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With her ‘Totally Kosher’ cookbook, Chanie Apfelbaum aims for a wider audience
(New York Jewish Week) — Chanie Apfelbaum’s newest cookbook, “Totally Kosher,” is filled with many inventive, flavor-packed recipes, like “Miso Matzo Ball Soup,” “Berbere Brisket” and “Pad Chai,” a shrimp-free version of the Thai staple.
But while the book is designed for kosher-keeping observant Jews like herself, Apfelbaum — who boasts 101,000 followers on Instagram and runs the popular Jewish lifestyle blog “Busy in Brooklyn” — had a larger audience in mind. Her first book, “Millennial Kosher,” published in 2018, is now in its sixth printing and is available in just about every Judaica store across the country. With her second effort, however, “I wanted to reach a larger demographic,” Apfelbaum, 42, told the New York Jewish Week. “I wanted to reach people that don’t necessarily know what kosher is.”
That’s how Apfelbaum ended up publishing “Totally Kosher” with Clarkson Potter, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group and publisher of cookbooks by culinary megastars like Ina Garten and Alison Roman. When Raquel Pelzel, the editorial director of cookbooks at Clarkson Potter approached Apfelbaum in 2019 about writing a cookbook — pitched as a “celebration of kosher,” as Apfelbaum recalls it — she immediately said yes.
“I was so excited,” Apfelbaum said.
“We hadn’t published a kosher cookbook in a really long time and, with Instagram and social media, there is obviously a massive kosher community,” Pelzel told the New York Jewish Week. “To not publish a kosher cookbook seemed like a huge omission and a hole on our list.”
“When I scout for authors, I look for someone whose recipes look delicious, original and creative and who has a really strong voice and is clear who their audience is,” Pelzel added. “Chanie certainly has all that.”
Apfelbaum’s decision to go with a mainstream publisher mean the book would appear in “regular” bookstores — and not just Judaica stores — but the change meant some new challenges. One hurdle was the publisher’s decision to feature a large, color photo of Apfelbaum on the book’s rear cover — a decision that could be considered controversial in the haredi Orthodox world where many publishers refrain from showing photos of women in the interest of sexual “modesty.” (Apfelbaum’s photo does not appear anywhere in “Millennial Kosher,” published by Artscroll/Shaar Press, which serves the haredi market. A spokesperson for ArtScroll said that, to date, they have not featured any photographs of women in their cookbooks, but “we are not against putting pictures of women in our books.”)
“If my photo is on the back of the book, maybe the Judaica stores really won’t take it,” Apfelbaum recalled thinking when she was sent a mockup of the cover. “I called friends in the publishing industry. I called Judaica shops and asked if my photo is on the back cover, are you going to carry the book?” The answers, Apfelbaum said, were mixed.
And yet, she didn’t back down or ask for a change in the cover. “I was like — you know what? I’m doing this for my daughters, I’m doing this for the women out there,” she said. “There is nothing wrong with having a photo of a Jewish woman on the back of the book. I’m just doing it, and I stand behind it.”
Fortunately, validation came quickly. “When I walk down the street in my neighborhood [of Crown Heights], I pass Hamafitz Judaica and they have two books in the window — one of the front cover of my book, depicting my Pad Chai, and one of the back.”
Apfelbaum’s mother, Devorah Halberstam, a prominent member of Crown Heights’ Chabad community, couldn’t be prouder. Her first-born son, Ari Halberstam, was killed in 1994 when a Lebanese-born man shot at a van filled with Chabad Lubavitch students, killing Ari and wounding three others. In the aftermath, Halberstam fought tirelessly to have his murder formally classified as a terrorist attack, which eventually happened in 2005. She was also a founder of the Jewish Children’s Museum, which was dedicated to the memory of her son.
Of all people, Halberstam understands the power of a photo. “At Ari’s yahrtzeit [anniversary of his death], I tweet things out,” she told the New York Jewish Week, noting that her son died 29 years ago. “I got 85,000 responses because I put his picture up there. Pictures make you stop. They make you pause.”
Photos, she added, “personalize everything. A story is not a story without pictures. It makes it real. It comes to life.”
Apfelbaum agrees, feeling that her decision to include photos of herself, her boys in their tzitzit (ritual prayer fringes) and her children around a table, is “a huge step in the Orthodox world.”
“I’m doing this because I think this is something that has to change,” she said. “Jewish women should be celebrated just like men.”
As a child, Apfelbaum said, she was a rule-follower who was drawn to the creative world. “I got very into artistic projects for school,” she said. “I loved drawing and craftsy, artsy things.”
Apfelbaum’s culinary journey began in 2002 when she was 22 and newly married. Apfelbaum’s mother had been the chef in the Halberstam home, and Apfelbaum was raised on what she calls “brown food” — matzah ball soup, gefilte fish, potato kugel. She came to her marriage skilled as a web designer but not knowing how to boil an egg. Her Syrian/Argentian/Jewish mother-in-law introduced her to ingredients like rosewater and dishes like empanadas, piquing Apfelbaum’s interest.
“When I started cooking, I was always very artistic and looking for ways to put color in my food and plate it nicely,” said Apfelbaum. “I would make my mom’s recipes. But when I started hosting friends and putting out a spread, with menus and plated meals, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is beautiful. Such a beautiful way to express my artistic side.’”
When Apfelbaum left her web design job after the birth of her third child in 2010, she poured her creative juices into her nascent cooking and photography skills, and her family encouraged her to start her own blog. In 2011, she launched “Busy in Brooklyn” — at the time she was raising three children under 5, running a home and teaching Hebrew while taking knitting and crochet classes.
Her first post, in January of that year, was for sauteed chicken cutlets topped with canned dark sweet cherries. Later that year, she gave her first cooking class for the teachers at her children’s school.
In 2013, she enrolled in a program at the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts (now closed). “I started to seek out different cultural dishes and put my kosher Jewish spin on it,” she said. She also took a photography class.
The following year, her recipe for “Drunken Hasselback Salami” — a whole salami sliced, coated in a sauce of jam, brandy and mustard, then baked until crispy — went viral. Later that year, she was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal for her creative spins on the traditional Ashkenazi Hanukkah treat, latkes. In 2015, she made the first of many out-of-town food demonstrations, traveling to Montreal to prepare harissa chicken sliders with preserved lemon carrot slaw and a marble halvah mousse.
These recipes, among others, made it into “Millennial Kosher.” And although Apfelbaum swore that she would never write another cookbook because of all the work involved, that call in 2019 from Clarkson Potter made her rethink her decision. Apfelbaum’s global recipes — such as “Nachos Bassar,” nachos with hummus, Israeli salad and pickles — and how she “bounces off of trends that are happening in social media, in restaurants,” as Pelzel describes her, are what drew the mainstream publisher to Apfelbaum
“From the first time I met Chanie, I understood why she was the obvious choice to make kosher cool,” Apfelbaum’s mentor and fellow cookbook author Adeena Sussman told the New York Jewish Week via text. “She’s wildly passionate about her food and her Judaism, and makes no apologies for either.”
“Add to that her natural warmth, sense of humor and willingness to share the ups and downs of life with her followers, and you’ve truly got a recipe for success,” Sussman added.
And there have been plenty of ups and downs: After signing her book contract in 2019, Apfelbaum became a single mom due to divorce. She was also hospitalized with COVID-19 (as was one of her kids) and lost her sense of smell and taste, at a time when nobody knew that this was a side effect of the virus.
Fortunately, Apfelbaum has since regained her sense of taste and smell, and she remains very busy in Brooklyn — and elsewhere. In July, she is leading a food tour in Italy where her group will make gelato, hunt for truffles and taste olive oil. She hopes to continue culinary travel in the future. She has just come out with a line of her own spices called TK (as in “Totally Kosher”) Spices; her first two products are the Yemenite spice mix, hawaijj — one for savory foods and one for coffee, which has a sweet profile. With “Totally Kosher” now in its third printing, she is looking to (finally) hire an assistant and find work space outside of her home.
“There were many times I said I don’t have the emotional bandwidth and strength to do this book — I wanted to give up,” Apfelbaum said. “My friends believed in me and pushed me and made it happen. When I look at this book, I see so much more than recipes. It was really a journey for me.”
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Writer of sitcom airing instead of Eurovision in Ireland calls broadcaster’s boycott over Israel ‘disgraceful antisemitism’
(JTA) — Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan accused Ireland’s public broadcaster of “disgraceful antisemitism” over its decision not to air this year’s Eurovision Song Contest because of Israel’s participation — even as his work will get prime airtime as a result.
Instead of airing the annual international song contest’s finale Saturday, which Ireland and four other nations have boycotted this year over Israel’s participation, the country’s public broadcaster, RTÉ, is scheduled to air an episode of “Father Ted,” a beloved Irish sitcom that Linehan co-created.
“I am disgusted that Father Ted is being used as a fig leaf to cover RTE’s disgraceful antisemitism,” Linehan wrote in a post on X on Tuesday. He later added that the broadcaster was “turning Father Ted into an antisemitic dogwhistle.”
Linehan, who has become a prominent anti-transgender activist in recent years, also posted an online petition on Monday calling for the resignation of RTÉ Director General Kevin Bakhurst over the broadcaster’s decision not to air the Eurovision finale because of Israel’s participation.
“I did not give my permission for Father Ted to be used as a prop in an antisemitic political gesture. I object to it in the strongest possible terms,” Linehan wrote. “This is not the Ireland I know. This is not the Ireland that gave Father Ted to the world. RTÉ’s institutional antisemitism is poisoning Irish public life, normalising Jew-hatred under the guise of solidarity, and it must be confronted.”
Linehan’s petition, which had garnered over 4,000 signatures by Wednesday afternoon, comes months after RTÉ announced plans to boycott the competition in December, writing in a statement at the time that its participation “remains unconscionable given the appalling loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there.”
On Tuesday, Israel’s Eurovision contestant Noam Bettan was met by chants of “stop the genocide” as he performed his song “Michelle” in Vienna. Bettan’s semifinal qualified him to perform in Saturday’s finale, where he will compete against entrants from 25 other countries.
Bettan told the BBC that he was shocked by the protests, and hoped that the public broadcasters of Iceland, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovenia would return for next year’s competition.
“It’s bad for them,” Bettan said. “They’re losing the opportunity to be in this amazing experience. So I am full of hope that next year they can sing and spread their light.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Writer of sitcom airing instead of Eurovision in Ireland calls broadcaster’s boycott over Israel ‘disgraceful antisemitism’ appeared first on The Forward.
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At Jewish Democratic event, Jacob Frey says anti-Zionism can blur into antisemitism
(JTA) — WASHINGTON — Jacob Frey, the Jewish mayor of Minneapolis, decried some criticism of Israel during a Jewish Democratic event on Wednesday.
Speaking at the national conference of the Jewish Democratic Council of America in Washington, D.C., Frey recounted visiting a local grocery store shortly after Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“The tiny little Jewish section, which had hummus and maybe one other product, was tagged with, ‘Why do you support genocide?’” he said. “And this was just the Jewish section, it wasn’t even the Israeli section.”
Frey continued, “So as much as people say, and have often said, ‘No we’re talking about Zionists, not Jews’ — well many of those same people are tying Zionism to Judaism. You can’t have it both ways at the same time.”
He concluded that “you can both believe in a State of Israel and support it, and simultaneously be opposed to some of the horrific acts that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has conducted.”
Frey’s comments, which came in response to a question from the audience, were some of his most extensive on Israel and his first on the topic since he took the national spotlight earlier this year for his defiant stance against the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement in his city.
The fact that Frey, 44, decided to appear at JDCA’s national leadership summit itself was notable because he is a relatively young rising star in a Democratic Party where the ascendant sentiments, especially among the progressive wing and among younger voters, are critical of Israel. The JDCA promotes a strong U.S.-Israel relationship and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Responding to a question about anti-Israel sentiment in his party, Frey said he thought Democrats should do more to constrain fringe sentiments within the party.
“It’s easy for me, and it’s very easy for Democrats, to critique the right,” he said. “I’ve got a whole team supporting me when I said get the F out of Minneapolis. That was not a hard thing to do, that’s just what I felt. What’s harder to do is to tell your own side, sometimes your own friends that, you know what, you’ve gone too far.”
He added, “My deep concern right now is that people don’t have the guts to tell their own side what they don’t want to hear.”
Asked in an interview following the session about whether Democrats should be campaigning alongside figures like the progressive streamer Hasan Piker, who is a staunch Israel critic and has drawn accusations of antisemitism, Frey told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he was not familiar with the debate around Piker nor his positions.
But Frey said he takes issue with litmus tests and opposes the villainization that comes from people on both ends of the political spectrum.
“I am uncomfortable with, ‘Get on board, say the word, say the phrase or we’re going to tar and feather you — put out this post or say on the stage this exact term, or else we’re going to consider you to be a villain,’” he said.
While Frey has drawn support from progressives over his showdown with ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that staged weeks of raids in Minneapolis earlier this year, he has clashed with that wing before on Israel. In 2024, Frey blocked his city council’s resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, calling it “one-sided resolution that adds more division to an already fraught situation.”
On Wednesday, the primary discussion between Frey and JDCA’s treasurer Beth Kieffer Leonard, focused on the ICE presence in Minneapolis and Frey’s response.
He also offered a Jewish reason for his determination to stop ICE “dead in their tracks” so that other cities aren’t similarly targeted, citing the value of repairing the world.
“As Jews, we have an obligation through tikkun olam to stand up for it, to make the world a better place, to heal people and to recognize that when they come for one of us, that they come for all of us,” he said.
When asked about Israel and anti-Zionism during the Q&A session, Frey expanded on his belief in the State of Israel as well as his criticisms of its government.
“You can recognize the importance of a place for peace and refuge, a place where refugees by the hundreds of thousands and millions have immigrated to Israel — from both Ashkenazi countries and also Iraq, Iran and Yemen — a very mixed ethnically and culturally place,” Frey said. “You can recognize that the history is complex. That there are areas where we collectively as Jews can improve. Where policies can be improved.”
Frey continued that he is an adamant opponent of Trump but believes in America and said the same should be possible with Netanyahu and Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post At Jewish Democratic event, Jacob Frey says anti-Zionism can blur into antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
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Saudi Warplanes Struck Militias in Iraq During War, Sources Say
F-15SA fighter jets are seen at King Faisal Air College in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 25, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser
Saudi fighter jets bombed targets linked to powerful Tehran-backed Shi’ite militias in Iraq during the Iran war, while retaliatory strikes were also launched from Kuwait into Iraq, multiple sources familiar with the matter said.
The strikes are part of a broader pattern of military responses around the Gulf that remained largely hidden during a conflict that began with US-Israeli attacks on Iran and has spread to the wider Middle East.
For this report, Reuters spoke to three Iraqi security and military officials, a Western official, and two people briefed on the matter, one of them in the US.
The Saudi strikes were carried out by Saudi air force fighter jets on Iran-linked militia targets near the kingdom’s northern border with Iraq, one Western official and the person briefed on the matter said. The Western official said some strikes took place around the time of the April 7 US-Iran ceasefire.
They targeted sites from which drone and missile attacks were launched at Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, the sources said.
Citing military assessments, the Iraqi sources said rocket attacks were launched on at least two occasions from Kuwaiti territory on Iraq. One set of strikes hit militia positions in southern Iraq in April, killing several fighters and destroying a facility used by Iran-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah for communications and drone operations, they said.
Reuters could not determine whether the rockets from Kuwait were fired by the Kuwaiti armed forces or the US military, which has a large presence there. The US military declined to comment. The Kuwaiti information ministry and the Iraqi government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
SAUDI ARABIA ALSO HIT IRAN
A Saudi foreign ministry official said Saudi Arabia sought de-escalation, self-restraint and the “reduction of tensions in pursuit of the stability, security, and prosperity of the region,” but did not address the issue of strikes on Iraq. A spokesperson for Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia launched strikes directly on Iran during the war in retaliation for attacks on the kingdom, the first time Riyadh is known to have hit Iranian soil. The UAE also carried out similar strikes on Iran, three people familiar with the matter said.
But hundreds of the drones that targeted the Gulf emanated from Iraq, all the sources said.
Militia-linked Telegram channels repeatedly posted statements during the war claiming attacks on targets in Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Reuters could not independently confirm their authenticity.
Sustained attacks from a second front in Iraq prompted Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to lose patience with the militias, which collectively command tens of thousands of fighters and arsenals including missiles and drones.
Kuwait summoned Iraq’s representative in the country three times during the war to protest cross-border attacks, as well as the storming of the Kuwaiti consulate in the city of Basra on April 7. Saudi Arabia also summoned Iraq’s ambassador on April 12 to protest attacks.
IRAQ-GULF TIES DEFINED BY SUSPICION
Gulf Arab relations with Iraq have long been defined by suspicion. Ties were severely damaged in 1990 when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded Kuwait and fired Scud missiles at Saudi Arabia, and they remained strained for decades.
The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq deepened Gulf concerns by empowering Shi’ite political factions and armed groups closely tied to Tehran, turning Iraq into a key node in Iran’s regional network of proxies.
Gulf states have repeatedly accused Baghdad of failing to rein in those groups, which operate with significant autonomy and have launched attacks across borders.
A China-brokered détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023 had offered hope for broader regional stabilization. But the outbreak of war has severely tested those gains, drawing Gulf states into a conflict they had sought to avoid and exposing the limits of diplomatic progress made in recent years.
In March, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had warned Baghdad via diplomatic channels to curb rocket and drone attacks by pro-Iranian groups against Gulf states, according to two Iraqi security officials and a government security adviser.
Iraqi forces say they intercepted some attempted attacks, including the seizure of a rocket launcher west of Basra intended to strike Saudi energy facilities.
But Iran-backed militias continue to fly surveillance drones along Iraq’s borders with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, conducting reconnaissance and feeding intelligence to Iran, according to four Iraqi security sources and a person briefed on the matter.
“They are gathering information on what has been damaged, what is still working. They are preparing for the next strike,” the person briefed on the matter said.