A loaf of challah being prepared. Photo: Aish.

There I was last week, standing on the rooftop of the AISH Institute for Women’s Education, flour dusting my blue apron, watching dozens of young women with their hands kneading dough. The Jerusalem skyline stretched out behind us like God’s own backdrop for our first-ever challah bake at the new seminary in the heart of the city — an event I’ve dreamed of hosting for so many years.

I’ve often held these events in other locations — what I call my “ABCs of Challah Bakes” tour, from Amsterdam, to Brooklyn, to Cape Town, and everywhere in between.

I’ve literally been flown around the world to knead dough with Jewish women. Sounds crazy, right? But there’s something magical about hosting this on the rooftop of our newly inaugurated seminary with young women who have come from all over the world to study Jewish wisdom together.

Through this Challah bake, we joined tens of thousands of women who were participating in similar events in stadiums, synagogues, and community centers worldwide, each of us elbow-deep in flour. We shared something monumental that brought us together in a way that was both moving and invigorating. The Shabbos Project figured this magic out 12 years ago, and honestly, they struck gold.

Want to know the real secret to challah bakes? They’re the Jewish equivalent of a universal welcome mat. I’ve seen women show up who haven’t set foot in a synagogue in decades or ever. Women who don’t fast on Yom Kippur or attend a Passover seder. Women who would typically run from anything remotely religious. Yet somehow, they come out of the woodwork for challah bakes. It’s mind-blowing! Maybe it’s the smell of fresh bread, maybe it’s the laughter and camaraderie, maybe it’s just the promise of those sweet and sumptuous carbs for the special day of Shabbos, but they come, and that’s what matters.

Since October 7, these events have gained even more momentum. For two years, our hearts broke daily thinking about what’s been happening in Israel and what was transpiring for the hostages in Gaza. I believe it is because of the search for connection that many Jews felt after October 7th, that these challah bake gatherings have morphed into something even more powerful.

Women who felt disconnected were suddenly craving community. The simple act of kneading dough has become this beautiful act of resilience. We’re literally taking flour and water, and a few more basic ingredients, and creating something nourishing when so much around us feels impossibly out of control.

I’ve always been a believer in the spiritual side of challah baking — just ask my family. I’ve been preaching about it for years. But then came Ori Megidish’s story. Her mother baked challah and made a special blessing for her daughter’s safe return on October 27, 2023, while Ori was held hostage by Hamas, praying with every fold of her dough for her daughter’s safe return. Three days later, Ori became the first hostage rescued by the IDF. Social media went wild connecting the dots. It made challah bakes look pretty powerful, and women noticed.

This isn’t superstition, mysticism, or folklore; Jewish tradition actually teaches that the moment when we separate a small piece from our dough is an incredibly auspicious time for prayer. Standing there with dough on your hands, preparing food that will nourish people you love and separating a small piece in compliance with Jewish law, our sages teach, is precisely the moment when heaven’s paying extra close attention to our prayers.

At our rooftop event, we aimed those prayers toward healing, physical, mental, and spiritual, for everyone touched by this horrific conflict in addition to very personal, heartfelt prayers and blessings for two new brides in the group. There were belly laughs and quiet tears, sometimes from the same person within minutes.

These gatherings work because you walk away with something real, actual bread that fills your home with that Friday afternoon (aka “erev shabbos”) smell that takes you right back to your bubby’s kitchen. But you also leave with something you can’t Instagram: new friends, renewed purpose, and this crazy warm feeling that you’re part of something bigger than yourself.

That’s why I’ll keep doing these as long as I possibly can. Like I’ve witnessed at the Suzana and Ivan Kaufman AISH Institute for Women’s Education, I’ve watched shy women who came once reluctantly then return year after year with friends in tow. I’ve seen friendships form across decades and continents.

I’ve witnessed the power of flour and water to heal wounds you can’t see, and in a world desperate for healing, there’s something revolutionary about women performing this ancient ritual together. The challah feeds our bodies; the community and spirituality of the moment feed our souls. As we shape our dough, we’re reshaping our world, one prayer, one loaf, and one gathering at a time.

And who knows? With enough flour, faith, and friendship, we might just heal all that divides us.

Jamie Geller is the Global Spokesperson and Chief Communications Officer for AISH. She is a bestselling cookbook author, Jewish education advocate, and formerly an award-winning producer and marketing executive with HBO, CNN, and Food Network. 

Then-IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, center, speaking to commanders and soldiers in the Golan Heights on Dec. 13, 2024. Photo: IDF.

A new documentary airing on ITV, Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War, claims to be “the story of the war in Gaza told by the soldiers who fought it.”

An insider account of war sounds promising, especially amid the flood of misinformation online from people who were never on the ground as IDF soldiers and have no experience of the reality of fighting a terrorist organization.

Yet, of all the thousands of soldiers, both in mandatory service and reserve duty, the documentary presents a carefully selected handful of soldiers to tell the story of what they believe really happened in Gaza.

But the story they tell distorts — if not entirely omits — key facts. The film overlooks the reality of what it means to fight a terrorist organization driven by an ideology of extermination, one that deliberately embeds itself among civilians to wage war from within their communities.

That didn’t stop other media outlets from jumping on allegations of war crimes, with outlets such as The Guardian and Independent publishing pieces based on the documentary’s conclusions. That the Tehran Times gleefully pounced on it as well tells a story in itself.

The War Against Hamas

While the film does spend a few minutes showcasing the horrific tragedies of the October 7, 2023, massacre led by Hamas, it quickly shifts its focus to alleged atrocities committed by the IDF in the aftermath.

From the very beginning, the IDF made it explicitly clear that the war was against terrorist organizations only – there was no deliberate targeting of innocent civilians in Gaza. The IDF has maintained this throughout the war, taking every measure possible to warn the civilian population of any potential danger, including sending leaflets before a targeted strike and creating civilian zones to ensure the safety of non-combatants.

The complexity of fighting a terrorist organization is largely overlooked throughout the film. At one point, the use of force in Gaza is called “unprecedented in combat in terms of the number of explosives dropped per square mile,” making it out to be worse than the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What it fails to acknowledge is that Israel precisely targets terrorists and terrorist infrastructure.

That viral cartoon comparing Gaza to Hiroshima and London is seriously misleading. Designed to provoke outrage, the reality shows Israel’s precision in targeting terrorists, even in the toughest situations. Context matters. pic.twitter.com/rxvi2YBvl2

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 14, 2024

Of course, for the documentary to accurately acknowledge the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, it would have to spend a considerable amount of time discussing the vast tunnel network Hamas has built beneath the entirety of the Gaza Strip. However, this undeniable fact gets quickly glossed over. The filmmakers suggest the tunnels are merely used for “smuggling, warfare, and to avoid Israeli airstrikes.”

This framing subtly shifts blame onto Israel, as if Hamas’s need to “avoid” the Israeli air force is a defensive response rather than a deliberate strategy to wage war from beneath civilian areas. Terrorism? The inhumane holding and torture of hostages in clear violation of every facet of humanitarian law? Entirely unmentioned.

Breaking the Silence

The omission of the true purpose of the tunnels instead becomes spun into a claim based on hearsay that the IDF uses human shields in Gaza. Despite the IDF’s unequivocal denial of such allegations, this assertion is amplified by the interviewees.

However, this should come as no surprise, as one of the interviewees, under the name “Yaakov,” has previously espoused this claim to the New York Times via Breaking the Silence. This highly politicized Israeli organization spends less of its time trying to convince the Israeli public of its case and more on providing the foreign media with fodder to attack Israel.

While the organization seeks to “expose the public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories,” in reality, it relies on unverified and exaggerated claims provided by IDF soldiers, some of whom receive a paycheck from the organization and therefore may very well have ulterior motives.

“Yaakov” shared photos he took during his time in reserve duty in Gaza, including one now infamous photo that was previously shared in his New York Times article. The photo is said to display civilians who are used as human shields by the IDF when exploring the tunnel network. But the blurry and contextless image offers no evidence whatsoever to support such a serious accusation.

The credits of the documentary give special “thanks” to “Yaakov” from Breaking the Silence, revealing a clear bias in its sources in order to frame a specific narrative about the IDF as a whole. Instead of drawing on a range of credible voices – including a wide array of active-duty soldiers, independent analysts, and military experts – they elevate a figure tied to a controversial advocacy group with a record of misrepresentation.

Amplifying Non-Neutral Voices

“Yaakov” from Breaking the Silence is not the only biased source. Dr. Itamar Mann, a professor of international law at Haifa University, for instance, gives highly critical commentary on the IDF’s actions.

Dr. Mann is listed as an author and legal consultant on a report by Physicians for Human Rights (Israel), claiming there is genocide in Gaza. The organization has been known to spread false, distorted narratives as a way of delegitimizing Israel. In fact, in the immediate aftermath of October 7, the organization stated that it is our “human obligation to contextualize yesterday’s violence.”

The documentary also brings in Amjad al-Shara, the director of the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), who refers to the IDF as the “occupation forces,” and is himself described as a “pro-Hamas” figure. PNGO has in the past supported terrorism and hosted conferences or speakers connected to the PFLP.

False Casualty Statistics and Disproved Claims

With the poor sourcing and reliance on problematic organizations, it is no surprise that the documentary also fell into the trap of repeating already thoroughly debunked claims about casualty statistics, genocide, and famine in Gaza.

At one point, the film refers to a previously debunked statistic from a so-called study by The Guardian and +972 Magazine, which claims that 83% of all casualties in Gaza are women and children. This figure is based on data from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, creating a misleading comparison to the IDF’s confirmed count of 8,900 identified terrorists. By subtracting that number from Hamas’ unverifiable total of 53,000 casualties at the time, these outlets and the documentary falsely present the remaining 83% of casualties as civilians, echoing Hamas propaganda.

Naturally, given the bias of the documentary, the claims of genocide and famine are also leveled against Israel. Even though the definitions of both terms have been distorted in order to accuse Israel of such atrocities, the film presents these allegations as fact, rather than propaganda.

Final Gaza fake “famine” analysis: IPC declared famine on Aug 22. Through ceasefire on Oct 10 there should have been 10,000 starvation deaths. But Hamas/UN counted 192 (most if not all with pre-existing conditions). That’s 98% below famine levels. It was always a hoax. 1/ pic.twitter.com/jWcZOnwdAe

— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) October 21, 2025

For a documentary to do its job and remain neutral on such serious allegations, the contrary evidence must be presented, but throughout the documentary, this was deliberately avoided.

War, especially against a terrorist organization that operates using guerrilla tactics, presents immensely challenging scenarios. In the fog of war, mistakes and errors of judgment can and do happen. But it is also true that the IDF has consistently held its soldiers to the highest of standards, investigating any wrongdoing as it occurs.

It would be naive to suggest that every soldier in the IDF or any other comparable army behaves in an exemplary fashion. In September 2024, The New Yorker published a database of what it said is the “largest known collection of investigations of possible war crimes committed [by the US military] in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11—nearly eight hundred incidents in all.”

Some of the alleged crimes include “the case of soldiers raping a fourteen-year-old girl and subsequently murdering her and her family; the alleged killing of a man by a Green Beret who cut off his victim’s ear and kept it; and cruelty toward detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and at the Bagram Air Base detention facility.”

All of this is not to claim that the IDF is necessarily more moral than the American military, although there is certainly a good case to be made. The point is that nobody would condemn the entirety of the U.S. Army as an immoral entity that brings shame to its country despite the behavior of a minority of its troops.

And ultimately, ITV’s documentary relies on a tiny number of Israeli soldiers as “eyewitnesses,” most of whom appear to have a political agenda backed by Breaking the Silence.

Rather than offering an honest insight into the complexities of modern warfare against a terrorist organization, the filmmakers chose a simplified, one-sided narrative of Israel’s supposed aggression. In doing so, ITV’s Breaking Ranks fails the very test it set for itself: to tell the story of the war “through the soldiers who fought it.” Instead, it tells a story already written — one shaped by bias, omission, and a refusal to confront the full truth.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

Michael Alpert, an influential klezmer musician and ethnographer who has played a key role in the global renaissance of Yiddish music and culture, has been selected as this year’s recipient of the prestigious Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Award.

The ceremony will take place at the Dreaming in Yiddish Award Concert during the Yiddish New York festival — the largest annual Yiddish culture festival in the world — in December.

Now in its eleventh year, the hybrid festival brings together a global community for in-person events at Hebrew Union College in downtown New York, as well as online programming via Zoom. The festival includes concerts, workshops, lectures, films, Yiddish classes, dance parties and intergenerational community events.

Adrienne Cooper was a popular Yiddish singer, musician and activist who was integral to the revival of klezmer music. The Dreaming in Yiddish Award supports artists who have contributed to the contemporary Yiddish cultural scene.

Michael Alpert, also known by his Yiddish name Meyshke, received an NEA National Heritage Fellowship — the nation’s highest honor in the traditional and heritage arts — in 2015. He has been a pioneering singer, multi-instrumentalist, ethnographer and educator for over five decades. His award-winning work with ensembles including Brave Old World, Kapelye, Khevrisa and Itzhak Perlman’s In the Fiddler’s House has shaped generations of performers and listeners alike.

A native Yiddish speaker and cultural bridge between East European-born tradition bearers and contemporary artists, Alpert is celebrated both for preserving the roots of Yiddish folk and klezmer music and for composing a new body of Yiddish songs that speak to today’s world.

The Dreaming in Yiddish Award Concert — an evening of music, memories, and celebration — is sponsored by Yiddish New York and GOH Productions. It will take place on Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2025 at 7 p.m. ET at Hebrew Union College and will be livestreamed as well.

Register

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