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How a small challah-baking business is building Jewish community in Astoria, Queens

(New York Jewish Week) — Cody Butler was 25 years old when he first tasted challah, the braided bread traditionally eaten by Jews on the Sabbath. As an Irish Catholic growing up in Astoria, Queens, he had had his fair share of bagels. But challah? Never.

Six years later, Butler is now an Orthodox Jew who bakes challah for himself and the Western Queens community under the name Bread of Idleness. Each week, he bakes between 10 and 15 loaves that he sells to Astorians who have pre-ordered a challah or two; on Thursday evenings, he sits on his stoop and personally hands off the lovingly packaged loaves. Many of his customers see Butler’s challah as a key ingredient in helping to build a Jewish community in the diverse neighborhood.

“It was a way for me to get into Shabbat,” Butler told the New York Jewish Week, explaining how he got his start as a challah baker. “The process of making challah extends Shabbat another day for me.”

But increased spirituality wasn’t his only motivator. “We don’t have good challah here in Astoria,” Butler said. “I wanted to have something special.”

Butler, 31, became a lover of challah — and Judaism —  following a long spiritual search. After attending Catholic school through high school, he enrolled in CUNY’s Hunter College where he initially majored in philosophy before switching to classical philology. Through his studies, he was introduced to the writings of Jewish thinkers like Maimonides, Martin Buber, Simone Weil and Emmanuel Levinas. He also read Torah with traditional commentary and discovered that he loved “the system of thought,” as he told the New York Jewish Week.

One night, while walking the streets of Astoria, in a state of despair over his growing feelings of alienation from Catholicism, he passed the open doors of a Conservative synagogue, the Astoria Center of Israel. He ventured in, and he was warmly greeted by Rabbi Jonathan Pearl, the congregation’s rabbi at the time. Pearl told Butler that Shabbat services were about to begin downstairs, followed by dinner, and he invited Butler to stay.

Butler said he loved the prayers and the music. As he sat there, “I felt my wounds beginning to knit themselves shut,” he said. At the dinner that followed, Butler had that first bite of challah and immediately liked it. “For me, at that point, all challah was good challah,” he said.

The following morning, Butler returned to the synagogue for the Saturday morning Shacharit service. He kept coming back, week after week and, said Butler, it “pretty rapidly became the centerpiece of my week.” He became a regular at Astoria Center of Israel.

As the pandemic took root in the spring of 2020, Butler continued to pray and to study, albeit alone at home. During the long months of social distancing, he explored Orthodox Judaism and discovered he was drawn to a commitment of a religiously observant Jewish life.

Like many stuck-at-home folks across the globe, Butler also decided to try his hand at baking — not sourdough bread, but challah. “My early attempts were disastrous,” Butler said. “The dough wouldn’t rise, or it rose so much the braiding disappeared, or the challah was pale or burnt,” he said. “But I worked through it one problem at a time.”

By trial and error, he found a recipe — a vegan one, at that — that worked, and he learned to braid challah by watching videos online.

Meanwhile, in August 2022, Rabbi Pearl left the Astoria Center of Israel to found a new pluralistic, unaffiliated Jewish community, Ashreynu, with his daughter, Ayelet Pearl, and Stephanie Luxenberg. “Ashreynu was created out of a desire to grow an energized, intra-connected Jewish community in Astoria,“ Luxenberg and Ayelet Pearl told Queens Scene in December 2022. “It came out of a longstanding goal of Rabbi Pearl, to create his own pluralistic, musical, Jewish community, and to offer a new model for how community can thrive, supporting clergy, creativity, and growth.”

For Butler, having Pearl as his spiritual leader was a huge draw for him to join the nascent community. Once Ashreynu began holding Shabbat services, Butler became a regular. “I attended their first service and every one since,” he said. He would bring his challahs to services and to the homes of people he met there.

“Cody started bringing challah to shul for kiddush, and everyone was excited,” Luxenberg told the New York Jewish Week. “He tried out different flavors. For Purim he did a sprinkle challah and the kids loved it. We didn’t know what to expect each week.”

At Luxenberg’s and Ayelet Pearl’s urging, Butler began selling his challah to community members. The enterprise, they said, would help “strengthen the feeling of the neighborhood.”

In April, Butler began baking and selling challah under the name Bread of Idleness. “It comes from the words of ‘Eshet Chayil,’ [Woman of Valor] the poem we read on Friday nights,” Butler said. “The idea is you get to be idle —  you pick up the homemade challah — because someone else is making it. But then, of course, textually it connects to sitting around the Shabbat table with family and friends.”

Butler isn’t afraid to experiment with his bread. In May, in honor of local Queens Jewish icons Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Butler made a “Scarborough Fair” challah, flavored with — you guessed it — parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. And in June, to celebrate New York’s most iconic carbohydrate, the bagel, he made an everything bagel-flavored challah. (In addition to Trader Joe’s Everything But the Bagel seasoning, Butler incorporates barley malt syrup into the dough, which is “the secret essential ingredient for that bagel taste,” he said.)

Anastasia Nevin, a 38-year old dietician, yoga teacher and mother of two small children, is a regular customer. ”The challah gives us more connection to the Ashreynu community,” Nevin told the New York Jewish Week, adding that she often runs into people she knows at pickup. “There is something nice about eating something that is not store bought but made with love by someone you know.”

Butler sells the challah for $12 each, although members of Ashreynu get the preferential rate of $10. As a bonus, he also makes babka from the challah dough, in flavors ranging from chocolate hazelnut to peach and sweet cheese or savory babka stuffed with caramelized onions and sundried tomatoes.

His bread has a growing number of fans in Astoria. Butler said that, in recent weeks, his customers have extended beyond the Ashreynu community. “I get people who I hadn’t seen at any of the shuls in the area,” he said. “Yet they are getting challah which makes me so happy because I know that they are getting a little piece of Shabbat for themselves.”

Astoria is home to Ashreynu, Astoria Center of Israel and Congregation Sons of Israel, a small Modern Orthodox congregation.

And yet, “Astoria feels a little bit like a Jewish desert,” Ayelet Pearl said. “Some things that we take for granted in living in New York, like being able to get a challah on Friday or a pomegranate before Rosh Hashanah, don’t exist. Getting challah isn’t an option [here] outside of what Cody is doing.”

Thanks to Butler’s challah, the neighborhood now feels “more Jewish,” she added. In fact, Pearl and Luxemberg, who were named to the New York Jewish Week’s “36 to Watch” list this year, named “when we ran into all our friends picking up challah from Bread of Idleness” as their “best experience” as Jewish New Yorkers.

“This is all about giving people a little bit of Shabbat that they might not otherwise have,” Butler said. “It is a taste of home. It is building community. I have parents who come with their children.”

Butler has converted to Judaism twice. His first, a Conservative conversion, was overseen by Rabbi Pearl. His second, which he completed this past May, was an Orthodox one presided over by Rabbi Adam Mintz. the rabbi of Kehilat Rayim Ahuvim, a Modern Orthodox community he founded on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

For now, Butler is keeping his “day job” as a Latin teacher at a charter school in Brooklyn. But he has already begun scouting out commercial ovens in the area to rent, once he can no longer satisfy demand for the challahs which he bakes at home. “I would love to provide challah to more people,” he said.

He is also considering creating a “Shabbat in a Box,” which would include challah, candles and spices as a way to bring Shabbat into more people’s homes. “For me, as a convert, I was amazed by the feeling of Shabbat and its palpable holiness, energy and community,” he said. “I knew I couldn’t live without it. “


The post How a small challah-baking business is building Jewish community in Astoria, Queens appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Israel’s Supreme Court Orders Improved Food for Security Prisoners

Israel’s Supreme Court. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

i24 NewsIsrael’s Supreme Court on Sunday instructed the Prison Service (Shabas) to guarantee adequate food supplies for security prisoners, ruling that current conditions fall short of minimum legal standards. The decision followed an appeal filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

In a 2–1 ruling, the court found that the food situation posed “a risk of non-compliance with legal standards.” Justice Dafna Barak-Erez stressed that the matter concerned “basic conditions necessary for survival, as required by law,” not comfort or privilege. Justice Ofer Grosskopf agreed, noting the state had not shown the policy was consistently applied to all inmates.

Justice David Mintz dissented, maintaining that the existing policy already met legal requirements.

The court underscored that Israel’s legal obligations remain binding, even in light of the ongoing hostage crisis in Gaza and the fact that many of the prisoners include Hamas members involved in the October 7, 2023 attack.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir condemned the ruling, arguing that while hostages in Gaza lack protection, “terrorist murderers, kidnappers, and rapists in prison” benefit from the Court’s intervention. He added that prisoners would continue receiving only the minimum conditions required by law.

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Ukrainian Government Building Set Ablaze in Record Russian Airstrike

Illustrative. More damage caused by the Russian drone that hit the Perlina school in Kyiv, Ukraine, Oct. 30, 2024. Photo: Jewish community JCC in Kyiv, Kyiv municipality, and Yan Dobronosov

i24 NewsThe Ukrainian government’s main building in Kyiv was hit overnight Saturday by Russian airstrikes for the first time since the war, igniting a fire in the building, authorities said. Firefighters are working to put out the flames.

“The government building was damaged by an enemy attack — the roof and upper floors,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko said. The blaze is is burning in the area of the office of the prime minister.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched a total of 805 drones and 13 missiles overnight on Ukraine — a record number since the start of the war.

Also as a result of the strike, a baby and a young woman were killed after a nine-story residential building was hit in the Svyatoshynsky district, also in Kyiv. Rescuers are still looking for a third body, authorities said. A woman was also reported killed in the strike in Novopavlivka village.

“The world must respond to this destruction not only with words, but also with actions. We need to increase sanctions pressure – primarily against Russian oil and gas. We need new restrictions that will hit the Kremlin’s military machine. And most importantly, Ukraine needs weapons. Something that will stop the terror and prevent Russia from trying to kill Ukrainians every day,” wrote Sviridenko after the attack.

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‘Trump’s Legacy Crumbles’: Israelis Call on US President to End Gaza War

Israeli protestors take part in a rally demanding the immediate release of the hostages kidnapped during the deadly October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, and the end of war in Gaza, in Jerusalem September 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Thousands of Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, issuing direct appeals to US President Donald Trump to force an end to the Gaza war and secure the release of the hostages.

Protesters packed a public square outside the military headquarters, waving Israeli flags and holding placards with images of the hostages. Some carried signs, including one that read: ‘Trump’s legacy crumbles as the Gaza war persists.’

Another said: “PRESIDENT TRUMP, SAVE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”

“We think that Trump is the only man in the world who has authority over Bibi, that can force Bibi to do this,” said Tel Aviv resident Boaz, 40, referring to the Israeli prime minister.

There is growing despair among many Israelis at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has ordered the military to capture a major urban center where hostages may be held.

Families of the hostages and their supporters fear the assault on Gaza City could endanger their loved ones, a concern the military leadership shares, according to Israeli officials.

Orna Neutra, the mother of an Israeli soldier who was killed on October 7, 2023 and whose body is being held in Gaza by militants, accused the government of abandoning its citizens.

“We truly hope that the United States will push both sides to finally reach a comprehensive deal that will bring them home,” she told the rally. Her son, Omer, is also American.

Tel Aviv has witnessed weekly demonstrations that have grown in size, with protesters demanding that the government secure a ceasefire with Hamas to obtain the release of hostages. Organizers said Saturday night’s rally was attended by tens of thousands. A large demonstration was also held in Jerusalem.

There are 48 hostages held in Gaza. Israeli officials believe that around 20 are still alive. Palestinian terrorists abducted 251 people from Israel on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led its attack. Most of the hostages who have been released were freed after indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

NO PURPOSE

Trump had pledged a swift end to the war in Gaza during his presidential campaign, but nearly eight months into his second term, a resolution has remained elusive. On Friday, he said that Washington was engaged in “very deep” negotiations with Hamas.

Israeli forces have carried out heavy strikes on the suburbs of Gaza City, where, according to a global hunger monitor, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are facing famine. Israeli officials acknowledge that hunger exists in Gaza but deny that the territory is facing famine. On Saturday, the military warned civilians in Gaza City to leave and move to southern Gaza.

There are hundreds of thousands of Palestinians sheltering in the city that was home to around a million before the war.

A video released by Hamas on Friday featured Israeli hostage Guy Gilboa-Dalal, 24, saying that he was being held in Gaza City and feared being killed by the military’s assault on the city. Rights groups have condemned such videos of hostages as inhumane. Israel says that it is psychological warfare.

The war has become unpopular among some segments of Israeli society, and opinion polls show that most Israelis want Netanyahu’s right-wing government to negotiate a permanent ceasefire with Hamas that secures the release of the hostages.

“The war has no purpose at all, except for violence and death,” said Boaz from Tel Aviv. Adam, 48, said it had become obvious that soldiers were being sent to war for “nothing.”

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military since it launched its retaliatory war after Hamas fighters attacked Israel from Gaza in October 2023. Around 1,200 people were killed in that attack on southern Israel.

The terrorist group, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades but today controls only parts of the enclave, on Saturday once again said that it would release all hostages if Israel agreed to end the war and withdraw its forces from Gaza.

Netanyahu is pushing for an all-or-nothing deal that would see all of the hostages released at once and Hamas surrendering.

The prime minister has said Gaza City is a Hamas stronghold and capturing it is necessary to defeat the Palestinian militant group, whose October 2023 attack on Israel led to the war.

Hamas has acknowledged it would no longer govern Gaza once the war ends but has refused to discuss laying down its weapons.

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