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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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Michigan’s El-Sayed doubles down: Israel ‘not an ally’
(JTA) — Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, is doubling down on his view that Israel is not a U.S. ally as the Nov. 3 midterm elections draw closer.
El-Sayed, a vocal critic of Israel who faces former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in one of the country’s most competitive Senate races, told ABC News on Monday that Israel is “not actually our friend.”
“An ally that takes your money to push you into wars you shouldn’t be fighting is not an ally,” said El-Sayed, referencing Israel’s reported lobbying of the United States to enter into a war with Iran.
He compared Israel with a friend who “keeps bumming off [your kid’s] money” and “talks about them behind their back and then gets them into fights with other friends.”
“What would you tell your kid to do with that friend? You’d probably tell them, maybe it’s not actually your friend,” he said.
El-Sayed made similar remarks in an interview with MS NOW on Thursday, saying that “the government of Israel has done nothing but use us” and “has done terrible things with our money.”
He added that he would continue to question whether Israel was an ally regardless of the outcome of Israel’s election on Oct. 27, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has served as Israel’s leader for most of the past 18 years, seeks another term.
“Netanyahu is one part of it, but the Israeli military has done heinous things, like heinous things, full war crimes, genocide,” said El-Sayed. “So I think we got to just get serious about whether or not we as a country should be subsidizing that government.”
El-Sayed previously affirmed that he does not consider Israel an ally to the United States in his first bitter debate with Rogers on Oct. 8. The candidates will meet for a final debate on Wednesday.
He told MS NOW that he was “committed to the safety and security” of Jewish voters, some of whom have pressured him to moderate his views on Israel. “Now, we may have differences when it comes to Israel, but the things that unite us are a lot bigger,” he said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Michigan’s El-Sayed doubles down: Israel ‘not an ally’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump endorsement of Netanyahu blasted by liberal policy advocates, Democrats
(JTA) — A day after President Donald Trump endorsed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Israeli election eight days from now, U.S. policy analysts, Democratic lawmakers and liberal advocacy groups slammed the decision.
Trump announced his support for Netanyahu, who is running for reelection, in a Sunday Truth Social post that described the Israeli leader as “a Great Warrior Prime Minister” and a critical partner in eliminating the Iranian threat. Netanyahu has been trailing former IDF chief-of-staff Gadi Eisenkot in recent surveys.
Tali deGroot, vice president of political and digital strategy for the liberal Zionist group J Street, described Trump’s declaration as “an endorsement of endless war for Israelis,” in a statement sent to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. She warned of “endless occupation and control of Palestinian life and land, and Israel’s growing isolation on the world stage.”
“The president is once again acting against the wishes of American taxpayers and choosing to uphold a failed, unpopular foreign policy that has brought devastation to Israelis, Palestinians and countless civilians,” deGroot added.
A spokesperson for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, meanwhile, said that the lobby had no comment about the endorsement.
David Makovsky, director of the Program on Arab-Israel Relations at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, criticized Trump’s decision, writing on X that “in one fell swoop, Trump has broken with the longstanding U.S. practice of avoiding explicit endorsements in Israeli elections.” The president, Makovsky added, went a step further by threatening to sever a partnership against Iran if Israelis choose a different leader.
“It is up to the Israeli people to choose their own leader and threatening that the U.S. will walk away from the conflict with Iran is beyond stunning,” Makovksy said.
Makovsky also pointed out that “a Trump endorsement is no electoral guarantee,” noting that Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s support for Viktor Orbán in Hungary did not end in a victory.
“The ultimate test is assembling a 61-seat Knesset majority,” Makovsky added. “Yet Netanyahu appears more focused on preventing an Eisenkot-led coalition from reaching that threshold than on demonstrating a viable path to 61 seats himself.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, offered another scathing perspective, observing that “authoritarians of a feather flock together.”
“They started a war together,” Van Hollen stated. “They crack down on press freedom together. They lie about everything together.”
Rep. Analilia Mejia, a New Jersey Democrat running for reelection, said that the endorsement “tells us everything we need to know about both of these men.” She then went on to list Netanyahu, North Korea leader Kim Jong Un, Orbán and Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding that “this guy has a ‘type.’”
On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a Republican from Florida, reposted a video in which Netanyahu thanked Trump for his support. The congressman then added that “America will always stand with the Jewish State of Israel and our dear friend Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has championed our alliance for decades.”
Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said he believes that “President Trump is incredibly popular with the people of Israel,” in a written statement to JTA.
“His support will carry considerable weight as Israelis make their choice for Prime Minister in a pivotal election this month,” Brooks added.
American Orthodox Rabbi Shmuley Boteach likewise celebrated the endorsement “by our great President Trump,” writing on X that he has “known and loved BIBI Netanyahu for some 35 years.”
Conservative radio personality Mark Levin described Trump’s Truth Social post as “an extraordinarily strong statement,” while accusing the opposition of “barking about election interference.”
“Trump makes clear it’s also in our national security interest for Netanyahu to remain PM,” Levin stated, calling complaints “unserious and a partisan political whine.”
Conservative influencer Evan Kilgore, on the other hand, fumed at Trump’s decision. Kilgore, whose X profile says “Christ is King,” announced that he is “so done with the GOP,” following Trump’s endorsement of Netanyahu. Kilgore described Trump as “TOTALLY fu*king subverted by Jewish and Zionist interests.”
Political analysts are divided as to whether Trump’s official support would have any sway on the results of an election 6,000 miles away.
Joyce Karam, editor-in-chief of the Washington-based site Al-Monitor, described the endorsement as a signal to both Israel and Iran that renewed escalation and a push for regime collapse could occur after the U.S. midterm elections. She also predicted that Trump’s backing could tip the balance in a tight race where neither side holds a majority.
However, Dov Waxman, director of the Israel Studies program at the University of California, Los Angeles, expressed doubt that support from Trump, who has become less popular in Israel, could significantly influence Netanyahu’s election chances.
“For a long time, most polls have shown his bloc falling well short of a parliamentary majority,” Waxman added.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Macklemore’s ‘Free Palestine’ tour will benefit group that called Oct. 7 a ‘prison break’
(JTA) — Macklemore, the rapper of hits such as “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us,” is facing backlash from Jewish organizations over plans to donate proceeds from his forthcoming concert tour to the Palestinian Youth Movement, which described the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel as a “prison break.”
The rapper was dropped on Sept. 14 from an opening slot on Ed Sheeran’s U.S. stadium tour after making pro-Palestinian remarks onstage. He announced his “Free Palestine” tour on Sept. 24, pledging that all proceeds would benefit organizations supporting Palestinians. PYM is among 12 organizations named as beneficiaries.
The tour includes concerts in Dublin on Oct. 26, Paris on Oct. 29 and London on Oct. 30.
Macklemore received a surge of support after being dropped from Sheeran’s tour, with all of Sheeran’s remaining opening acts quitting in solidarity. He said on Instagram that the “Free Palestine” tour “sold out immediately.”
PYM is a grassroots movement of Palestinian and Arab youth in the United States, Canada and Britain. On Oct. 7, 2024, the first anniversary of the Hamas attacks, the group described the assault as a “prison break” and called the fighters “the men who broke through” in an essay published in The New Inquiry.
“Those fighters had trained for months, and now found themselves stepping foot onto the same hills and plains that their grandfathers and grandmothers had lived upon,” said PYM, without mentioning the killing and abduction of Israeli civilians.
PYM also said a week after the attacks, “Understand Palestinian resistance as fundamentally just and as a means of survival for our people; it will not stop in the weeks and months to come, and you must be prepared not to waver again.”
Jewish and pro-Israel groups have slammed Macklemore for supporting PYM. The Jewish Leadership Council, which represents British Jewish and pro-Israel groups, told The Jewish Chronicle, “When the PYM describes the 7 October massacre as a ‘prison break’, it risks legitimizing violence against Jews.”
The Israeli-American Council, which petitioned Sheeran to drop Macklemore, told Fox News Digital that “Live Nation and the concert organizers must now publicly explain their vetting process and ensure that concert proceeds do not benefit organizations that justify violence against innocent civilians.”
Macklemore, Live Nation and the Palestinian Youth Movement did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Macklemore’s ‘Free Palestine’ tour will benefit group that called Oct. 7 a ‘prison break’ appeared first on The Forward.
