled. “Right now in the Jewish community, it’s a weird sort of policy we have, like, we don’t encourage you to use it but if you’re going to use it, have a filter on it.”
Indeed, internet use has been a fraught topic in haredi Orthodox communities, with rabbis warning that online access can be a gateway to inappropriate content that conflicts with and diverts attention from Jewish practice.
Some Orthodox leaders have urged Jews to reject the internet entirely. In 2012, a rally warning of the dangers of the web drew more than 40,000 men to Citi Field in New York; last year, two massive rallies for women urged them to delete their social media profiles and give up their smartphones.
With the abrupt arrival of consumer-facing AI in recent months, the technology has drawn specific attention from some rabbinic leaders for the first time. Last month, a dozen rabbis from the traditionalist Skver Hasidic community, based in New Square, New York, explicitly banned its use.
“It is possible that at this point, not everyone knows the magnitude and scope of the danger, but it has become clear to us in our souls that this thing will be a trap for all of us, young and old,” the rabbis wrote in their decree last month. “Therefore, the use of ‘AI’ is strictly prohibited in any shape and form, even by phone.”
Despite these warnings, many haredi Orthodox Jews use the internet for work, shopping and other activities. But in some communities, users are expected to install “kosher” filters that block content considered inappropriate, and many Orthodox yeshivas require parents to install filters as a condition of enrollment. Bree said his own children’s Brooklyn yeshiva required a phone filter, which he installed, and that he made sure to construct his apps so that they would function on phones whose function is limited to WhatsApp and basic communication tools.
He also said that while Norman’s was persuaded to move forward with the cheesecake app because it had its own website, he was considering adding a disclaimer.
“We might have to actually make a little statement on the website saying something along the lines of, you know, ‘Please abide by your rabbinical guidelines regarding internet use,’” Bree said. “Because people were saying, ‘Oh, what are you pushing internet for?’ We’re not pushing it. If you’re using it anyways, then you could use this.”
Goldstein said she wasn’t sure she would become a regular AI user but thought that Cheesecake Wizard, for which she posted an instructional video for her followers on Wednesday, was a comfortable entry point for her community. “I definitely think it’ll take people a little while, maybe, to warm up to the concept, but it’s a great way to introduce it,” she said.
In her heavily Orthodox town of Lakewood, Goldstein said a wide range of internet uses are tolerated — and that she sees a value in remaining online.
“I’m not telling people to come start using Instagram, start using AI — it’s if you’re here [and] it’s where you’re at, then this is a fun way to make something amazing, to elevate something for chag,” Goldstein said, using the Hebrew word meaning holiday. “For people who are already out there on the internet — whether you need it for work, or just, you’re not at that place yet to completely eradicate internet from your life — here’s a way to take these tools and do something even spiritual with it.”
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Trump Says US Will Sell F-35s to Saudi Arabia Ahead of White House Talks With Crown Prince
US President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Salman shake hands during a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signing ceremony at the Royal Court in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
US President Donald Trump on Monday said he plans to approve the sale of US-made F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, announcing his intention one day before he hosts Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House in Washington, DC.
The high-stakes meeting comes as rumors swirl about the possibility of Israel and Saudi Arabia, long-time foes who in recent years have increasingly cooperated behind closed doors, normalizing ties under a US-brokered deal.
“They want to buy. They are a great ally. I will say that we will be doing that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We will be selling them F-35s.”
Reuters reported earlier this month that Saudi Arabia has requested to buy as many as 48 F-35 fighter jets in a potential multibillion-dollar deal that cleared a key Pentagon hurdle.
Such a sale would be a policy shift for Washington, which primarily sells the F-35 to formal military allies, such as NATO members or Japan. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has the elite fighter jets, in accordance with longstanding bipartisan policy for US administrations and the Congress to maintain Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the region. Saudi Arabia’s acquiring them would at least somewhat change the military balance of power.
However, Axios reported over the weekend that Israel does not oppose the US sale of F-35s to Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil producer — as long as it’s conditioned on Riyadh normalizing relations with Jerusalem.
“We told the Trump administration that the supply of F-35s to Saudi Arabia needs to be subject to Saudi normalization with Israel,” an anonymous Israeli official told the news outlet, adding that giving the fighter jets without getting any significant diplomatic progress would be “a mistake and counterproductive.”
It has been widely reported that Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the verge of a deal to establish formal diplomatic ties until the discussions were derailed by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Saudi officials have said that they will only agree to a normalization deal if Israel commits to a path toward a Palestinian state.
Saudi Arabia’s close partners Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were among the Arab states to normalize ties with Israel in 2020 as part of the Trump-brokered Abraham Accords. Trump has said he is intent on expanding the accords to include other countries, above all Saudi Arabia.
“I hope that Saudi Arabia will be going into the Abraham Accords fairly shortly,” Trump told reporters on Friday.
The F-35 deal and possible Israeli-Saudi normalization are expected to be central to the agenda when bin Salman, widely known by his initials MBS, meets Trump.
It will be the crown prince’s first trip to the US since the death of prominent Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul in 2018. US intelligence concluded that bin Salman approved the capture or killing of Khashoggi, although Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader has denied ordering the operation.
Seven years later, Washington and Riyadh, longtime strategic partners, are looking forward, with bin Salman set to receive full ceremonial honors at the White House. Their meeting comes six months after Trump secured a $600 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest in the United States.
Beyond investment, Riyadh has been eager to reach a security agreement with Washington expanding arms sales such as advanced missile-defense systems and drones, and deeper military training partnerships. Most importantly for Riyadh, however, is the US offering certain guarantees ensuring the kingdom’s security. Many observers have suggested that such a defense deal could be part of a broader arrangement to broker Saudi-Israel normalization.
Trump and bin Salman are also expected to discuss broadening ties in commerce, technology, and potentially nuclear energy.
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Catholic Church in Berlin Condemns Antisemitism as Anti-Israel Agitators Vandalize Historic Crucifix
Illustrative: Hamas supporters at a rally in Cologne, Germany, on Oct. 22, 2023. Photo: Reuters/Ying Tang
As antisemitic incidents continue to rise in Germany, the Catholic Church in Berlin has taken a firmer stance against anti-Jewish hatred by issuing new guidelines prohibiting its members from expressing racist, antisemitic, or extremist views.
On Saturday, the Archdiocese of Berlin, the governing body of the city’s Catholic Church, announced that all candidates for leadership positions must sign a special declaration rejecting racism, antisemitism, and extremist views.
“With this decision, responsibility falls where it belongs. Anyone seeking to serve on the diocesan committees and run in the elections must actively uphold the values of our Church,” Karlies Abmeier, president of the Diocesan Council, said in a statement.
The Catholic Church’s latest move aims to ensure that anyone seeking a leadership role within the institution commits to rejecting “racism, antisemitism, ethnic nationalism, and hostility toward democracy.”
“It is crucial for us that such statements never come from those in positions of power within our Church,” Marcel Hoyer, executive director of the committee, told the German Press Agency.
Candidates would also be prohibited from belonging to any party or organization that the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution has designated as extremist.
The archdiocese’s announcement comes amid a climate of rising hostility and radicalization in Germany, where the local Jewish community has increasingly become a target.
Last week, anti-Israel protesters vandalized a church with paint in the Vogelsberg district of Hesse in central Germany.
According to local media reports, a crucifix was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti, including the slogans “Free Palestine” and “Jesus is Palestinian,” and the church walls were also defaced with red paint.
Pastor Ingmar Bartsch denounced the incident, describing himself as “angry and bewildered.”
“What affects me most is that it’s a historic depiction of Jesus, at least 200 to 300 years old, and truly one of a kind,” Bartsch told the German newspaper Bild.
He explained that the crucifix will require a professional restoration, with initial damage estimates reaching into the thousands of dollars.
Local police have launched an investigation into the incident as a case of property damage, noting that the items involved hold religious significance.
As the restoration process begins, Bartsch said the church will remain closed for now, reopening only for religious services.
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Columbia University Rejects Latest Israel Divestment Proposal
Columbia University on Sept. 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ryan Murphy
Columbia University said on Friday that it will not divest from Israel and other corporations which anti-Zionist activists denounced for selling materials to the Israeli military.
The university’s Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI) stated its position on the matter as a response to a group which submitted three proposals calling for the policy in December 2024, when the institution’s campus was being roiled by anti-Israel protests and a deluge of antisemitic incidents. The group had charged that Israel is guilty of “human rights violations” and “war crimes.”
Israel argued it went to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties during the latest war in Gaza, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targeted them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication. It noted that Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group it was targeting, embedded its fighters within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeered civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
In three separate statements, Columbia said that the group behind the boycott proposals lacks consensus support on campus and has reduced one of the most complex geopolitical conflicts in the world history to “vague and excessively broad” categories, sewing partisan division and confusion where a university would, ideally, aim to promote clarity and sober analysis of fact.
Additionally, ASCRI said that the group’s proposals are of “similar … substance” to other ideas put forth by the notorious Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) group, a spinoff of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) which Columbia resolved neither to recognize nor correspond with due to its culpability in antisemitic assaults, hate speech, and a slew of illegal occupations of campus property.
“As noted in the ASCRI’s decision on the CUAD proposal last year, members of the university have a wide range of views on contentious issues,” ASCRI wrote. “Hence, it will be difficult or unprecedented for the university, with such diverse views, to sponsor shareholder proposals of the kind this proposal envisages.”
It added, “There is significant opposition in the Columbia University community to divesting from companies that are involved in Israel, as evidenced by the actions of many students, faculty, and alumni.”
Columbia University has begun implementing a series of reforms it says will address campus antisemitism.
In a statement issued in July, university president Claire Shipman said the institution will hire new coordinators to oversee complaints alleging civil rights violations; facilitate “deeper education on antisemitism” by creating new training programs for students, faculty, and staff; and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — a tool that advocates say is necessary for identifying what constitutes antisemitic conduct and speech.
Shipman also announced new partnerships with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other Jewish groups while delivering a major blow to the anti-Zionist movement on campus by vowing never to “recognize or meet with” CUAD, a pro-Hamas campus group which has serially disrupted academic life with unauthorized, surprise demonstrations attended by non-students.
“I would also add that making these announcements in no way suggests we are finished with the work,” Shipman continued. “In a recent discussion, a faculty member and I agreed that antisemitism at this institution has existed, perhaps less overtly, for a long while, and the work of dismantling it, especially through education and understanding will take time. It will likely require more reform. But I’m hopeful that in doing this work, as we consider and even debate it, we will start to promote healing and to chart our path forward.”
Columbia University had, until that point, yielded some of the most indelible examples of anti-Jewish hatred in higher education since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel set off explosions of anti-Zionist activity at colleges and universities across the US. Such incidents included a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
Amid these incidents, the university struggled to contain CUAD, which in late January committed infrastructural sabotage by flooding the toilets of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with concrete. Numerous reports indicate the attack may have been the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon. During the event, ADP reportedly distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts. Additionally, a presentation was given in which complete instructions for the exact kind of attack which struck Columbia were shared with students.
Columbia has since paid over $200 million to settle claims that it exposed Jewish students, faculty, and staff to antisemitic discrimination and harassment — a deal which secures the release of over $1 billion dollars the Trump administration impounded to pressure the institution to address the issue.
“Columbia’s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to retain the confidence of the American public by renting their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate,” US Education Secretary Linda McMahon McMahon said at the time. “I believe they will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.