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Adir Michaeli, maestro of the babka, bakes his way into the heart of Manhattan
(New York Jewish Week) — In a city where love of babka borders on a religion, Adir Michaeli, founder of Michaeli Bakery, is the (you’ll pardon the expression) high priest of the confection.
You may not know his name, but if you love good babka, you probably know his product. Michaeli, 39, was once the pastry department manager and head pastry chef of Lechamim Bakery in Tel Aviv; there, Michaeli told the New York Jewish Week, he spent two years perfecting the babka recipe. When Lechamim founder Uri Scheft wanted to expand to the United States, he tapped Michaeli to help open Lechamim’s American cousin, Breads Bakery, in New York. Since opening in 2013, Breads has since become the gold standard for babka in New York.
After three years with Breads — which has since expanded to five locations in the city — Michaeli left the company to start his own business, which he said was a dream of his. Now, after a fitful start due to COVID, Michaeli Bakery has developed its own devoted following at two locations in Manhattan.
“People love these pastries,” said Michaeli, referring to New Yorkers’ embrace of the babka, rugelach and bourekas for which Breads, and now Michaeli, has become known.
Of course, it’s not like New Yorkers were suffering from a lack of babka prior to either bakery’s arrival. Lots of bakeries, notably Green’s Bakery of Brooklyn, had been making and selling the gooey, yeasted cake for decades. Local New York comedian Jerry Seinfeld even devoted an episode of his eponymous show to the sweet treat back in 1994.
But Breads brought a babka to New York unlike anything that New Yorkers had ever tasted before. It was made with a laminated dough, similar to croissants, and it was at once light, fluffy and rich, layered with butter, stuffed with Nutella and chocolate chunks, and glazed with a simple syrup. A couple of months after Breads opened on East 16th St. near Union Square in 2013, New York magazine food writers Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite anointed Breads’ babka as the best in the city.
“The business went boom!” Michaeli told the New York Jewish Week. Almost overnight, Breads went from a virtually unknown purveyor of Israeli pastries to an essential stop on the tourist food trail.
“Everyone starts to come and take pictures with the babka,” said Michaeli. During their first Rosh Hashanah, not long after the New York magazine article appeared, Michaeli said the bakery sold 3,000 loaves of babka in a single day.
(Co-founder Scheft left Breads in 2021 and now runs Bakey, a Boston bakery. As for Breads’ current ownership, a spokesperson said that Michaeli “had nothing to do with the creation of Breads Bakery’s Babka.”)
After leaving Breads, Michaeli considered opening up a bakery in Tel Aviv and briefly returned there, but, assessing the competition, he soon realized that his future was in New York.
“There was only one Israeli bakery in New York — more [of them] should come,” he said.
Living on the Upper West Side while working on his business plan and meeting with potential investors, Michaeli did some baking for Anat Sror, an Israeli-born caterer and owner of Cafe Petisco, a now-closed restaurant on the Lower East Side.
Sror knew that Michaeli wanted to start his own bakery, and though she had never invested in anybody before, she decided to back Michaeli. “He’s very talented, very passionate, and he knew exactly what he wanted to do,” said Sror. “He had a great business plan. Plus, we had worked together so I knew exactly what he is capable of. I felt it was a good risk to take.”
Sror helped Michaeli find a storefront not too far from Cafe Petisco. They both agreed it was not an ideal location, but it was within their budget. “We trusted that once people try his stuff and get to know the bakery, things will be easier,” Sror said.
Michaeli Bakery opened on Division St. on the Lower East Side in May 2019. Conceived as an “Israeli patisserie,” it sold pastries, cookies, cakes, cream cakes, cheesecakes, sandwiches and, on Fridays, challah.
Less than a year later, however, just as the bakery was developing a name for itself, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the city to its knees. As New Yorkers stayed home or left the city altogether, Sror shut her restaurant and catering concern. Meanwhile, Michaeli streamlined his bakery’s offerings, focusing on babka, rugelach and bourekas, dropping the sandwiches and cakes on his original menu.
During the long months of the pandemic, Michaeli said he worked round the clock, keeping the business open seven days a week and working as the establishment’s baker, barista and manager. On the bright side? “It gave me the flexibility to build the business over time,” he said.
His efforts paid off: Less than three years later, in March 2022, Michaeli and Sror opened a second location on East 90th St. and First Ave. “The decision to open on the Upper East Side was because customers kept saying it was too far to come to the Lower East Side,” said Sror.
Sensing “the vibe” uptown, according to Michaeli, he decided to make the bakery kosher. “My integrity is that if I’m kosher, I’m kosher,” he said, referring to his decision to have kosher supervision for both bakeries, and to close them on Saturdays and early on Fridays. “Uptown Sunday is super busy, we need the reset of Saturday. “
“My vision is that I do the best that I can,” he added. “Everyone on the team is the same. Every day should be 100%. There is no 99%. This is the DNA of the place.”
One loyal customer, art consultant Andrea Meislin, raves about the “chocolate-y, gooey and decadent” babka at Michaeli, what Meislin describes as “babka to die for.” In addition to the chocolate babka, Michaeli makes a vegan chocolate babka, cheese and cherry babka and halvah babka. His Galil bourekas, made with goat cheese, onion and za’atar, are very popular, too.
These days, the biggest challenge Michaeli faces, he said, is dealing with the enormous demand the holidays bring. “For Hanukkah, I sent the manager out to the line on the street, to say that we are sorry. We can’t catch up with demand,” said Michaeli. “We told customers [on line] to go away. It was horrible. It is a problem I am trying to solve.”
Moving forward, Sror is optimistic that the bakery will expand: “It will either be another location, perhaps on the Upper West Side, or we are thinking about making a bigger location to be able to produce a bit more,” she said. Sror hopes Michaeli will be able to expand his menu, perhaps by adding his classic, light Israeli cheesecakes, what Michaeli calls “Grandma Cheesecake.”
When asked what differentiates Michaeli’s baked goods from Breads’ or other bakeries’, the baker refused to compare, stating that he just aims to do the best he can, all the time. “If someone says this is better than this or that, I really don’t care,” says Michaeli. “There is no competition. This is what we do.”
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Pope Leo Calls War in Middle East a ‘Scandal’ to Humanity
Pope Leo XIV is welcomed by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and officials upon arrival at Rafic Hariri International Airport, during his first apostolic journey, in Beirut, Lebanon, November 30, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Yassin
Pope Leo on Sunday said death and suffering caused by the war in the Middle East are a “scandal to the whole human family,” renewing his plea for an immediate ceasefire.
As the US-Israeli war on Iran enters its fourth week, the first US pope said that he continues to follow with “dismay” the situation in the Middle East and in other regions torn apart by war and violence.
“We cannot remain silent in the face of the suffering of so many people, the defenseless victims of these conflicts. What hurts them hurts the whole of humanity,” Leo said at his weekly Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square.
“I strongly renew my appeal for us to persevere in prayer, so that hostilities may cease and the way may finally be paved for peace,” he added.
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Hundreds Wounded in Iran Missile Attacks Across Central, Southern Israel, Including Near Nuclear Site
A drone view shows a damage in a residential neighborhood, following a night of Iranian missile strikes which injured dozens of Israelis, amid the US-Israel conflict with Iran, in Dimona, southern Israel, March 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Roei Kastro
More than 200 people were wounded in several Iranian strikes on central and southern Israel over the weekend, including children who were seriously injured, after Israeli air defenses failed to intercept at least two ballistic missiles, prompting the defense minister to threaten to send Iran “back decades.”
Fifteen people were injured on Sunday following an Iranian cluster missile strike in the central Israeli cities of Tel Aviv, Petah Tikva, and Ramat Gan. By early evening, several homes and roads were damaged by the strikes.
A direct hit by a missile launched from Iran the prior evening on Arad and Dimona in southern Israel caused widespread damage to buildings and prompted the evacuation of nearly 300 people to hospital. As of Sunday afternoon, 18 children were still hospitalized.
A ballistic missile carrying a payload of several hundred kilograms of explosives landed next to residential buildings in Dimona, with the shockwave ripping through them and leaving about 30 people wounded, including a young boy.
Israel’s Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, located roughly eight miles southeast of the city, was likely the target, analysts said. But according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the site was not harmed in the strikes.
“Information from regional states indicates that no abnormal radiation levels have been detected,” the UN nuclear watchdog tweeted.
Iranian state TV said on Saturday the salvos were in response to an attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility earlier that day.
Tonight, the Iranian regime unleashed a devastating hail of missiles on southern Israel, purposefully striking civilians in Arad and Dimona.
Over 100 people, including many children and elderly, inured.
This is a blatant war crime. Pure terrorism. Yet, world is silent! pic.twitter.com/EBLLrxuJ9t
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) March 22, 2026
At Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, more than 160 injured patients arrived overnight, including over 70 children, according to Prof. Shlomi Codish, the hospital’s director. He described the influx as a “highly complex mass casualty event” involving blast injuries, shrapnel wounds, and trauma, including critically and moderately injured patients who required urgent surgery.
Codish said authorities were working to provide “immediate support and shelter” for those impacted, adding that entire families were evacuated to the hospital.
“The challenge is not only medical but also human. The strike hit the heart of a civilian neighborhood, and entire families arrived together, injured and distressed. We worked to map family connections in order to provide coordinated care and preserve family unity as much as possible,” he told The Algemeiner.
The missiles in both Arad and Dimona were engaged by air defenses, but the interceptors failed to bring them down.
In both cases, most of those injured in the missile did not make it to bomb shelters in time.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting the scene of the strike in Arad, said it was a “miracle” that no one was killed but added “we don’t want to rely on miracles.”
“If you’re in a shelter, you’re protected,” he said.
Defense Minister Israel Katz, who was also in Arad, accused Iran of intentionally targeting civilians.
“If this continues, we’ll make sure to hit Iran so hard it will be sent back decades,” Katz said.
Tehran aimed to generate domestic pressure on Israel’s government to stop the war, he said, but added that “it won’t happen because our home front is strong.”
In a statement posted on X, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi stressed that “maximum military restraint should be observed, in particular in the vicinity of nuclear facilities.”
Since the Feb. 28 US-Israeli strikes on Iran, Tehran has launched more than 400 missiles toward Israel, with the Israeli Air Force saying roughly 92 percent were intercepted. More than 4,500 Israelis have been evacuated to hospitals from the strikes, the health ministry said.
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Scores Hurt After Iranian Missiles Hit Israeli Desert Towns
A drone view shows a damage in a residential neighbourhood, following a night of Iranian missile strikes which injured dozens of Israelis, amid the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran, in Dimona, southern Israel March 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Roei Kastro
Southern Israeli towns woke to widespread damage on Sunday after air defenses failed to intercept two Iranian missiles overnight that injured scores of civilians in one of the worst attacks of the war so far on Israeli soil.
As daylight broke, the scale of the damage in the desert town of Arad, where one of the strikes hit a multi-story apartment bloc, came into clearer view, with entire floors blown open by the blast.
Uri Shacham, the chief of staff of Israel’s ambulance service, said at least eight buildings were damaged by the missile, which left a crater not far from the apartment blocks.
Footage verified by Reuters showed flames engulfing the top floor of an apartment building shortly after the strike. Search and rescue teams moved from floor to floor inside the damaged buildings.
Israeli military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said both strikes had been carried out with conventional ballistic missiles. He declined to comment when asked about the initial findings of a military investigation into the failure to intercept the missiles.
NETANYAHU SAYS MIRACLE NO ONE KILLED
Most Israelis receive alerts on their mobile phone when launches from Iran are identified. An air raid siren sounds and they then have a few minutes to go to safe rooms or public bomb shelters.
“It is a miracle that no-one was killed,” Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, standing in the crater at the impact site in Arad.
Pointing at the blown out walls of the apartment bloc and then at the enforced undamaged wall leading to a shelter below ground, Netanyahu urged Israelis not to be complacent. No one would have been hurt, he said, had all sought shelter in time.
In Arad, 31 people, including 18 children, were hospitalized, at least 9 of them in serious condition, according to the hospital. Dozens more were lightly injured.
Israel said Iran was targeting civilian population areas. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they targeted military and security-related sites in retaliation for Israeli strikes against Iranian sites.
Arad and Dimona, another city that was hit, are located close to Israel’s secretive nuclear reactor and several military bases, including Nevatim Air Base, one of the country’s largest.
In Dimona, 5 people were hospitalized, including a 12-year-old boy in serious condition, the hospital said.
Since joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, Israel has come under daily missile fire from Iran. At least 20 civilians have been killed in Israel and the Palestinian territories, including one Israeli killed in an attack by Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah on Sunday.
At least 15 people were hospitalized on Sunday in fresh Iranian attacks, according to emergency services, including a cluster munition that struck in Tel Aviv.
Israeli and US strikes have killed at least 1,300 people in Iran so far, according to the Iranian government. The US-based rights group HRANA, which tracks human rights violations in Iran, has recorded 3,320 people killed, including 1,406 civilians and 1,167 military personnel, with the remainder not yet determined. Reuters could not independently verify the data.