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An app that can generate 64,000 kosher cheesecake recipes aims to prove AI’s value for Orthodox Jews
(JTA) — Sara Goldstein’s regular cheesecake recipe is like the rest of the kosher food she makes and shares on her Instagram account — “straightforward, and I wouldn’t say too adventurous.”
But she tried something special this year ahead of Shavuot, a Jewish holiday that begins Thursday night, when dairy foods are traditionally on the menu. In honor of the holiday, she whipped up a bourbon caramel cheesecake, with candied pecans on top.
Goldstein’s baking shakeup was spurred by an online tool that, using artificial intelligence, allows users to mix and match ingredients that can be made into more than 64,000 different cheesecake recipes. For Goldstein, a chef and kosher recipe developer who lives in Lakewood, New Jersey, CheesecakeWizard.AI offers a welcome challenge.
“You have to be extra creative in the kosher world because it’s very limited,” she said. “And I think it definitely opened people’s eyes to what’s possible. I mean, saying there’s 64,000 combinations that are kosher — it’s really, really cool.”
The app’s creator, Brooklyn marketing executive Avi Bree, doesn’t just want to push the bounds of what gets served on Shavuot tables. He’s also looking to prove to clients his value in a world of AI-generated press releases — and to show his fellow Orthodox Jews that ChatGPT and other AI tools can be a boon to Jewish observance, not a threat, despite concerns about internet use in his community.
“Not everybody who is going to go to this website is actually going to actually bake the cheesecake,” Bree said. “They’ll futz around with it, and they’ll push a couple buttons and it’ll make us all meshuggeneh trying to come up with the craziest flavor.… While they’re doing it, the company that’s sponsoring it, their logo and their name is there.”
The app asks users to select their crust, filling and topping preferences, then uses artificial intelligence to spit out a recipe to match. An image integration feature called Midjourney allows users to see computer-generated pictures of what their cheesecakes might look like — from carrot-cake crusts to maple and sweet potato filling to savory toppings such as an olive tapenade.
Since its launch last week, Cheesecake Wizard has been used by about 12,000 people to generate 45,000 recipes — though it remains to be seen how many actual cheesecakes result. Bree said that like Goldstein, he had been drawn to the “boozy options” in the Cheesecake Wizard interface and hoped that when the holiday begins Thursday night, he’ll get a chance to partake.
“After a very long week of work, I’d like to sit down on Shavuos eating cheesecake, and having a splash of bourbon on top would definitely, you know, add a little more enjoyment to the holiday festivities,” he said.
Bree’s experiment with AI started last spring, when clients began to drop him because, they said, they could use the new technology to create their marketing materials instead. He decided to explore the new terrain. Passover was approaching, and Bree’s first venture was a day-trip generator, inspired by the hassle Orthodox families can face when deciding what to do in the middle of the weeklong holiday, when Jewish schools and workplaces are closed.
Avi Bree created a cheesecake AI generator to show his Orthodox community the value of AI. (Courtesy Bree)
CanWeGoNow launched on the first day of chol hamoed, the period of the holiday when travel is allowed, and quickly crashed as the link ricocheted across WhatsApp groups that are the primary form of communication for many Orthodox Jews. Bree called his wife from synagogue and said he needed to scrap their own family’s plan to take their six children to an amusement park. He had to spend the time getting the site back up.
“I said, ‘Pessel, the bottom line is I stepped into something that might be amazing,’” he recalled. “I generally don’t work on chol hamoed, but if there’s a loss involved, the rabbinical leaders say you can work. So I said, ‘If I don’t take care of this, the whole thing’s going to fold.’”
Ultimately, 20,000 people generated tens of thousands of trip ideas in the United States, Israel, England, Australia and even Mexico, where hundreds of people at a kosher-for-Passover hotel got wind of the app.
Bree lost money on the venture, but he gained confidence that AI could catch on in his community, despite some of his Orthodox peers’ ambivalence toward new technologies. Now, he has relaunched his marketing firm to focus squarely on using AI to reach Orthodox audiences. (Its name, MarketAIng, makes the gambit visible.)
“The Jewish community is always a little bit behind, let’s just face it,” he said. “Our tradition is what kept us going all these thousands of years, so anytime something new comes into the picture, we’re always a little more wary and always a little more concerned. So AI really hasn’t made inroads yet.”
Bree’s latest effort hit a turning point while he was in synagogue, which he referred to as “a mini-networking event” that he attends three times a day for prayers. A self-described ultra-Orthodox Jew, he had been casting about for a kosher corporate partner for the cheesecake bot. An acquaintance named Akiva overheard him lamenting his lack of connections to a fellow worshiper after evening services.
Akiva said his wife worked for a kosher dairy-products company called Norman’s. A few WhatsApp messages later, Bree was in touch with executives there — and now the company’s name and logo appear on the website, and its products are inserted into the cheesecake recipes that the tool generates. Goldstein has also promoted the company on her social media posts about Cheesecake Wizard.
The sell wasn’t totally straightforward, Bree said. An executive “was a little bit nervous because of the internet aspect,” he recalled. “Right now in the Jewish community, it’s a weird sort of policy we have, like, we don’t encourage you to use it but if you’re going to use it, have a filter on it.”
Indeed, internet use has been a fraught topic in haredi Orthodox communities, with rabbis warning that online access can be a gateway to inappropriate content that conflicts with and diverts attention from Jewish practice.
Some Orthodox leaders have urged Jews to reject the internet entirely. In 2012, a rally warning of the dangers of the web drew more than 40,000 men to Citi Field in New York; last year, two massive rallies for women urged them to delete their social media profiles and give up their smartphones.
With the abrupt arrival of consumer-facing AI in recent months, the technology has drawn specific attention from some rabbinic leaders for the first time. Last month, a dozen rabbis from the traditionalist Skver Hasidic community, based in New Square, New York, explicitly banned its use.
“It is possible that at this point, not everyone knows the magnitude and scope of the danger, but it has become clear to us in our souls that this thing will be a trap for all of us, young and old,” the rabbis wrote in their decree last month. “Therefore, the use of ‘AI’ is strictly prohibited in any shape and form, even by phone.”
Despite these warnings, many haredi Orthodox Jews use the internet for work, shopping and other activities. But in some communities, users are expected to install “kosher” filters that block content considered inappropriate, and many Orthodox yeshivas require parents to install filters as a condition of enrollment. Bree said his own children’s Brooklyn yeshiva required a phone filter, which he installed, and that he made sure to construct his apps so that they would function on phones whose function is limited to WhatsApp and basic communication tools.
He also said that while Norman’s was persuaded to move forward with the cheesecake app because it had its own website, he was considering adding a disclaimer.
“We might have to actually make a little statement on the website saying something along the lines of, you know, ‘Please abide by your rabbinical guidelines regarding internet use,’” Bree said. “Because people were saying, ‘Oh, what are you pushing internet for?’ We’re not pushing it. If you’re using it anyways, then you could use this.”
Goldstein said she wasn’t sure she would become a regular AI user but thought that Cheesecake Wizard, for which she posted an instructional video for her followers on Wednesday, was a comfortable entry point for her community. “I definitely think it’ll take people a little while, maybe, to warm up to the concept, but it’s a great way to introduce it,” she said.
In her heavily Orthodox town of Lakewood, Goldstein said a wide range of internet uses are tolerated — and that she sees a value in remaining online.
“I’m not telling people to come start using Instagram, start using AI — it’s if you’re here [and] it’s where you’re at, then this is a fun way to make something amazing, to elevate something for chag,” Goldstein said, using the Hebrew word meaning holiday. “For people who are already out there on the internet — whether you need it for work, or just, you’re not at that place yet to completely eradicate internet from your life — here’s a way to take these tools and do something even spiritual with it.”
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The post An app that can generate 64,000 kosher cheesecake recipes aims to prove AI’s value for Orthodox Jews appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Most Jewish voters backed El-Sayed, but many Michigan Democrats crossed party lines, early exit poll shows
Nearly one in four Jewish voters in Michigan who supported Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin in 2024 crossed party lines to vote for Republican Mike Rogers instead of Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed this year, according to an exit poll of early voters. The findings highlight El-Sayed’s struggle to win over Jewish Democrats amid concerns about his views on Israel and his association with an influencer accused of antisemitism.
The Mercury Public Affairs survey of 482 Jewish voters who cast ballots before Election Day found that El-Sayed received 60% of the early Jewish vote in the Senate race, compared with 79% for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson. Rogers received 36% and another 5% of respondents said they left the Senate race blank.
The poll sponsored by The Jewish Majority, an advocacy group led by AIPAC veteran Jonathan Schulman, was conducted from Oct. 25 through Oct. 31 via text and had a reported margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
Among Jewish voters who said they backed Slotkin in 2024, 23% voted for Rogers this time, and among those who voted for Kamala Harris in the presidential election, 18% crossed over to Rogers, while another 11% voted for someone else or skipped the Senate race.
More than 2.3 million voters cast ballots by Monday morning, including 743,450 in person and nearly 1.57 million by mail, according to the Michigan Secretary of State. Jewish voters make up an estimated 1.4% of Michigan’s electorate, but both parties viewed them as an important voting bloc in the closely contested Senate race. Slotkin defeated Rogers by fewer than 20,000 votes in 2024.
The election followed months of tension between El-Sayed and Jewish Democrats, who voted for his primary rival, Rep. Haley Stevens. His outspoken opposition to Israel, ties to left-wing commentator Hasan Piker, who has been accused of antisemitism, and his initial response to the March attack on Temple Israel upset some Jewish voters. El-Sayed apologized for his remarks about the attack and sent mailers to Jewish households promising to fight antisemitism, but did not moderate his positions on Israel. He even doubled down on his criticism of the Jewish state.
The Republican Jewish Coalition spent $2 million targeting about 50,000 Jewish voters, primarily in Oakland County, hoping to persuade Democrats frustrated with El-Sayed to cross party lines.
The findings suggest that El-Sayed’s struggles were not the result of a broader shift toward Republicans. Among Jewish voters who voted for Rogers, 61% said they voted mainly against El-Sayed rather than for the Republican. Another 23% said both factors mattered equally. And 88% of those who did not vote for El-Sayed said they would have been very likely to vote for a different Democratic nominee.
Almost all of them — 92% — cited El-Sayed’s positions on Israel and concerns about antisemitism as a main reason for their decision, while just 22% said they wanted to send a message to the Democratic Party.
The survey may not reflect last-minute developments. It was completed before Stevens endorsed Rogers on Sunday, in a rare break with her party. Later that day, leaders of Nonnegotiable, a group of Jewish Democrats opposed to El-Sayed, urged voters who could not support either candidate to write in Emma Lazarus, the Jewish author whose poem appears on the Statue of Liberty, instead of leaving the Senate race blank.
The post Most Jewish voters backed El-Sayed, but many Michigan Democrats crossed party lines, early exit poll shows appeared first on The Forward.
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Georgia voters decide the future of Jon Ossoff, a Jewish Democrat who increasingly criticizes Israel
(JTA) — Jewish voters in Georgia went to the polls on Tuesday to choose between Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, who has increasingly criticized Israel, and Republican Rep. Mike Collins, his pro-Israel challenger with ties to white nationalists.
Ossoff, who is Jewish, called Collins a “notorious bigot, antisemite, and extremist” during the bitterly fought election. Collins said that Ossoff “caved to the radicals” by voting to halt certain arms shipments to Israel.
Ossoff’s voting record on Israel has captured a shift in the Democratic party. While he has supported measures to boost Israeli defense systems, he also became one of the first Senate Democrats to vote for blocking offensive weapons sales to Israel in 2024, as the country’s military conduct in Gaza drove mounting opposition.
In contrast, Collins has pledged continued military support for Israel and described the country as “a frontline partner against Iran and their partners in terror” in the Atlanta Jewish Times. A self-described “born again Christian,” Collins added that he supports Israel because “my faith tells me to and because it is the right policy for America.”
Collins’ campaign was mired in controversies surrounding his associates. One of his former staffers posted images of a swastika and a Ku Klux Klan robe online, while another partook in a group chat with prominent white nationalists that aimed to help an accused Holocaust denier. Collins’ son-in-law is a social media influencer who has promoted conspiracy theories that “Jews control our government” and called to deport all Muslims.
Ossoff took aim at those associations during the candidates’ two debates, saying that Collins “hired half the Third Reich to staff your congressional office” and was “unable to stop someone under your own roof from disseminating neo-Nazi propaganda while you run for the Senate.” Collins has said that he condemns antisemitism and does not support his son-in-law’s views.
Meanwhile, Ossoff’s vote against offensive weapons for Israel in November 2024 divided Georgia’s Jews. In an open letter, a coalition including Georgia synagogues, the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, the local Anti-Defamation League chapter and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee told Ossoff they were “deeply disappointed” and the vote demonstrated that his “commitment to Israel’s security is not ironclad.”
An opposing letter from over 100 Atlanta Jewish leaders, including rabbis and heads of liberal organizations, thanked Ossoff for his vote. They said his position represented “a growing portion of the American Jewish community that believes that the US-Israel relationship should be grounded in our laws, national security interests and shared values.”
AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, attacked Ossoff and other senators who supported the bill in an advertising blitz. But Ossoff was backed by J Street, a liberal Jewish Middle East advocacy group, which spent $3 million on ads attacking Collins and other AIPAC-supported Republicans.
Ossoff subsequently voted for further measures in 2025 and 2026 to block sales of rifles, bulldozers and 1,000-pound bombs to Israel. Collins repeatedly attacked Ossoff for those votes, accusing the senator of giving in to “radicals” in the Democratic party who were “pushing the anti-Israel agenda.”
Ossoff has walked a tightrope between criticizing Israel and distancing himself from his party’s staunchest left flank. In his Oct. 8 debate with Collins, he was asked whether Israel committed genocide in Gaza, a charge made by a growing chorus of progressives. Ossoff cited Israeli war crimes while deferring to international courts.
“The question of genocide is a question of whether a government has the specific intent to destroy a national or ethnic group, and that is a question for the International Criminal Court,” Ossoff said. “There is no doubt in my mind that Israeli forces prosecuting the war in Gaza violated the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law.”
Ossoff has also excoriated Trump’s decision to join Israel in a war with Iran. Like other Democratic candidates across the country, Ossoff accuses Trump of “lying a nation into war” and sending “prices soaring with his warmongering in the Middle East.”
Ossoff’s rising popularity has spurred speculation about his potential future as a 2028 presidential contender, though he said he has “zero interest in running for president.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Georgia voters decide the future of Jon Ossoff, a Jewish Democrat who increasingly criticizes Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Why Nick Fuentes endorsed Democrats in the midterms
Nick Fuentes is a devoted conservative, open antisemite and far-right agitator. On his Rumble show, one of the most viewed on the streaming platform, he regularly calls for mass deportations, labels women the biggest threat to America, praises Hitler, slanders Black people as illiterate and blames Jews for a host of societal ills.
So why, on the morning of the 2026 midterm elections, did he post, “Get out and vote Democrat today?”
It sounds like a joke, which wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for the shockjock humor the far-right influencer employs. Fuentes paraded with MAGA flags on Boston University’s liberal campus when he was briefly enrolled there. He went to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. He had dinner with the then-former president Trump alongside Kanye West. He celebrated the president’s win in 2024.
But Fuentes was not kidding. In his streams on Rumble, where he runs his podcast, America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes, he has been telling his followers, often called Groypers, to vote blue no matter who. He has done the same on X, where his once-banned account was reinstated when Musk bought the platform.
What changed his mind? Well, in large part, Israel.
Fuentes has been complaining for nearly a year now about Trump, for myriad reasons. On X, Fuentes harshly criticized Trump’s refusal to release the Epstein files and his failure to deport millions. He slammed the war with Iran. And, as ever, the streamer known for his antisemitism has speculated about Jewish influence on rightwing politicians and causes.
On a stream urging his followers once again to vote for Democratic politicians in congressional races, he said that Trump had failed to end the “genocide in Gaza” and had instead broken his promises not to start any new wars — and done so at Netanyahu’s bidding no less. Angrily, he pointed out that Trump had come into office with control of both the House and the Senate, and with the support of some of the most-desired demographics of American voters: young men.
“For the first time in like a quarter of a century, it was hip to be Republican. It was cool,” Fuentes said, recalling Trump’s win in 2024. But then, he argued, the Republican leadership blew it: “You lost the comedians, you lost the podcast bros, you lost the normies! Normies don’t like war with Iran. Normies don’t like 3.7% inflation!”
But don’t take Fuentes’ endorsement of Democrats as proof that the worst antisemitism now lies with the left; the influencer has been clear that he reviles the Democratic party and is still a right-winger. Not only is he an avowed white nationalist and antisemite, he is a devout traditionalist Catholic who does not believe women should be allowed to vote. However much he dislikes anything to do with Jews, he is not truly interested in uniting with anti-Zionist progressive candidates just because they criticize Israel. (He is, however, happy to endorse Amy Action, a blonde white Democrat, over the Indian Vivek Ramaswamy, who Fuentes called an “anchor baby.”)
Instead, he has said his Democratic endorsement is a tactical one, a way to steer and influence the Republican party to come closer to his Christian nationalist, antisemitic, closed borders ideology.
“James Talarico is a Satanic wicked disgusting figure. Abdul Rahman El-Sayed in Michigan is a lying scumbag. He’s trying to maintain this facade that he’s Woke 2.0, patriotic, just wants healthcare — he’s a Muslim socialist. Pure contempt for America and whites,” Fuentes said on a stream about the midterms. “These are some of the worst Democrats ever! But maybe that is the wake up call we are going to need as the anti-left opposition to put up some legitimately good candidates.”
If there is a blue wave on Tuesday night, as Fuentes predicts, he believes the Republican party will blame him for it — and he’s ready to accept responsibility. He did, after all, urge his followers to vote Democratic. But don’t be fooled; he won’t be pushing the Democrats to become groypers. Most likely, he’ll present himself and his followers as the natural successors to lead the Republican party in 2028.
The post Why Nick Fuentes endorsed Democrats in the midterms appeared first on The Forward.
