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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.
“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.”
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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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Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire
Explosions send smoke into the air in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, July 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing said on Friday that while the Palestinian terrorist group favors reaching an interim truce in the Gaza war, if such an agreement is not reached in current negotiations it could revert to insisting on a full package deal to end the conflict.
Hamas has previously offered to release all the hostages held in Gaza and conclude a permanent ceasefire agreement, and Israel has refused, Abu Ubaida added in a televised speech.
Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have hosted more than 10 days of talks on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day truce in the war.
Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on a call he had with Pope Leo on Friday that Israel‘s efforts to secure a hostage release deal and 60-day ceasefire “have so far not been reciprocated by Hamas.”
As part of the potential deal, 10 hostages held in Gaza would be returned along with the bodies of 18 others, spread out over 60 days. In exchange, Israel would release a number of detained Palestinians.
“If the enemy remains obstinate and evades this round as it has done every time before, we cannot guarantee a return to partial deals or the proposal of the 10 captives,” said Abu Ubaida.
Disputes remain over maps of Israeli army withdrawals, aid delivery mechanisms into Gaza, and guarantees that any eventual truce would lead to ending the war, said two Hamas officials who spoke to Reuters on Friday.
The officials said the talks have not reached a breakthrough on the issues under discussion.
Hamas says any agreement must lead to ending the war, while Netanyahu says the war will only end once Hamas is disarmed and its leaders expelled from Gaza.
Almost 1,650 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed as a result of the conflict, including 1,200 killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Over 250 hostages were kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.
Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
The post Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel
People hold images of the victims of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Irina Dambrauskas
Iran on Friday marked the 31st anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires by slamming Argentina for what it called “baseless” accusations over Tehran’s alleged role in the terrorist attack and accusing Israel of politicizing the atrocity to influence the investigation and judicial process.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the anniversary of Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300.
“While completely rejecting the accusations against Iranian citizens, the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns attempts by certain Argentine factions to pressure the judiciary into issuing baseless charges and politically motivated rulings,” the statement read.
“Reaffirming that the charges against its citizens are unfounded, the Islamic Republic of Iran insists on restoring their reputation and calls for an end to this staged legal proceeding,” it continued.
Last month, a federal judge in Argentina ordered the trial in absentia of 10 Iranian and Lebanese nationals suspected of orchestrating the attack in Buenos Aires.
The ten suspects set to stand trial include former Iranian and Lebanese ministers and diplomats, all of whom are subject to international arrest warrants issued by Argentina for their alleged roles in the terrorist attack.
In its statement on Friday, Iran also accused Israel of influencing the investigation to advance a political campaign against the Islamist regime in Tehran, claiming the case has been used to serve Israeli interests and hinder efforts to uncover the truth.
“From the outset, elements and entities linked to the Zionist regime [Israel] exploited this suspicious explosion, pushing the investigation down a false and misleading path, among whose consequences was to disrupt the long‑standing relations between the people of Iran and Argentina,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.
“Clear, undeniable evidence now shows the Zionist regime and its affiliates exerting influence on the Argentine judiciary to frame Iranian nationals,” the statement continued.
In April, lead prosecutor Sebastián Basso — who took over the case after the 2015 murder of his predecessor, Alberto Nisman — requested that federal Judge Daniel Rafecas issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his alleged involvement in the attack.
Since 2006, Argentine authorities have sought the arrest of eight Iranians — including former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died in 2017 — yet more than three decades after the deadly bombing, all suspects remain still at large.
In a post on X, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, released a statement commemorating the 31st anniversary of the bombing.
“It was a brutal attack on Argentina, its democracy, and its rule of law,” the group said. “At DAIA, we continue to demand truth and justice — because impunity is painful, and memory is a commitment to both the present and the future.”
31 años del atentado a la AMIA – DAIA. 31 años sin justicia.
El 18 de julio de 1994, un atentado terrorista dejó 85 personas muertas y más de 300 heridas. Fue un ataque brutal contra la Argentina, su democracia y su Estado de derecho.
Desde la DAIA, seguimos exigiendo verdad y… pic.twitter.com/kV2ReGNTIk
— DAIA (@DAIAArgentina) July 18, 2025
Despite Argentina’s longstanding belief that Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group carried out the devastating attack at Iran’s request, the 1994 bombing has never been claimed or officially solved.
Meanwhile, Tehran has consistently denied any involvement and refused to arrest or extradite any suspects.
To this day, the decades-long investigation into the terrorist attack has been plagued by allegations of witness tampering, evidence manipulation, cover-ups, and annulled trials.
In 2006, former prosecutor Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the attack and Hezbollah for carrying it out.
Nine years later, he accused former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in return for Iranian oil.
Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.
The alleged cover-up was reportedly formalized through the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 between Kirchner’s government and Iranian authorities, with the stated goal of cooperating to investigate the AMIA bombing.
The post Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns
Murad Adailah, the head of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, attends an interview with Reuters in Amman, Jordan, Sept. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jehad Shelbak
The Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements, has been implicated in a wide-ranging network of illegal financial activities in Jordan and abroad, according to a new investigative report.
Investigations conducted by Jordanian authorities — along with evidence gathered from seized materials — revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood raised tens of millions of Jordanian dinars through various illegal activities, the Jordan news agency (Petra) reported this week.
With operations intensifying over the past eight years, the report showed that the group’s complex financial network was funded through various sources, including illegal donations, profits from investments in Jordan and abroad, and monthly fees paid by members inside and outside the country.
The report also indicated that the Muslim Brotherhood has taken advantage of the war in Gaza to raise donations illegally.
Out of all donations meant for Gaza, the group provided no information on where the funds came from, how much was collected, or how they were distributed, and failed to work with any international or relief organizations to manage the transfers properly.
Rather, the investigations revealed that the Islamist network used illicit financial mechanisms to transfer funds abroad.
According to Jordanian authorities, the group gathered more than JD 30 million (around $42 million) over recent years.
With funds transferred to several Arab, regional, and foreign countries, part of the money was allegedly used to finance domestic political campaigns in 2024, as well as illegal activities and cells.
In April, Jordan outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most vocal opposition group, and confiscated its assets after members of the Islamist movement were found to be linked to a sabotage plot.
The movement’s political arm in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, became the largest political grouping in parliament after elections last September, although most seats are still held by supporters of the government.
Opponents of the group, which is banned in most Arab countries, label it a terrorist organization. However, the movement claims it renounced violence decades ago and now promotes its Islamist agenda through peaceful means.
The post Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns first appeared on Algemeiner.com.