Uncategorized
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.”
—
The post With her ‘Totally Kosher’ cookbook, Chanie Apfelbaum aims for a wider audience appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Maduro Accuses Zionists of Trying to Deliver Venezuela to ‘Devils’ as US Threatens Terror Designation
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a march amid the disputed presidential election, in Caracas, Venezuela, Aug. 3, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Maxwell Briceno
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro accused Zionists of trying to hand his country over to “devils,” as the United States ramped up military pressure and opposition leaders continued to voice support for action against his regime.
“There are those who want to hand this country over to the devils – you know who, right? The far-right Zionists want to hand this country over to the devils,” Maduro said on Saturday during a speech to local pro-government grassroots organizations.
“Who will prevail? The people of [King] David, the people of God, the people of [Simón] Bolívar, or the imperialist demons?” he continued. “We are the people of David against the Goliaths that we have already defeated in history. If God wills it, we will face them.”
| Nicolás Maduro: “Algunos quieren entregar este país a los demonios; ya saben quiénes son: la facción sionista de ultraderecha”.
pic.twitter.com/i7IJ5W0kOs— Alerta News 24 (@AlertaNews24) November 16, 2025
The Venezuelan leader has a long history of blaming the Jewish state and Jewish communities for the country’s problems, even as opposition leaders continue to publicly voice support for Israel and denounce his regime.
Last year, Maduro blamed “international Zionism” for the large-scale anti-government protests that erupted across the country following the presidential elections, in which he claimed victory amid widespread claims of fraud.
He also called the Argentinian government “Nazi and Zionist” earlier this year, amid an ongoing dispute over the arrest of an Argentine military officer in Venezuela.
Maduro broke diplomatic relations with Argentina after President Javier Milei refused to recognize his reelection in July.
During his Saturday speech, the Venezuelan leader insisted that the country is a Christian nation and questioned why Americans would want to kill Christians, as he urged Washington to refrain from military escalation amid a US buildup in the Caribbean and strikes on alleged drug trafficking vessels.
“I place at the forefront of this battle our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom our homeland has been entrusted, the only king between heaven and Earth, Jesus of Nazareth, the young child and Palestinian martyr, Jesus of Nazareth,” Maduro said.
“I place Jesus of Nazareth as commander-in-chief of the battle for peace and the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people,” he continued.
He also tried to appeal to the American people, urging them to say “no” to war and “yes” to peace.
Maduro’s latest remarks came just before the Trump administration on Sunday announced the decision to designate the Cartel de los Soles, which the Trump administration has accused Maduro of leading, as a foreign terrorist organization. The designation could open the door to strikes on Maduro’s assets and infrastructure inside Venezuela.
“Based in Venezuela, the Cartel de los Soles is headed by Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking individuals of the illegitimate Maduro regime who have corrupted Venezuela’s military, intelligence, legislature, and judiciary,” the US State Department said in a statement, noting the designation will take effect next week, on Nov. 24.
“Neither Maduro nor his cronies represent Venezuela’s legitimate government. Cartel de los Soles by and with other designated [foreign terrorist organizations] including Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel are responsible for terrorist violence throughout our hemisphere as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe,” the statement continued. “The United States will continue using all available tools to protect our national security interests and deny funding and resources to narco-terrorists.”
Congress has seven days to review the decision after being notified, and “in the absence of congressional action to block the designation,” it will take effect, according to the State Department.
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that, while he doesn’t believe the administration needs congressional authorization for potential military strikes inside Venezuela, he would like to keep lawmakers informed.
“We like to keep Congress involved. I mean, we’re stopping drug dealers and drugs from coming into our country,” he said. “We don’t have to get their approval. But I think letting them know is good.”
In recent weeks, Trump has ordered at least 21 strikes on boats believed to be carrying narcotics and has built up thousands of troops in the region.
Last month, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the creation of a new counter-narcotics Joint Task Force, saying it was established “to crush the cartels, stop the poison, and keep America safe.”
Uncategorized
Harvard Students to Vote on Anti-Israel Divestment Measure
April 20, 2025, Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University and Harvard Square scenes with students and pedestrians. Photo: Kenneth Martin/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect.
Harvard University students will vote this week on an anti-Israel measure calling for divestment from the Jewish State, amid rising concerns about the growth of antisemitism across the political spectrum.
According to The Harvard Crimson, the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee — a self-described revolutionary movement which issued some of the world’s first endorsements of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel — overcame objections expressed by the Harvard Undergraduate Association, a student government body, to place the idea on this academic year’s fall survey. Another group, working in concert with PSC, prevailed over the HUA as well, and added a survey question which aims to build a consensus of opposition to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.
“Should Harvard disclose its investments in companies and institutions operating in Israel?” asks PSC’s question, which was originally framed to accuse Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. “Should Harvard divest from companies and institutions operating in Israel?”
PSC’s diction was edited at the behest of the administration, which determined that it was “leading” and contravened school rules.
“The commission emphasizes that the survey process is designed to foster an environment where students can share their perspectives freely and without pressure,” Harvard’s Election Commission told the Crimson in a statement. “It is not intended to serve as a platform for activism or advocacy by any particular group.”
The US campus antisemitism crisis has kept Harvard University in the headlines.
In October, school officials disclosed a $113 million budget deficit caused by the Trump administration’s confiscation of much of its federal contracts and grants as punishment for, among other alleged misdeeds, its admitted failure to combat antisemitism on its campus.
According to Harvard’s “Financial Report: Fiscal Year 2025” the university’s spending exceeded the $6.7 billion it amassed from donations, taxpayer support, tuition, and other income sources, such as endowment funds earmarked for operational expenses. Harvard also suffered a steep deficit in non-restricted donor funds, $212 million, a possible indication that philanthropists now hesitate to write America’s oldest university a blank check due to its inveterate generating of negative publicity — prompted by such episodes as the institution’s botching the appointment of its first Black president by conferring the honor to a plagiarist and its failing repeatedly to quell antisemitic discrimination and harassment.
“Even by the standards of our centuries-long history, fiscal year 2025 was extraordinarily challenging, with political and economic disruption affecting many sectors, including higher education,” Harvard president Alan Garber said in a statement. “We continue to adapt to uncertainty and threats to sources of revenue that have sustained our work for many years. We have intensified our efforts to expand our sources of funding.”
Harvard is also in court fighting a lawsuit which alleges that administrative officials violated civil rights law by declining to impose meaningful disciplinary sanctions on two students who allegedly assaulted a Jewish student during a protest held to rally anti-Israel activists just days after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israeli communities.
The university’s lawyers contend that the Jewish student, Yoav Segev, has not backed his claim with evidence and that his grievance is founded not in any legally recognizable harm but a disagreement regarding policy.
“Mr. Segev’s allegation, then, is not that Harvard failed to take action, but simply that he disagrees with the actions taken after the investigation,” a motion to dismiss the suit says, adding that the school believes Segev’s contention that Harvard “conspired” to deny him justice cannot be substantiated.
Segev had endured a mobbing of pro-Hamas activists led by Ibrahim Bharmal and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, who stalked him across Harvard Yard before encircling him and screaming “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as he struggled to break free from the mass of bodies which surrounded him. Video of the incident, widely viewed online at the time, showed the crush of people shoving keffiyehs — traditional headdresses worn by men in the Middle East that in some circles have come to symbolize Palestinian nationalism — in the face of the student, whom they had identified as Jewish.
Nearly two years after the assault, Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo have not only avoided hate crime charges but also even amassed new accolades and distinctions — according to multiple reports.
After being charged with assault and battery, the two men were ordered in April by Boston Municipal Court Judge Stephen McClenon to attend “pre-trial diversion” anger management courses and perform 80 hours of community service each, a decision which did not require their apologizing to Segev even though Assistant District Attorney Ursula Knight described what they did as “hands on assault and battery.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Uncategorized
Iran’s Execution Spree Continues Unabated, Alarming Human Rights Groups
A February 2023 protest in Washington, DC calling for an end to executions and human rights violations in Iran. Photo: Reuters/ Bryan Olin Dozier
The Islamist regime in Iran has ramped up its executions in what one human rights watchdog group described as “an unprecedented increase compared to previous years,” leading observers to raise alarm bells over Tehran’s crackdown on dissent.
Iran has executed 1,286 human beings so far this year through the end of October, according to a new report by the Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA).
The organization identified 31 recent executions on murder and drug-related charges, adding, “As of the time of this report, prison authorities and responsible institutions have not publicly announced these executions.”
While most of the executed are accused of murder or drug charges, human rights groups say these charges are often fabricated, conceal the real crime of political opposition, and target minority groups as Baluchis, Kurds, and Arabs.
The Times reported on Sunday that family members of political prisoners on Iran’s death row now wait by their phones in a state of terror and trauma. “Every phone call is a nightmare for me, especially in the morning. It might bring heartbreaking news,” one woman in Tehran told the British paper. “Every night I go to bed with the same dread of what tomorrow may bring.”
The increase in executions — usually carried out by hanging at dawn — have reportedly inspired hunger strikes among prisoners around the country.
One unnamed Iranian activist in exile described to The Times how the executions served as intimidation against those who would resist, saying that “the noose has become the regime’s loudspeaker” and “every hanging is a message: we are still in charge.”
Amnesty International called the increase in killings “state-sanctioned murder on an industrial scale.” Human rights groups have noted the current pace is the highest since 1988, when the regime infamously executed thousands of political prisons, and has already surpassed last year’s total of 1,001.
“Over the past year, as its nuclear program and network of militant proxies have been severely weakened, the regime has become even more reliant on domestic repression,” Shahin Gobadi, of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, told The Times.
The inhumane conditions of Iranian prisons also act as a tool to repress those who would speak out for freedom. Those who have escaped describe being packed so tightly into cells that they needed to sleep in shifts under lights that remained on permanently.
On Thursday, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) released a report about Goli Kouhkan, a victim of child marriage who has lived on death row in Iran, scheduled for execution in December.
“Girls are married off at age 13 or even younger, and subjected to decades of beatings and rape, with no real possibility of divorce or escape,” said Bahar Ghandehari, director of advocacy at CHRI. “Many are often killed by family members if they try. Courts must consider these circumstances as mitigating factors when sentencing.”
Ghandehari explained how “the Iranian regime is deeply complicit in these killings because it does not take even the most basic measures to end child marriage or to protect girls and women from domestic abuse — situations that all too often end in death, although it is usually that of the woman.”
Zahra Rahimi co-founded the Imam Ali Popular Students Relief Society and has described the process by which child brides are forced into marriages in Iran.
“The judge will ask questions such as, ‘What is the price of meat? If you want to buy something for your home, what do you buy?’ and based on the girl’s answers, he will determine whether she is ready for marriage,” Rahimi said. “In this process, there is no lawyer, psychologist, doctor, expert, or trusted person to talk to the child … Where the court did not allow marriages to take place [for example, when the girls were under 9 years old], the girls were sent into ‘temporary marriages’ until they turned 13, and then their marriage would become legal.”