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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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What we know about the car crash at Chabad-Lubavitch Headquarters in Brooklyn
CROWN HEIGHTS — A driver crashed a car into an entrance of the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn on Wednesday night, damaging the building on a night thousands had gathered there to celebrate.
Video circulating online and verified by eyewitnesses shows a vehicle repeatedly driving into the building’s doors at 770 Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights neighborhood, the main synagogue of the Chabad movement and one of the most recognized Jewish institutions in the world. One witness said the driver had yelled at bystanders to move out of the way before he drove down a ramp leading to the doors.
Police arrested the driver at the scene and the synagogue was evacuated as a precaution.
The incident occurred on a festive evening in the Chabad world — Yud Shevat, the day that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson took the movement’s reins in 1951. Chabad revelers from around the globe travel to Crown Heights each year to celebrate the occasion at farbrengens, or toasts, that are spread out in Chabad homes all over the neighborhood. The largest one is held at the movement’s iconic headquarters — Schneerson’s former home — with as many as 3,000 people in attendance.
Avrohom Pink, a 19-year-old Chabad yeshiva student, said the program at the headquarters had just concluded when the incident occurred.
He and a couple dozen others stood near the top of a ramp down to the pair of doors, a sedan turned into the driveway. Its driver, who Pink said was in his mid-twenties or early thirties with shoulder-length hair, yelled at people to get out of the way.
“He was trying to pull in, yelling at everyone to move out the way, interestingly — didn’t want to run people over, I guess,” Pink said. “Everyone moved out the way, and then he just drove down the ramp, rammed his car into those doors.”
While the car managed to push in the wooden doors, there was nobody in the anteroom they led to. The approximately 1,000 people Pink estimated were still in the building were behind another pair of doors on the other side of that room. Over the din of their celebration, they couldn’t hear what was going on, Pink said.
Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesperson for the movement, said on X that the ramming “seems intentional, but the motivations are unclear.”
The incident is being investigated as a hate crime by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
During the election campaign and since taking office, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has repeatedly said he is committed to protecting Jewish New Yorkers and ensuring security around synagogues and other houses of worship.
The attack follows a rash of antisemitic incidents across the city. On Tuesday, a rabbi was verbally harassed and assaulted in Forest Hills, Queens, and last week, a playground frequented by Orthodox families in the Borough Park neighborhood in Brooklyn was graffitied with swastikas two days in a row. In both incidents, the suspects have been arrested. Antisemitic incidents accounted for 57% of reported hate crimes in 2025, according to the NYPD.
While the driver’s intent remained unclear, condemnation poured in from elected leaders.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin called it a “horrifying incident” and a “deeply concerning situation.” New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who has close ties to the community, posted on X, “These acts of violence against our Jewish communities, and any of our communities, need to stop. Now.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani arrived at the scene about two hours of the incident being reported and denounced the attack. “This is deeply alarming, especially given the deep meaning and history of the institution to so many in New York and around the world,” Mamdani said in a statement, standing alongside Police Tisch, who is Jewish. ”Any threat to a Jewish institution or place of worship must be taken seriously.” The mayor added that “antisemitism has no place in our city” and expressed solidarity with the Crown Heights Jewish community,
During the election campaign and since taking office, Mamdani has repeatedly said he is committed to protecting Jewish New Yorkers and ensuring security around synagogues and other houses of worship.
The incident came during a rash of antisemitic incidents across the city. On Tuesday, a rabbi was verbally harassed and assaulted in Forest Hills, Queens, and last week, a playground frequented by Orthodox families in the Borough Park neighborhood in Brooklyn was graffitied with swastikas two days in a row. In both incidents, the suspects have been arrested. Antisemitic incidents accounted for 57% of reported hate crimes in 2025, according to the NYPD.
The celebrations, which also mark the yahrtzeit of the Rebbe’s predecessor in 1950, continued at other locations in spite of the incident.
Pink described Yud Shevat as “Rosh Hashana for Chabad.”
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The post What we know about the car crash at Chabad-Lubavitch Headquarters in Brooklyn appeared first on The Forward.
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France, Spain Signal Support to Blacklist Iran’s IRGC as EU Moves Closer Toward Terrorist Designation
Commanders and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps meet with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
The European Union could soon label Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, after France and Spain signaled a shift in support amid mounting international outrage over the Iranian regime’s violent crackdown on anti-government protests and shocking reports of widespread civilian deaths.
As two of the largest EU member states previously to oppose blacklisting the IRGC, France and Spain could tip the balance and pave the way for the designation, as the regime’s brutal suppression of dissent at home and support for terrorist operations abroad continues.
On Wednesday, a day before EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels to discuss the issue, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot announced that France will back the move to blacklist the IRGC, saying the repression of peaceful protesters must not go unanswered and praising their courage in the face of what he described as “blind violence.”
“France will support the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations,” he posted on X.
After reversing its long-standing opposition to the move, France also urged Iran to free detained protesters, halt executions, restore digital access, and permit the UN Human Rights Council to investigate alleged abuses.
Multiple media outlets also reported that the Spanish government is expected to back the EU’s move to blacklist the IRGC, aligning with France in breaking its previous opposition.
The United States, Canada, and Australia have already designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization, while Germany and the Netherlands have repeatedly called on the EU to do the same.
Some European countries, however, have been more cautious, fearing such a move could lead to a complete break in ties with Iran, which could impact negotiations to release citizens held in Iranian prisons.
The EU has already sanctioned the IRGC for human rights abuses but not terrorism.
Labeling the IRGC as a terrorist organization would not only extend existing EU sanctions, including asset freezes, funding bans, and travel restrictions on its members, but also activate additional legal, financial, and diplomatic measures that would severely limit its operations across Europe.
Earlier this week, Italy also reversed its earlier hesitation and signaled support for the measure after new reports exposed the scale of Iran’s brutal crackdown on anti-government protests — a move that sparked diplomatic tensions, with the Iranian Foreign Ministry summoning the Italian ambassador.
According to local media, Iranian authorities warned of the “destructive consequences” of any labeling against the IRGC, calling upon Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani to “correct his ill-considered approaches toward Iran.”
Tajani said the Iranian regime’s bloody crackdown on anti-government protests this month that reportedly killed thousands of people could not be ignored.
“The losses suffered by the civilian population during the protests require a clear response,” Tajani wrote on X. “I will propose, coordinating with other partners, the inclusion of the Revolutionary Guards on the list of terrorist organizations, as well as individual sanctions against those responsible for these heinous acts.”
As international scrutiny over the regime grows, new estimates show that thousands have been killed by Iranian security forces during an unprecedented crackdown on nationwide protests earlier this month, far surpassing previous death tolls.
Two senior Iranian Ministry of Health officials told TIME that as many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone.
The Iranian regime has previously reported an official death toll of 3,117. But new evidence suggests the true number is far higher, raising fears among activists and world leaders of crimes against humanity.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which tracks deaths by name and location, has confirmed 5,858 deaths, including 214 security personnel. Nearly 20,000 potential deaths are still under investigation, and tens of thousands of additional Iranians have been arrested amid the crackdown.
Established after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the IRGC wields significant power in the country, controlling large sectors of the economy and armed forces, overseeing Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs, and coordinating closely with the regime’s terrorist proxies in the region.
Unlike the regular armed forces, the IRGC is a parallel military body charged with protecting Iran’s authoritarian regime, ensuring its so-called Islamist revolution is protected within the country and can be exported abroad.
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Petition Calls for US Investigation Into Immigration Status of Daughter of Former Iranian President
Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, right, and his daughter, Leila Khatami. Photo: Screenshot
A petition circulating online that has garnered tens of thousands of signatures is calling on US authorities to investigate the immigration status of Leila Khatami, the daughter of former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, arguing that relatives of senior figures tied to Iran’s ruling establishment should not benefit from life in the United States while Iranians at home face repression.
The petition, launched by an anonymous activist identifying as an “Iranian Patriot,” urges the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to review Khatami’s residency or visa status and to consider revocation and deportation if any legal grounds exist.
“This is not personal revenge. This is justice,” states the petition, which as of this writing has 84,919 verified signatures. “You cannot chant ‘Death to America’ through your political system while your own family enjoys safety, stability, and prosperity in America.”
Mohammad Khatami served as Iran’s president from 1997 to 2005 and has been described as a reformist figure within the Islamic Republic’s political system. Despite his reformist reputation, however, critics note that the Iranian state remained responsible for widespread human rights abuses at home and support for terrorist proxies abroad during his time in office.
Under Iran’s authoritarian, Islamist system, the Guardian Council, a 12-member body composed of clerics and jurists appointed either directly or indirectly by the supreme leader, bars any candidate from running for office not considered acceptable by the regime.
According to publicly available information cited in the petition, Leila Khatami, born in 1976, has pursued an academic career in the United States and has reportedly worked as a mathematics professor at Union College in New York. The petition argues that her presence in the US exemplifies a broader pattern of children of senior Iranian officials living in Western democracies while ordinary Iranians face repression at home.
Human rights activists have long documented abuses by the Islamic Republic, including the use of torture, suppression of protests, and severe restrictions on political freedoms.
Over the past few weeks, however, the Iranian regime has gone to unprecedented lengths to crush nationwide anti-government protests with a bloody crackdown. More than 30,000 people may have been killed by security forces earlier this month, according to new estimates that far exceed earlier death tolls.
Senior Iranian Ministry of Health officials told TIME that the scale of the killings and executions has overwhelmed the state’s capacity to dispose of the dead, saying that as many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone.
Aligned with the Ministry of Health’s new figures, Iran International reported that security forces killed over 36,500 Iranians during the Jan. 8–9 nationwide crackdown, marking the deadliest two-day massacre of protesters in modern history. The news outlet cited newly obtained classified documents, field reports, and accounts from medical staff, witnesses, and victims’ families.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which tracks deaths by name and location, has confirmed 5,858 deaths, including 214 security personnel. Nearly 20,000 potential deaths are still under investigation, and tens of thousands of additional Iranians have been arrested amid the crackdown.
The Iranian regime has reported an official death toll of 3,117.
The nationwide protests, which began with a shopkeepers’ strike in Tehran on Dec. 28, initially reflected public anger over the soaring cost of living, a deepening economic crisis, and the rial — Iran’s currency — plummeting to record lows amid renewed economic sanctions, with annual inflation only getting worse.
However, the demonstrations quickly swelled into a broader anti-government movement calling for the fall of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and even a broader collapse of the country’s Islamist, authoritarian system.
The online petition does not allege that Leila Khatami herself has committed crimes in the United States. Instead, it argues that allowing family members of senior Iranian political figures to live in the US undermines accountability and sends the wrong message amid ongoing tensions between Washington and Tehran.
The campaign reflects growing anger within segments of the Iranian diaspora, particularly after the latest protests in Iran were met with deadly force. Activists argue that pressure should extend beyond sanctions on Iranian officials to include scrutiny of their family members living abroad.
The petition also comes on the heels of Emory University terminating Dr. Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, the daughter of Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran. The termination came after US Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) argued that her presence posed national security and patient trust concerns.
The US Department of the Treasury this month sanctioned her father for his role in coordinating the Iranian government’s violent crackdown on the protests throughout the country. According to the Treasury, Larijani publicly called on security forces to use force against demonstrators demanding basic rights, and his actions are tied to thousands of deaths and injuries.
The Algemeiner has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment for this story.