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A 35-foot challah in NYC attempts to break a Guinness World Record

(New York Jewish Week) — New York City kitchens are notoriously small. Nonetheless, on Friday Congregation Rodeph Sholom on the Upper West Side unveiled a 35-foot-long challah that they and their partners hope will break a world record. 

The gargantuan loaf was made in collaboration with the Jewish Federations of North America and the Orthodox Union with the aim of besting the current record-holder: a challah baked in Australia in 2019 that was just over 32 feet. 

The 35-foot challah — braided in Borough Park and baked in New Jersey before being transported to the Reform synagogue — was made in honor of Shabbat of Love, a JFNA initiative that took place on Jan. 19 across North America. JFNA, OneTable, the Orthodox Union and 250 other partner organizations helped Jews organize and host thousands of Shabbat dinners.

“We came up with the idea of doing the Shabbat of Love to uplift people and to communicate the idea that you’re loved for who you are and you’re loved for being Jewish, as opposed to a lot of the messages that I think people are absorbing right now from social media,” said Sarah Eisenman, the chief officer of community and Jewish life at JFNA, who spearheaded the initiative alongside the challah-baking effort. 

As for the challah, “I was thinking about what could we do that was a record-breaking, feel-good, prideful thing,” Eisenman said. She had thought about trying to break a record for the world’s largest Shabbat dinner, but realized that the challah would be less complicated and easier to measure. 

Eisenman said she reached out to the Orthodox Union for help with logistics and they immediately jumped on board.  “They said, ‘Let’s do it,’” she said. “Without the OU, we wouldn’t have been able to do it because they knew who to call right away.”

That call was to Strauss Bakery, a kosher bakery in Borough Park, Brooklyn, who pitched in by creating the dough. Said dough weighed in at more than 200 pounds, and was mixed and braided at the bakery last Thursday night. 

A baker braids part of the dough at Strauss Bakery in Borough Park. (JFNA/Vladimir Kolesnikov)

A team assembles the challahs at Strauss Bakery. (JFNA/Vladimir Kolesnikov)

Braiding a 35-foot challah is one thing; baking it is another story: The unbaked challah was then loaded onto an 18-wheeler truck and driven across state lines to a kosher commercial kitchen in New Jersey operated by David’s Cookies, which has a 40-foot long tunnel oven — one of the only places in the tri-state area that can fit a challah of that size, according to Eisenman. 

A baker puts on the final touches at David’s Cookies before the challah is loaded into the oven. (JFNA/Vladimir Kolesnikov)

Bakers at David’s Cookies peer into the oven to check on the baking process. (JFNA/Vladimir Kolesnikov)

Unloading the challah from the oven. (JFNA/Vladimir Kolesnikov)

Once the challah was baked Thursday night, it was loaded back on the truck and transported to Congregation Rodeph Sholom, where Eisenman’s children go to school. There, a crowd of dozens of volunteers showed up to help unload the oversized challah. Some spontaneously broke out into song, singing “Am Yisrael Chai” (“The People of Israel Live”) as they maneuvered the challah into the building. 

The baking team at David’s cookies. (JFNA/Vladimir Kolesnikov)

Come Friday morning, the challah was finally revealed at an all-school Shabbat assembly for Rodeph Sholom Day School students and their families. Also in attendance was Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine.

 

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A post shared by Mark D. Levine (@marklevinenyc)

“I was shocked it was edible actually,” Eisenman joked, adding that although the bake was “doughy” in parts, community members of all ages were excited to dig in.

Eisenman said the collaboration between the Orthodox Union, the non-denominational JFNA and Rodeph Sholom, a historic Reform congregation with many Israeli members, is “exactly the kind of unifying message we need right now.”

The challah measured 35 feet, 2 inches, Eisenman said. The JFNA and the Orthodox Union are sending the measurements and video evidence to the Guinness World Records this week, and they hope to hear a verdict soon after.

If Guinness accepts the measurements, the challah would break — by several feet — the current record set by Grandma Moses Bakery and the Jewish National Fund chapter in New South Wales, Australia.

The New York-based groups also baked a backup challah that turned out even longer than the challah that was unveiled on Friday — Eisenman said it measured roughly 35 feet, 11 inches but, as it happens,  was too long to fit on the wooden planks that transported it from the bakery to the truck. The back-up challah remained in New Jersey, where it was cut up into a dozen three-foot long chunks and donated to all the Moishe Houses in New York City, where the communal residences, designed for Jewish 20-somethings, were hosting their own Shabbat of Love dinners. 

“Obviously, right now is a kind of a watershed moment around Jewish identity formation. It’s going to take a little time for the Jewish world to come to terms with what kind of strategies or new initiatives we might need to respond to the moment,” Eisenman said. “In the meantime, we took the approach that we can invest in and create Jewish positive spaces and experiences. We need more of them and we need them now. That is what this is about — building pride, confidence, unity and community.”


The post A 35-foot challah in NYC attempts to break a Guinness World Record appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Rights Group Files Lawsuit to Block Trump Deportations of Anti-Israel Protesters

Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) filed a lawsuit challenging as unconstitutional the Trump administration’s actions to deport international students and scholars who protest or express support for Palestinian rights.

The lawsuit, filed on Saturday in the US District Court for the Northern District of New York, seeks a nationwide temporary restraining order to block enforcement of two executive orders signed by US President Donald Trump in the first month of his term.

The lawsuit comes after the detention of a Columbia University student, Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old permanent US resident of Palestinian descent, whose arrest sparked protests this month.

Justice Department lawyers have argued that the US government is seeking Khalil’s removal because Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reasonable grounds to believe his activities or presence in the country could have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” Rubio on Friday said the United States will likely revoke visas of more students in the coming days.

Trump vowed to deport activists who took part in protests on US college campuses against Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza following the October 2023 attack by the Palestinian terrorists.

The ADC lawsuit was filed on behalf of two graduate students and a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who say their activism and support of the Palestinian people “has put them at serious risk of political persecution.”

“This lawsuit is a necessary step to preserve our most fundamental constitutional protections. The First Amendment guarantees the freedom of speech and expression to all persons within the United States, without exception,” said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the ADC.

Chris Godshall-Bennett, the group’s legal director, said the litigation seeks immediate and long-term relief “to protect international students from any unconstitutional overreach that stifles free expression and deters them from fully engaging in academic and public discourse.”

The lawsuit centers on three Cornell University plaintiffs: a British-Gambian national and PhD student with a student visa; a US citizen PhD student working on plant science; and a US citizen novelist, poet, and professor in the Department of Literatures in English.

The post Rights Group Files Lawsuit to Block Trump Deportations of Anti-Israel Protesters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Netanyahu Informs Shin Bet Chief to Vote on His Dismissal Next Week

Israel’s Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar speaks at Reichman University in Herzliya on Sunday, September 11, 2022. Photo: Screenshot

i24 NewsPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet security agency, that he will bring a vote before his government to dismiss him next week.

The post Netanyahu Informs Shin Bet Chief to Vote on His Dismissal Next Week first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Houthis Claim to Attack US Aircraft Carrier, Retaliating for Strikes

Newly recruited fighters who joined a Houthi military force intended to be sent to fight in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, march during a parade in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 2, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

i24 NewsThe Houthis claimed on Sunday that they targeted the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman and other vessels in the northern Red Sea with 18 ballistic and cruise missiles and a drone. Military spokesperson Yahya Saree said that the US-led attacks against the Houthis on Saturday comprised of more than 47 airstrikes on seven governorates, with the death toll expected to rise.

“The Yemeni Armed Forces will not hesitate to target all American warships in the Red Sea and in the Arabian Sea in retaliation to the aggression against our country,” Saree said, vowing the Houthis “will continue to impose a naval blockade on the Israeli enemy and ban its ships in the declared zone of ​​operations until aid and basic needs are delivered to the Gaza Strip.”

The post Houthis Claim to Attack US Aircraft Carrier, Retaliating for Strikes first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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