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The founder of Peru’s only Jewish bakery looks to educate non-Jews through food — and Instagram stories
LIMA, Peru (JTA) — The story of Lima’s only Jewish bakery begins on Christmas.
On the eve of the holiday in 2016, Deborah Trapunsky was baking challah for a non-Jewish friend who wanted a unique gift for her boyfriend. Her friends had always loved her challah, and she enjoyed sharing this aspect of her culture with them. But on that night, Trapunsky figured that she would see if anyone else would be interested in some challah to go with their Christmas dinner. So she posted on Facebook.
The response was overwhelming.
Trapunsky ended up receiving nearly 100 orders, and without a professional oven, she barely kept up with the demand. Using her parents’ small kitchen to complete the orders, Trapunsky said that she had to “colonize” her parents’ apartment — using every countertop to knead dough, laying out challahs throughout the rooms to cool down and then packaging them.
As she drove around Lima on Christmas day completing all the deliveries, as the majority of Peruvians were celebrating with their families, Trapunsky hatched a plan to turn the unexpected response into a business.
“I was really surprised when the orders started to grow and grow,” she said. “I had no idea about anything, no idea how much challah I could bake, no idea how to do the packaging…but that’s how it all started.”
She named her creation Oh-jalá — a bit of wordplay, as “ojala” means “I hope” and jalá is the Spanish word for challah, the braided Ashkenazi bread traditionally made on Shabbat and holidays.
Seven years after that Christmas Facebook post, the bakery has moved from a cramped 120-square-foot kitchen to a 1,200-foot brick and mortar space that opened in 2020 in a garage of an old colonial home in the posh neighborhood of San Isidro.
Trapunksy, who is 30, has gone from selling four flavors of challah to 12 — including vegan and nutella varieties — and has expanded from only selling challah to offering coffee, hamantaschen (for Purim), a variety of sweetbreads and even bagels. (She made sure to add the disclaimer that hers are not on par with New York bagels but that they suffice for the traveler in Peru who is craving the Jewish-American staple).
Over the years, Trapunsky’s clientele has also shifted from mostly Jewish customers — who found her after the initial Christmas rush — to mostly non-Jews. She therefore sees Oh-jalá as more than a job: it’s her attempt to combat stereotypes, encourage the integration of Jews into Peruvian society, and perhaps most importantly, it’s her attempt to forge a unique Jewish-Peruvian identity for herself.
The bakery is housed in a garage of an old colonial home in the posh neighborhood of San Isidro. (Courtesy of Deborah Trapunsky)
“Here in Peru people like ‘different’ [cultures and cuisines], and being Jewish in Peru is very different,” Trapunsky said. “And I really enjoy having a bakery that exists at the intersection between this minority community and the larger Peruvian world.”
Jewish Peruvians make up fewer than .01% of the country’s population of 34 million and are mostly concentrated in the capital Lima. Trapunsky and her family are currently close with other members of the community here, but they didn’t always fit in.
Like many South American Jews, her family mostly descends from Eastern Europe. Before 1998, they lived in Chile, but looking to leave financial struggles behind, the Trapunskys left for Peru. Siblings, parents, cousins, aunts and uncles all lived together in an old house in Lima. Trapunsky recalled these memories fondly, as she was only a child and enjoyed being with her cousins. But she also remembers the tension between her parents and uncles and aunts, as their economic hardships were compounded by feeling like outcasts among Lima’s Jews.
Oh-jalá includes bagels on the menu. (Courtesy of Deborah Trapunsky)
Lima’s Jewish community of around 2,000 is very wealthy, and the Trapunskys came to Peru with almost nothing. Starting from scratch, they had to fight for a place within a community that Deborah describes as “hermetic.” She spent much of her childhood feeling like she didn’t belong in the traditional but not Orthodox community that was supposed to embrace her. It made her bitter.
“The Jewish community here is very closed-minded. When [my family] arrived in Peru, we didn’t have any money…I was young but I remember feeling the struggle of my family trying to exist in an unwelcoming community,” Trapunsky said. “So although I’ve always felt grateful for being Jewish and for the Jewish community here, I also have always felt a little resentment.”
After graduating from Peru’s only Jewish high school, she went to university and immersed herself in the non-Jewish world. She quickly discovered that the majority of Peruvians know very little about Jewish people, and what they do know is often based in stereotypes and anachronisms. She often tried to educate her peers about Jewish holidays, traditions and food, and through that process felt more Jewish than she ever had.
“Sharing my culture with friends helped me discover what made me feel Jewish. When I was only spending time with other Jews, I lost the ability to identify myself by contrasting myself to others,” she said. “But being immersed in Peru’s secular world gave me the opportunity to connect to my Judaism in a very different way.”
She added that she thinks the insularity of Lima’s Jewish community leads non-Jewish Peruvians to view the community with suspicion and reinforces negative stereotypes about Jewish people. With Oh-jalá, Trapunsky is trying to change that — to foster interaction between local Jews and others, and to show Peruvians how Jews enrichen their society.
Trapunsky is shown with some of her employees inside Oh-jalá. (Courtesy of Deborah Trapunsky)
“Food is a safe and secular space,” she said. “It gives me the opportunity to share cultural information in a non-political manner.”
But Oh-jalá’s physical space is not the only tool that Trapunsky uses in her mission — she also uses the bakery’s Instagram account to educate Peruvians about Judaism. With more than 18,000 followers, she does educational Instagram stories on Sukkot, Pesach, and other Jewish holidays. She even did an Instagram live video on “Judaism 101.” In a series of highlighted stories on her page, she talked about topics ranging from the fasting on Yom Kippur to why Jews don’t celebrate Christmas to, of course, the origins of challah.
As a result, she has received hundreds of positive direct messages from Peruvians eager to learn more about the religion and compare Judaism to their own Catholicism. She said this was her exact goal.
“I want to overturn the hermetic reputation of the Jewish community and turn it into something accessible, open to the public, and even trendy,” she said. “I want everyone in Peru to be able to get to know us… and explore our culture.”
Starting Oh-jalá has also helped her let go of the resentment. She now not only feels more secure in her identity as both Peruvian and Jewish, but also more of a valued member in the Lima Jewish community.
As the financial success continues, Deborah is focused on the future. She wants to franchise her bakery and plans to open another one on the other side of the city.
Ever the entrepreneur, she also made sure to tell the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that she’s looking for investors — and for a Jewish boyfriend.
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The post The founder of Peru’s only Jewish bakery looks to educate non-Jews through food — and Instagram stories appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Tidbits: Taiwan opens its first Jewish cemetery
Tidbits is a Forverts feature of easy news briefs in Yiddish that you can listen to or read, or both! If you read the article and don’t know a word, just click on it and the translation appears. Listen to the report here:
אויפֿן אינדזל טײַוואַן האָט מען לעצטנס פֿאַרלייגט דעם ערשטן בית־עולם אין לאַנד, דרײַ יאָר נאָך דעם ווי אַן אָרטיקער ייִד האָט, בײַם גוססן, אויסגעדריקט צער, וואָס מע וועט אים נישט קענען באַגראָבן אין טײַוואַן.
הרבֿ שלמה טאַביב, אַ מיטגרינדער פֿונעם חב״ד־הויז אין דער טײַוואַנער קרוינשטאָט טײַפּיי, האָט געזאָגט אַז דער ייִד האָט אים געבעטן בויען אַ בית־הקבֿרות אין טײַוואַן, כאָטש ער האָט געוווּסט אַז ער אַליין וועט נישט דערלעבן דאָרט באַגראָבן צו ווערן.
„זײַנע ווערטער זענען פֿאַר מיר געווען אַ קול־קורא,“ האָט טאַביב געזאָגט. „איך האָב פֿאַרשטאַנען, אַז אויב איך וועל זיך דאָס נישט אונטערנעמען, וועט קיינער עס נישט טאָן.“
מיט אַ חודש צוריק האָט מען פֿאַרלייגט דעם בית־עולם און באַלד נאָך דעם האָט טאַביב אָנגעפֿירט מיט דער ערשטער לוויה על־פּי־הלכה אין דער געשיכטע פֿון טײַוואַן. 95% פֿון די מתים אין טײַוואַן ווערן קרעמירט.
דער בית־עולם געפֿינט זיך אין אַ וואַלד, בערך 40 מינוט פֿונעם חב״ד־הויז. פֿאַר טאַביב איז דער בית־עולם געווען דאָס לעצטע רינגל אין אַ קייט פּראָיעקטן לטובֿת דער אָרטיקער ייִדישער קהילה. אין 2021 האָט מען געעפֿנט אַ ייִדישן קהילה־צענטער, אַ דאַנק אַ מתּנה פֿון 16 מיליאָן דאָלאַר פֿון אַן אָרטיקן ייִדישן געשעפֿטסמאַן, דזשעפֿרי שוואַרץ. אינעם צענטער געפֿינט זיך אַ שיל, אַ כּשרע קיך, אַ יודאַיִקאַ־מוזיי, אַ מיקווה און אַ זאַל פֿאַר 300 מענטשן.
הגם דער נײַער בית־עולם איז דער ערשטער אין טײַוואַן איז ער נישט דער ערשטער אין כינע. אין האָנג־קאָנג האָט מען געגרינדעט אַ בית־הקבֿרות נאָך אין 1855, און אין שאַנכײַ — אין 1862.
צו זען דעם אַרטיקל אויף ענגליש גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
To see this article in English, click here.
The post Tidbits: Taiwan opens its first Jewish cemetery appeared first on The Forward.
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EU seeks to advance trade ban on Israeli settlements
(JTA) — The European Union could be leaning toward banning trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Foreign ministers debated various tactics to respond to the settlements on Monday at their monthly council meeting in Brussels, against the backdrop of rising violence by settlers and efforts by the Israeli government to expand settlements in Palestinian territories.
In a press conference following the meeting, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said one possibility had stood out.
“The option that got the most support was banning the trade with illegal settlements,” she said. All 27 member states consider Israeli settlements in the West Bank to violate international law.
Kallas added, “We tasked the ambassadors to take this work forward, and probably will also have an extraordinary meeting on this.”
No decisions have yet been made, and the path forward is uncertain. Some EU member nations favor aggressive action against the settlements, while others are unlikely to back any measures that take aim at Israel. A number are in the middle and have not decided whether they support trade bans.
The level of agreement between European governments needed to enact a partial or full trade ban on Israeli settlements remains an open question. Kallas said it was the European Council’s legal opinion that voting on trade issues called for a qualified majority, meaning that 15 out of 27 states would have to vote in favor, representing at least 65% of the EU population.
But she also acknowledged that legal experts disagreed about how much backing was needed for a trade ban. “You can always find different lawyers who come up with different ideas,” she said.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused Kallas of an “obsessive campaign against Israel” in a post on X. “There was no consensus. There was no qualified majority. In fact, there was no majority at all,” he wrote, adding, “Tricks like this do nothing to advance our shared interests.”
The EU has hotly debated measures against Israel as settlements in the West Bank have expanded and settler violence has sharply intensified over recent years. The Israeli NGOs Peace Now and Kerem Navot said in a report last week that “the current Israeli government has advanced de facto annexation of the West Bank at an unprecedented pace.”
The ministers considered measures including a stricter export licensing system, higher tariffs and a partial or outright ban on goods produced over the pre-1967 lines. The options were first presented in a paper last week by the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, as pressure mounted from European governments.
Kallas said these potential moves were not “options against Israel,” but “options against the illegal settlements that undermined the two-state solution.” She told reporters before the meeting that member states had been pressing for a trade ban on Israeli settlements, saying, “Everyone agrees that the situation in the West Bank is really intolerable.”
In May, the EU sanctioned Israeli settlers over violence against Palestinians after Hungary’s new government, led by Peter Magyar, gave its approval and allowed the states to reach a consensus.
To protest the Gaza war, the commission last year proposed suspending the EU’s free trade agreement with Israel as set out under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the cornerstone of economic and political cooperation between Europe and Israel. The proposal was not advanced because it lacked the majority support of 15 member states.
The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner, accounting for 33.1% of its imports and 29.4% of its exports in 2025, according to a summary on the European Commission website, which did not provide data on settler goods. The free trade agreement does not apply to goods originating from Israeli businesses located over the pre-1967 lines.
Revoking the association agreement requires unanimous approval from the EU’s 27 member states, while a partial suspension, such as freezing the free trade agreement, calls for a qualified majority. Germany, Italy, Hungary and Czechia have consistently opposed such suspensions.
Israel’s most vocal critics in Europe, including Ireland and Spain, have pushed for suspending the association agreement along with proposing their own import bans at the national level. Ireland now holds the rotating presidency of the European Council, a six-month term that ends in December 2026.
The legal basis of trade restrictions on Israel lies at the heart of debates in the EU. Support from a qualified majority is sufficient to enact a commercial policy, while changes in the common foreign and security policy — such as sanctions — require unanimity.
Some legal scholars have argued that an EU ban on imports from Israeli settlements should be imposed as a trade measure rather than a sanction, making it easier to pass.
A group of 40 scholars said in an open letter last month to Kallas, trade chief Maroš Šefčovič and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen that a blanket ban on settlement imports had a legal basis under the EU’s common commercial policy. Claims that unanimity was needed for the prohibition were “grounded in political rather than legal considerations,” they said.
The scholars also referenced an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice in 2024, which said that Israel’s military control of Palestinian territories in the West Bank constituted an illegal occupation.
“In that regard, it should be noted that the EU Court of Justice has ruled that, in its acts, the EU is ‘bound to observe international law in its entirety,’” they said.
Daniel Mariaschin, Honorary CEO of the pro-Israel Jewish advocacy organization B’nai Brith International, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that reducing trade “would only weaken one of Europe’s most important partnerships in the region.”
“There are those within the EU who are looking for any way to undercut Israel’s international standing, and this is yet another example,” Mariaschin said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post EU seeks to advance trade ban on Israeli settlements appeared first on The Forward.
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PEN America president, defending Israel’s critics, resigns after report warns of threats to Jewish authors
(JTA) — The president of PEN America resigned over the weekend in protest of a report on boycotts targeting Jewish and Israeli authors, part of yet another round of internal division over Israel at the literary free-speech institution.
Dinaw Mengestu, an Ethiopian-American novelist and Bard College professor, told The Atlantic he was stepping down because he believed the PEN report, “A Silent Moratorium,” failed to defend the free-speech rights of participants in the movement to boycott Israel.
“It’s the First Amendment that allows all of us to engage in boycotts, not PEN America,” Mengestu told the publication. “PEN America as a free expression organization is supposed to defend that right.”
The author did not respond to multiple Jewish Telegraphic Agency requests for comment, but in an Instagram post Monday alluded to an interest in creating a new organization to rival the prominent nonprofit, which defends the free expression rights other writers.
In response to an interview request, PEN sent a statement to JTA saying it was “grateful” for Mengestu’s leadership and would “respect” his decision. The statement also alluded to PEN’s own past turmoil: “We tell hard stories, in politically challenging moments, about writers from a range of perspectives, even when it’s uncomfortable for us given our own recent history.”
In its report, published on its blog, PEN described “Jewish and Israeli writers who feel that the mainstream literary world is increasingly shutting them out because of their identity, nationality, or views.” Interview subjects include several Israel critics, as well as literary agents who assert that they face more difficulties signing Jewish authors after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and amid the subsequent war in Gaza. The report also repeatedly cited a JTA report about a 2024 viral list of “Zionist” authors to boycott.
Among other details, PEN’s report revealed that Israeli novelist Etgar Keret and public radio host Ira Glass had cancelled a planned live event in Australia over fears of threats and protest.
“This silencing and exclusion of writers is a threat to what PEN America is fundamentally committed to defending: a culture of free expression for all,” according to the report.
In addition to the report, PEN also altered its institutional policy toward cultural boycotts, which the organization has long opposed. Although its report on Jewish authors asserted that boycotts “threaten the free expression rights” of their targets, the revised guidelines say that the group will also defend the right of writers to participate in boycotts.
Mengestu’s resignation comes at a perilous moment for Jews facing cultural boycotts, both within the standard-bearers of PEN and elsewhere. PEN’s Jewish former longtime CEO stepped down in 2024 following months of blowback from rank-and-file authors who felt the organization was insufficiently critical of Israel and caused PEN to cancel a festival for global authors.
Since the leadership change, PEN leadership has published and retracted a condemnation of a boycott effort trained at an Israeli comedian and also published a report cataloguing Israel’s “cultural destruction in Gaza.”
Mengestu had assumed the role of board president in 2025. But PEN’s report about Jewish and Israeli writers on Thursday, he wrote, “makes clear that [change] will not happen.”
The Anti-Defamation League said it was “deeply troubled” by Mengestu’s resignation Monday. “Freedom of expression means opposing efforts to boycott, silence, or exclude writers because of their identity or nationality,” the organization tweeted, saying that the author’s decision to leave PEN over his objections to the report on Jewish authors “sends a chilling message.” Jewish authors also objected.
“Imagine running a free expression org and resigning because it refuses to blacklist authors based on their nationality,” the author David Zweig wrote on X, musing whether Mengestu would object to boycotting authors from his birth country: “Ethiopia doesn’t exactly have a good human rights record.”
In response to The Atlantic’s story that quoted sources from inside PEN who were critical of his resignation, Mengestu wrote a lengthy Instagram post Monday in which he stated, “This piece is about trying to suppress constitutionally protected speech,” criticized past PEN reports critical of the BDS movement, and added, “What PEN America fails to understand is that boycott is a form of dialogue.”
He announced his intention to “help make something better,” receiving affirmative comments from notable authors including Viet Thanh Nguyen, Angela Flournoy, Jewish pro-Palestinian novelist Jess Row and Pulitzer Prize-winner Benjamin Moser, author of a forthcoming history of Jewish anti-Zionism.
Other Jewish authors on the left were among those defending Mengestu’s decision to step down.
“Dinaw is one hundred percent correct that this kind of fake victim propaganda can be used to support anti-Boycott legislation which violates the First Amendment and is everywhere as popular support for Palestinians grows,” author Sarah Schulman wrote on Facebook. Calling PEN’s blog about Jews “one of those fake anti-semitism pieces,” Schulman added, “If PEN wants to survive, they have to get out of the Israel/Zionism business.”
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