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Jewish food celebrities hold a bake sale for Israel, raising $26K for food relief efforts
(New York Jewish Week) — Last week, Adeena Sussman had been gearing up for a Chelsea Market stop on her tour promoting her new cookbook, “Shabbat,” which she’d traveled from her home in Tel Aviv to the United States to launch.
But after Hamas attacked Israel on Saturday morning, that didn’t feel right. “There was no way I was going to do an event built around me at a time like this,” Sussman said.
So she and Rachel Simons, the owner and founder of tahini brand Seed + Mill, who had been planning to host the signing, joined forces with members of the Jewish Food Society, a non-profit organization that celebrates Jewish culinary heritage from around the world, to plan a different sort of event.
The result, what they called a “community hug and bake sale,” brought dozens of Jewish food influencers and their followers and friends to a Chelsea Market event space on Wednesday. Even though the event wasn’t advertised widely out of security concerns, the line to enter stretched down the block as attendees pledged donations to ASIF, the Jewish Food Society’s partner organization in Tel Aviv where staff have been preparing meals for displaced families and hospital workers in Israel.
Donations were traded for yellow tickets which then could be redeemed inside for treats, sweets, cookbooks and swag. The tables were manned for the most part by food influencers themselves.
People waited in line to donate to Israeli food relief efforts outside food influencers’ bake sale in New York City, Oct. 11, 2023. (Rachel Ringler)
New York Times bestselling cookbook author Jake Cohen baked and brought 100 of his signature date-studded brownies. Restaurateur Einat Admony, whose falafel shops Taim were an early arrival to the city’s Israeli food scene, stood behind towers of her cookbooks while selling cupcakes donated by BCakeNY.
Food blogger Chanie Apfelbaum was toting hawaij gingersnaps that had come out of the oven just moments before she had to head to the sale. She’d barely had time to bake but said she made room for one more activity because of the pain she felt in the wake of the attack, which left thousands of Israelis dead, wounded and held captive.
“I felt like I had to be part of this,” Apfelbaum said. “I had to see people and be amongst the food community.”
Lior Lev Sercarz, who recently opened La Boite, a spice atelier, had his books and spices on hand. And the team at Seed + Mill prepared and distributed 100 tahini brownies, a recipe from Sussman’s previous cookbook, “Sababa,” a celebration of Israeli cuisine.
“Food is obviously really important to us as a culture and as a nation,” said Chaya Rappoport, the Jewish Food Society’s culinary manager, who came up with the bake sale concept. “Food helps people connect in times of happiness and times of sorrow and times when we need to come together. … Everybody pitched in on a moment’s notice.”
About 300 people attended the bake sale, raising $27,000 for ASIF’s relief work. The first donations would support 2,000 meals for families who have evacuated to Eilat, in Israel’s south, the Jewish Food Society said.
Max Aronson, who works at local restaurant Carbone, said he came because he has friends and family in Israel. Columbian cookbook author and food stylist Mariana Velasquez came to show support for Jewish Food Society’s founder Naama Shefi and the Jewish community.
A worker from Mesiba, an Israeli restaurant in Brooklyn, pours arak spritzers at a “Community Hug and Bake Sale for Israel” in New York City’s Chelsea Market, Oct. 11, 2023. (Philissa Cramer)
And Maria Zalewska, editor of the cookbook “Honey Cake & Latkes,” a compilation of recipes from survivors of Auschwitz, was there, too. Since the war began, Zalewska has been reaching out and checking up on the Holocaust survivors featured in her book to see how they are. “Most of them have expressed to me that they are experiencing PTSD on steroids,” she said.
Zalewska had planned to attend Sussman’s book signing when she received an invitation to the book sale — along with an exhortation to keep its location and existence a secret.
“I think it is horrifically sad that this event needs to be private, and we can’t talk about it on social media for security reasons,” said Zalewska. “It is a reflection of the scary time that we are in.”
The event felt to her like the “community hug” it was planned to be.
“A lot of people, especially non-Jews, feel helpless and they don’t know what to do,” Zalewska said. “This gives people an opportunity to donate a little bit of money, come together and show their allegiance to the Israelis and their Jewish friends.”
Simons said the bake sale is only the first effort by a local Jewish food community; further planning, she said, “is ongoing.”
Already, Ben Siman-Tov, who goes by BenGingi, is collaborating with Breads Bakery to make heart-shaped challahs to raise money for Magen David Adom, Israel’s version of the Red Cross. New York Shuk, which makes Middle Eastern pantry staples, is donating 100% of its proceeds this month to Israeli children who have lost parents in the attack and subsequent conflict. And Miznon, the chain of restaurants operated by Israeli chef Eyal Shani, is inviting customers to round up their purchases with a donation toward humanitarian aid in Israel.
Simmons said she found catharsis in the bake sale event. It “was about solidarity, support and our community’s mental health,” she said. “I hugged and cried with friends and strangers — Jews and non-Jews alike.”
Gadi Peleg, founder and owner of Breads, a local bakery chain with roots in Tel Aviv, learned about the event a day earlier and, along with Yonatan Floman, Breads’ CEO, donated the bakery’s flaky black-and-white cookies for the sale.
“Word got around the Israeli hospitality community very quickly,” Peleg said. “Israelis do better when they are not given too much time. This is where we shine. We put stuff together quickly and get it done.”
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The post Jewish food celebrities hold a bake sale for Israel, raising $26K for food relief efforts appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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How Does ‘An Eye for an Eye’ Hold Up Today?
A Torah scroll. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” is one of the best-known rules not only in the Torah, but universally. It was recorded in the Hammurabi code of Mesopotamia more than 4,000 years ago. This rule still applies in many legal systems, and is sometimes taken literally. It is clear, however, that this statement in the Torah cannot be taken literally at all.
The Talmud (Bava Kama 83b to 84a) raises an obvious question: Perhaps one thinks it means literally an eye; in that case, if a blind man blinded another or if a cripple maimed another, how would he be able to give an eye for an eye literally?
There are even greater challenges. What if a person who has no teeth puts out the tooth of somebody who has a full set? How are you going to take a tooth for a tooth? Did they have some sort of mechanism for judging a bruise for a bruise? There was indeed a judging system:
If two men are involved in a fight when a pregnant woman comes in between them and as a result there is a miscarriage but there’s no other physical damage [this must have been a pretty common occurrence to be specified], the punishment should be in accordance with what the husband places the value of his lost child and that should be assessed by the judges.
This is then followed immediately by, life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a bruise for a bruise, a wound for a wound.
But then in the next verse, the Torah says that if a person has a slave and he damages him, puts out his eye or knocks out his teeth, the slave should go free. On both sides of this law, you have laws that deal with financial compensation assessed by the judges in relation to the injury or the loss — as indeed would happen in most legal systems today.
The second time this law is repeated, slightly changed, is in this week’s reading (Vayikra (Leviticus) Chapter 24:). The context is a sad incident in which the son of an Israelite woman and an Egyptian father was involved in a fight and cursed God. Through his mother, he was part of the Israelite people. But because of his father, no tribe would accept him — an interesting example of how they defined Israelites then. He felt rejected and alienated. In a way I can feel sorry for him.
The law of cursing is phrased differently in verses 24:15 & 16, and expanded by adding different words for the crime of blasphemy, before reiterating the law.
Cursing God was not the way people nowadays curse or insult each other verbally. Curses were taken very seriously. It was the equivalent of rejecting not only God, but also the people. Laws of blasphemy are not only still very strongly adhered to in many countries today, but actually there is pressure now, thanks partly to the Islamic vote, to bring blasphemy back as a serious offense in Britain and elsewhere
There are people who like to make fun of the ancient Biblical laws and say how out of date they are. Yet in many ways, they are far more advanced and humanitarian than many laws that apply in different countries and under different religions around the world today.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York
The post How Does ‘An Eye for an Eye’ Hold Up Today? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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New York Times Pumps Out Al-Jazeera-Style Anti-Israel Videos for TikTok
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The New York Times is using the Chinese-dominated TikTok video app to amplify and pump out Al-Jazeera-style short videos from Gaza demonizing Israel.
Some of the most-viewed recently posted videos on the Times TikTok account, which has 1.8 million followers, feature dramatic images—with credit omitted—and language describing Israel as an aggressor.
“Israel bombarded a large tent encampment for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza, causing a deadly fire,” is a headline on one Times TikTok video that has been viewed more than 110,000 times.
“Families desperate for food gathered at distribution sites in Gaza as Israel’s halt on humanitarian aid surpassed 60 days,” is the headline on another video, viewed more than 100,000 times. There’s no transparency in the TikTok video of what journalist captured the video and conducted the interviews, or under what conditions or terms—it is simply credited to “The New York Times.”
The videos are also available, in horizontal format, on the Times website. There the videos carry bylines of Times staffers and, in some cases, very brief attribution of the source of the images. For example, an April 7 video headlined “Israeli Strike By a Major Hospital in Gaza Kills and Injures Journalists” is credited to Nader Ibrahim and Jon Hazell. Ibrahim is a “senior video journalist” based in London and came to the Times from the BBC; Hazell is a video editor also based in London. The video carries a brief attribution to “Anadolu Agency, via Reuters.” What the Times doesn’t tell its readers or viewers is that the “Anadolu Agency” is a state-controlled organ of the government of Turkey, which hosts and is ideologically aligned with Hamas.
Text that goes along with the video on the Times website says, “The strike killed one journalist and injured nine others, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate. At least one more person was killed, according to Gaza’s government office. Among those injured was Hasan Aslih, whom the Israeli military accused, without providing evidence, of being a Hamas militant.”
The bias here is clear. “Gaza’s government office” is the Hamas terrorists, but the Times doesn’t say that. Israel gets the “without providing evidence” treatment, but actually the IDF did offer up details, with a statement on social media, “Asilh, who operates under the guise of a journalist and owns a press company, is a terrorist operative in Hamas’ Khan Yunis Brigade. On October 7, he infiltrated Israeli territory and participated in Hamas’ murderous massacre. Asilh documented and uploaded footage of looting, arson and murder to social media.”
The Times is churning out video after video along this model—produced not in the Times Jerusalem bureau, but by workers in London or New York relying on scantily credited video from foreign wire services, advancing a pro-Hamas narrative and giving short shrift to Israel’s point of view. An April 17 video credited to Ibrahim is headlined, “Israeli Strike Kills at Least a Dozen in ‘Humanitarian Zone,’ Gazan Officials Say.” Text says, “Gaza’s Civil Defense, the local emergency rescue service, reported that an Israeli strike overnight into Thursday in the Mawasi encampment area killed at least a dozen people, including children. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.” Gaza’s “civil defense” is the Hamas terrorist organization.
A May 4, 2025 video by McKinnon de Kuyper includes images attributed only to “AFPTV” without disclosing to Times readers that the AFP board includes three representatives appointed by the French government. The Times describes de Kuyper as based in New York as a “weekend video journalist, operating livestreams and producing clips and breaking news packages for our website and social platforms.”
De Kuyper also is credited with a May 14, 2025, video headlined “Dozens Killed in Israeli Strikes in Northern Gaza, Officials Say.”
A May 7, 2025, video headlined “Airstrikes Kill Dozens in Gaza City” is attributed only to “By The New York Times.” It says, “The single deadliest bombing took place near a popular cafe in Gaza City where at least 33 people were killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.” The IDF announced May 8 that during a May 7 strike in the area of Gaza City it had eliminated “Muhammad Rasmi Marzouq Barakeh, a terrorist in Hamas’ military intelligence, who infiltrated Israel during the brutal October 7 massacre, and participated in the abduction of Yaffa Adar.” The Times video doesn’t report that.
Another video, also produced from London, amplifies a protest within Israel against the Israeli government’s policies.
I’ve had my quarrels and complaints over the years with print New York Times coverage produced by the newspaper’s journalists in Washington, New York, and Israel. But these propaganda-style videos are so strident and apparently calculated to generate an emotional response that they make previous New York Times news articles in print look, by comparison, like something produced by Israel’s government press office. What’s the point of having the New York Times produce this stuff when anyone can go to the TikTok account of Qatari-sponsored Al Jazeera and get basically the same material, also amplified to US-based viewers by TikTok’s proprietary algorithm?
Perhaps the New York Times management thinks they can profit in the short term by surfing the wave of Jew-hate, but it will be at the cost of eroding for longtime customers whatever credibility it built up over the years. Maybe they think that the legacy print customers aren’t paying attention to what the newspaper is doing on the social media platforms. Not so—we see it, and we are disgusted—not by what the Times is accusing Israel of doing, but by the Times’s abandonment, in the process, of traditional journalistic standards of quality, accuracy, and transparency.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
The post New York Times Pumps Out Al-Jazeera-Style Anti-Israel Videos for TikTok first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Even After Death of Terrorist, the AP Continues to Sell His Photos
The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie on a street after they were killed during a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
An Israeli air strike on Tuesday, May 13, killed a Palestinian journalist in Gaza whom the IDF identified as a Hamas terrorist, the army said. Despite HonestReporting calling out the Associated Press (AP), the agency continues to sell his photos on its global platform, in what some legal experts say may be considered material/financial support of a designated foreign terrorist organization in violation of US law that prohibits such conduct.
Allegations of Hassan Eslaiah’s links to terrorism should not have come as a surprise to the AP, which officially cut ties with the freelancer after HonestReporting’s November 2023 exposé of his infiltration into Israel during the October 7 massacre, which also saw the resurfacing of a photo of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar kissing him on the cheek.
Eslaiah’s death also provoked a social media outcry from self-appointed Palestinian “journalists,” as well as from the new Pulitzer Prize winner — people whom we have previously exposed for praising the October 7 massacre, documenting abductions of Israelis by Hamas, or excusing them.
Hassan Eslaiah (r) with former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar (l)
AP’s Deafening Silence
Although we reached out to the AP twice for comment, the wire service continues to ignore our revelation last week of more than 40 photos by Eslaiah on its digital platform, which serves hundreds of media outlets worldwide. The photos’ prices range between 35 and 495 US dollars.
Our story, which detailed the possible legal ramifications of the AP selling Eslaiah’s material, was published after the IDF targeted and wounded him in southern Gaza in early April, while publicly identifying him as a member of Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigade who had been posing as a journalist.
On May 13, he was killed in a precise air strike on the Nasser hospital in Gaza along with other terrorists, the IDF said.
Interestingly, Eslaiah’s specific photos of the October 7 atrocities inside Israel have been removed from the AP’s platform, and it’s not clear whether he received royalties when his remaining photos were purchased.
But the credit Eslaiah still gets from a respected news outlet is certainly a reputation booster. And either way, the AP can still make money off of his propaganda for Hamas:
Social Media Outcry
Meanwhile, some self-appointed Palestinian journalists and the new Pulitzer Prize winner used the X social media platform (formerly Twitter) to eulogize their admired colleague, who also happened to receive a heartfelt send-off from Hamas.
Eslaiah received a prominent lamentation from Mosab Abu Toha, a Gazan poet who won the Pulitzer Prize last week for his New Yorker essays on the war in Gaza, and whom we recently exposed for justifying the abduction of Israelis by Hamas. Incidentally, he also blocked HonestReporting on X.
Hind Khoudari, a self-appointed Gazan journalist who was quoted by various media outlets throughout the Israel-Hamas war, also wrote a moving post about Eslaiah, which prompted us to remind her online fan club that she had collaborated with Hamas, leading to the arrest of Palestinian peace activists.
“Journalist” @Hind_Gaza was outed as a Hamas collaborator whose information led to the arrest of Palestinian peace activists.
Here she is putting lipstick
on a pig
.
No amount of cameras, press vests, or press helmets can disguise who Hassan Eslaiah was.
Behind the… https://t.co/8sh1Qto6iU
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 13, 2025
Khoudari’s reaction was to accuse HonestReporting of responsibility for the deaths of Palestinian journalists, an entirely far-fetched claim with no basis in reality, but repeated by many of her followers on social media.
Motaz Azaiza, another Gazan with an iPhone who became the darling of Western media, called Eslaiah “the most kind human you will ever meet.” Kindness, apparently, does not apply to Jews in Azaiza’s eyes, considering he had posted a video of the kidnapping of Israelis into Gaza and another video replete with a triumphant caption, showing Hamas terrorists inside Israel.
Yeah. Two “kind humans” together.
Reminder: @azaizamotaz9 posted a video of the kidnapping of Israelis into Gaza & another video replete with a triumphant caption, showing Hamas terrorists inside Israel.
No wonder he admired Oct. 7 infiltrator & Hamas operative Hassan Eslaiah. https://t.co/ygkgnk7hBR
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 13, 2025
All of these “journalists” praising their hero, as well as the AP platforming his work, conveniently ignores or denies Eslaiah’s links to terrorism — which comes as little surprise.
Hassan Eslaiah is just the tip of a very big iceberg when it comes to the role of Palestinian journalists in Hamas’ propaganda campaign. And public acknowledgment of this would bring the entire edifice crashing down — something that too many media outlets, as well as Palestinian activists, will try as hard as they can to avoid.
HonestReporting is a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post Even After Death of Terrorist, the AP Continues to Sell His Photos first appeared on Algemeiner.com.