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These almost-too-cute-to-eat hamantaschen are baked for a good cause
(New York Jewish Week) — Baker Michal Prevor, the founder and owner of Babka Bailout, makes hamantaschen at her Jersey City bakery all year long, not just for Purim. Her inventive fillings of the triangular-shaped cookie include guava jam, dulce de leche and date nut.
Ahead of the festive holiday of Purim this year, which begins on the evening of March 6, Prevor decided to kick the creativity up a notch: She’s gone a bit wild, offering a collection of hamantaschen that are decorated to look like animals.
“When I was a little girl I ate with my eyes,” Prevor, 47, told the New York Jewish Week. “I always wanted to buy anything that looked like a character.”
Inspired by some googly eyes that she had leftover in her kitchen from Halloween, Prevor created the fanciful cookies, which sell for $6 each. Decorated as bunnies, kittens, giraffes and bears, the hamantaschen are almost too cute to eat. But make no mistake: Iced with white chocolate or dark chocolate and filled with a choice of nutella, dulce de leche or cookie butter — fillings she feels kids would like — the cookies are meant to be consumed and enjoyed.
As both her animal-themed hamantaschen and the unusual name of her bakery business might suggest, Prevor is not one to do the expected: The mom of two founded Babka Bailout in May 2020 at the height of the pandemic — despite the fact that she had never baked a babka before. Rather, her motivation was to help a friend who had fallen on hard times during lockdown and was having trouble feeding her family of five.
The plan, said Prevor, was to make and sell homemade babka and give the proceeds to their friend. Prevor, who lived in Hoboken at the time, went on a local moms’ Facebook group and wrote that she was selling babkas to help her friend. Within five minutes of posting, she sold 40 nutella or cinnamon babka at $14 each.
“The name for the company was my husband’s idea,” said Prevor. “Some people didn’t have the government to bail them out. Lots of people were left behind and not in great situations. The name was a fun spin — the babka would bail my friend out.”
Prevor’s husband, Grant, a home builder who bakes as a hobby, made that first batch of babka, while Prevor watched and learned. Their two daughters, Ariel and Amelie, who were 15 and 12 years old at time, pitched in, too. “Everyone was working,” said Prevor. “All hands on deck. It gave us a schedule, and it made my kids busy at a time when a lot of kids were very depressed.”
From there, Prevor started baking every week. “I was making hundreds of babkas a week from home,” she said. “It was quite an adventure. I had to start very early — the babkas had to rise. The oven could only fit eight babkas at a time, and it took 45 minutes to bake the babkas in the home oven at 350 degrees.”
“My oven door literally fell off from all of the opening and closing,” she added.
Prevnor had never baked babka before she launched Babka Bailout in May 2020. Since then, she’s expanded her menu with inventive creations. (Michelle Gevint)
Two months after Babka Bailout launched, Prevor began experimenting with different babka flavors, like cereal milk and oreos-and-nutella (both suggested by her daughters). In March 2021, she added hamantaschen for Purim. Prevor tested more than 40 different recipes for hamantaschen until she came up with an amalgamation that she felt was best — and decided to keep what she calls her favorite cookie permanently on the menu.
For flavor inspiration, Prevor said she draws upon the diverse populations of New York and Jersey City, in particular, as well as her own multi-cultural background: Prevor spent the first six years of her life on a moshav (an agricultural cooperative) in the Sinai Peninsula where her father, Ofer Rozenfeld, grew melons and flowers.
In 1981, ahead of Israel’s impending withdrawal from from the Sinai, the family moved to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, where her father continued his farming. Then, a few years later, when Prevor’s older brother turned 18, the family returned to Israel so that he, and the other four children in the family, could eventually serve in the Israel Defense Forces.
Following her service, Prevor moved to New York where she attended New York University and double majored in political science and journalism. A year after graduation, she married Grant, a fellow Spanish-speaking Jew who grew up in Puerto Rico. In 2005, when their first daughter was 10 months old, the family moved to New Jersey.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Prevor sold irrigation equipment designed by her father. She had her last business meeting via Zoom in March 2020 — and two months later, she came face-to-face with her friend’s financial problems and decided to help. “Giving back to the community and tzedakah have always been indoctrinated into my upbringing,” Prevor said. “My parents took care of anybody they came into contact with who needed help. And I think that is part of having a Jewish soul.”
Babka Bailout’s business has continued to grow — in addition to online orders via their web site, Prevor’s products can be found at Butterfield Market, a gourmet grocery store on Madison Avenue and 85th Street.
Last September, Babka Bailout moved to a commercial kitchen in Jersey City, where Prevor and her family now live. She now has a storefront connected to the bakery where passersby stop in to buy treats — many Manhattanites place advance orders and make the short trip over the Hudson themselves, Prevor said.
“We are getting their hamantaschen for Purim this year,” said Joelle Obsatz, owner of Butterfield Market. “They have faces on it. I have never seen anything like it — I think it will be a hit. We will only be selling our house-made hamantaschen and Babka Bailout’s.”
As for Prevor’s previously down-on-her-luck friend, she now assists Prevor in the kitchen. These days, Prevor donates portions of Babka Bailout’s proceeds to numerous organizations, including Welcome Home Jersey City, an organization that supports refugees arriving in the area. “Whenever there is an opportunity to help, I do, either by baking or donating money,” she said. “Whenever an organization asks, my rule of thumb is to help.”
While Prevor may have never intended to become a professional baker, it’s clear she’s established a perfect niche for herself and her community. “In our little shop, people that pick up our baked goods come from all over — the Arab world, the Philippines, Latin America. Once they try them, they are hooked,” she said. “That kind of ties into all my flavors. I love diversity. I love learning from other people and taking flavors from other countries and making everybody feel welcome.”
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The post These almost-too-cute-to-eat hamantaschen are baked for a good cause appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention
(JTA) — Local and national Jewish Democrats say they are sympathetic after Michigan’s Jewish attorney general, Dana Nessel, said she would skip the state Democratic Party’s nominating convention over concerns about antisemitism and harassment.
“I don’t blame AG Nessel for not wanting to go and basically put herself in situations that feel untenable in this moment of time and don’t add any value politically, personally,” Jessica “Decky” Alexander, the Michigan Jewish Democratic caucus chair, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.
Alexander’s comment came a day after Nessel announced during a televised antisemitism roundtable that she would be skipping the convention next month, where party leaders will finalize the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate following a divisive primary that has focused in part on Israel and antisemitism.
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during the roundtable. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
She said she had filed a formal complaint within the party about a party official who had called her a neo-Nazi because of her beliefs. “Why is this person more accepted in our party than me?” she asked without naming the official. Her office responded to a request for comment by referring to the recorded livestream of the antisemitism roundtable.
Nessel’s declaration comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel. El-Sayed is surging in polls despite a reported $30 million spent against him by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and its supporters, whom he has made a target of criticism from the campaign trail.
Nessel’s comments also follow turmoil at the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement convention in April, where Stevens was booed by attendees. A third primary candidate who later dropped out of the race, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, said a convention attendee had targeted her Jewish husband with an antisemitic slur.
The incident has fueled alarm among Jewish Democrats, according to Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
“She’s not alone,” Soifer told JTA about Nessel on Friday. “We’ve heard from other Jewish Democrats who attended the Democratic Party convention earlier this year in Michigan, and there was a sense of discomfort amid what felt like a pro-Palestinian protest [that] may have even blurred the line for some into antisemitic sentiment — and it’s really concerning.”
Nessel has raised the alarm about antisemitism within the party for years, alleging in 2024 that Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a prominent pro-Palestinian voice, had been antisemitic when criticizing charges Nessel filed against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan.
For her part, Alexander said she would be participating in the nominating convention and said she believed the chair of the state Democratic Party, Curtis Hertel, had been “very accessible and very open to making sure that we, including our Jewish elected officials, feel safe in that space.” But she said she understood why Nessel was staying away.
“It would never even occur to me, but I’m not an elected official,” Alexander said. “It’s a different stake for me than it is for Dana. I understand her completely.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention appeared first on The Forward.
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Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’
(JTA) — Every congregational rabbi in Maine has signed onto a statement calling for peace and urging the state’s political leaders to stop using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza, following a Democratic primary in which several candidates used the label for the first time.
But the rabbis also indicated that they, too, were unsatisfied with conditions in the Middle East and called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work toward a peaceful future.
“We call upon Maine’s leaders, and particularly its political leaders, to reject the irresponsible usage of the term in describing the Israel-Hamas War,” said the statement released on Friday. “We also call upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the cycle of violence and to create a better world for both Palestinian and Israeli children.”
The statement, titled “A Call for Peace and Responsible Rhetoric,” argues that using the term as a “political slogan does not advance peace in the Middle East.” The term “erases essential moral and legal distinctions, diminishes the meaning of genocide, and inflames hatred for the local Jewish community,” the rabbis say.
“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the adoption of hateful and misleading language,” they continue. “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.”
The statement comes days after Troy Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, secured the Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nomination Saturday at the party’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner, a staunch Israel critic who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Platner faced a sexual assault allegation, which he denies. Jackson now faces Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November’s general election.
Platner’s romp to the primary victory featured routine use of “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. And ahead of the convention to replace him, Jackson and several other Democratic hopefuls who later exited the race began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza for the first time, a shift that drew scrutiny from some Jewish leaders and voters in the state.
The use of the term has become a “currency for acquiring power and position in Maine’s Democratic party,” Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, who also signed the statement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Too many Maine Democrats are cynically willing to trade in that currency at the expense of our safety and dignity,” she said in an emailed statement. “We decided we needed to say something collectively, both about the specious and dangerous nature of the claim, and about how much damage has been done to our families and congregants.”
The statement Friday was spearheaded by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine and signed by every congregational rabbi in the state, including Rabbi Bill Siemers of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and Rabbi Erica Asch of the Reform Temple Beth El in Augusta. (Rabbis affiliated with the Chabad movement in Maine did not appear on the signatory list.)
Zach Schwartz, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, said the federation hoped the “unity displayed here in Maine can inspire Jewish communities across the US to also unite against the extremist rhetoric harming our community and our children.”
Rabbi Josh Stanton, the associate vice president of interfaith and intergroup initiatives for Jewish Federations of North America, also hailed the joint statement.
“Maine’s Jewish clergy are setting an important example with their call to put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look to the common good,” Stanton said in an emailed statement. “At a time of rising polarization and declining civil discourse, the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s efforts to unify the community around this important message are a mark of true leadership.”
Isaacs told JTA that she hoped Jackson would “support, understand, and advocate for all of Maine’s citizens, including the totality of Maine’s diverse Jewish community.”
“Work with us to figure out how to express outrage and legitimate critique of Israel’s government without succumbing to language that you might not know is an ancient antisemitic trope, or dismissing the security needs of Israel’s citizens,” Isaacs said of her message to Jackson. “Please have the courage to forge your own path, and not follow in the footsteps of Graham Platner, a man who should have never been normalized, endorsed, or empowered.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song
(JTA) — Boy George has withdrawn from his run as King Herod in London’s West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” days before he was due to take the stage and 24 hours after releasing “We Will Dance Again,” dedicated to the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Nova music festival in Israel.
The 80’s pop star was scheduled to appear at London’s Palladium starting Monday as part of the production’s rotating cast playing King Herod, the Judean king who is best known by Jews for his expansion of the Second Temple and to Christians for his efforts to stave off the arrival of a challenger — the story of which is reflected in the rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
Boy George will be replaced by actor Richard Armitage in the London production.
In announcing the cast change, Paul Kelmsley, the singer’s manager, did not directly mention the blowback the former Culture Club frontman was receiving for releasing a pro-Israel song but alluded to it.
“George has never been afraid to stand by his personal convictions, and I have always respected him for that,” he said. ”In this instance, I felt it was right to step aside, allowing the production to remain the focus, while ensuring everyone involved can move forward with mutual respect and goodwill.”
Boy George is defending his decision to release the song, saying he believes artists should be free to express their views even when they are unpopular. In “We Will Dance Again,” the singer rejects claims of genocide against Israel and proclaims, “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.”
Earlier Friday, Boy George lashed back at the vitriol he was getting online. “What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me, ” he posted on X. “If you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f—_ a garage,’” he said, referring to a quote attributed to the taboo-breaking transgender artist.
“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers, not just the Jewish community,” Boy George said. “When will you wake up?”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song appeared first on The Forward.
