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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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Arab-American Rights Group’s New Legal Director Says Jews Fake Hate Crimes, Control America — Then Deletes Posts
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) legal director Jenin Younes. Photo: Screenshot
The new legal director of one of the largest and most influential Arab-American rights advocacy groups in the US recently promoted classic antisemitic tropes on social media, claiming that American society is under “Zionist control” and that Jews routinely “fake” hate crimes against them.
Jenin Younes, who in September was hired by the American‑Arab Anti‑Discrimination Committee (ADC) to be its national legal director, made the explosive claims on X last week.
“There may be inadequate evidence to be certain in this specific instance, but the fact is it is a very common occurrence that Jewish people fake these hate crimes,” Younes said, responding to someone else’s post.
In another post, Younes replied to a tweet which claimed that Jews control the media, education system, entertainment indsutry, and government.
The ADC’s legal director responded, “100 percent. It’s dawning on me recently how insane it is I just accept that I’m subservient to them.”
Both social media posts have since been deleted. The ADC did not respond to a request for comment for this story on why the posts were erased and whether the organization agrees with and stands by her comments.
Younes’s posts came a few days after her organization filed a federal lawsuit targeting a California law which aims to combat antisemitism in K-12 schools.
Earlier this month, she led a lawsuit challenging the state over a civil rights bill which requires government officials to establish a new Office for Civil Rights for monitoring antisemitism in public schools, establish an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator, set parameters within which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be equitably discussed, and potentially bar antisemitic materials from reaching the classroom.
State lawmakers introduced the measure, also known as Assembly Bill (AB) 715, in the California legislature followed year-on-year increases in incidents of K-12 antisemitism, including vandalism and assault, which surged 135 percent in 2023, fueled by Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Among the ensuing spike in incidents, a Jewish girl was beaten with a stick and teased with jokes about Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
In a statement announcing its lawsuit, the ADC argued that Arabs are victims of discrimination and that fighting antisemitic harassment in accordance with the new law undermines First Amendment protections of speech unfettered by governmental interference. Furthermore, the ADC argued that the law amounts to a hijacking of American policy by Israel, an argument advanced by neo-Nazis, including Nicholas Fuentes, and commentators who promote their views such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens — both of whom claim that proliferating antisemitism is an exercise of free speech.
“AB 715’s intent and effect is classroom censorship. It — probably intentionally — does not feign the conduct it targets, then points schools to federal guidance that blurs legitimate criticism of a foreign state with bigotry,” Younes said in a press release announcing the action. “That combination guarantees arbitrary punishment of educators, chills valuable classroom instruction and discussion, and deprives students of the vigorous debate the Constitution protects.”
Since joining the ADC, Younes has garnered media coverage from prominent legacy media outlets such as The Washington Post, which described her in a lengthy feature published in September as always in search of “new allies” due to her traveling across the political spectrum to promote vaccine skepticism and anti-Zionism.
Just months ago, she compared Bari Weiss, founder of The Free Press and the newly minted editor in chief of CBS News, to Nazi party official and propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Younes stood by her comparison after receiving significant backlash.
Others, including Asaf Romirowsky, executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), told The Algemeiner that Younes is one among many figures pantomiming intellectual seriousness as they degrade public debate with demagoguery, conspiracy mongering, and hate regarding Israel and the prevalence of antisemitism.
“In today’s world of infotainment, facts matter even less,” he said. “In particular, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has turned into a theater for the land of make believe where Palestinians are the evergreen victims and Israelis are the victimizers. This fallacious binary view of the conflict has been amplified by historic antisemitic tropes of Jews controlling media and governments, taking a page out of the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
He added, “Further, social media has become ripe with such rhetoric as illustrated by the ADC’s legal director Jenin Younes projecting her own biases and falsehoods in an attempt to create a predetermined outcome detached from reality, something we just witnessed at the BBC that manufactured and ignored facts in its reporting.”
Multiple BBC leaders resigned this past weekend after a leaked memo revealed that Britain’s public broadcaster misleadingly edited a speech by US President Donald Trump to make it appear that he had directly called for violence on Jan. 6, 2021, when a crowd of his supporters breached the US Capitol. The internal report also showed that the BBC’s story selection and editing largely omitted pieces criticizing Hamas or highlighting the suffering of Israelis amid the war in Gaza.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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NYC’s yeshivas can offer a well-rounded education. Will Mayor Mamdani help them get there?
In the most intensely covered mayoral election in generations, the wellbeing of Jewish New Yorkers became a major flashpoint. And yet, no candidate took a decisive stance on a crisis affecting tens of thousands of Jewish children: the educational conditions at Hasidic and haredi yeshivas.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has not said much, and the few comments he has made have raised concern for those of us who believe the schools are characterized by grave educational neglect. At a New York Jewish Agenda forum during the primary, he questioned whether the enforcement of basic education standards in yeshivas was possible. This is troubling, given that New York State recently gutted regulations to provide a sound, basic education.
In the absence of state oversight, new research has revealed just how deep this educational neglect runs. The sociologist Matty Lichtenstein captured the most granular data to date of course material in New York City’s Jewish schools, leveraging community researchers to survey dozens of people with on-the-ground knowledge of curriculum. Ultimately, the researchers gained a comprehensive understanding of what is taught in 171 grades at 85 schools — including haredi yeshivas.
The results were astounding.
In Hasidic all-boys schools, students spent an average of less than two hours per week on all secular subjects combined. At the height of their intellectual development, children’s growth is being stunted.
And STEM education was almost nonexistent for Hasidic high school boys – only 13% of male high school cohorts received any science instruction, and fewer than a quarter received math. The denial of a STEM education essentially slams the door shut on many career paths in today’s tech-forward workforce.
And though English received greater priority for Hasidic high school boys, many Hasidic boys have a limited ability to communicate with the outside world. A separate report that we released earlier this year about economic outcomes in the Hasidic community found that fully 13% of Hasidic male youth speak no English whatsoever, with much larger percentages languishing at subpar proficiency levels.
As an advocate for Hasidic and haredi education equity, I have seen that the impact of this deprivation extends far beyond the classroom. Too often, I hear stories like that of a man who had a bright mind and was a great Torah student — but when he enrolled in college to help build a career, he could not keep up. Without the English fluency to do his coursework, he dropped out within a year.
His story is tragically common, and it is borne out in the data. Approximately 63% of Hasidic individuals live below or near the poverty line, and Hasidic men earn about 30% less than their non-Hasidic counterparts.
Still, we have reasons for cautious optimism. The curriculum report found that some Hasidic boys’ schools — a small but important minority — include six to eight hours of secular studies per week. And Hasidic all-girls schools generally offered at least eight hours per week of secular coursework as well as robust religious coursework. This proves that traditional Torah study and secular instruction are not mutually exclusive within these communities.
I have met many haredi women who received a balanced education, and they credit it for their success. They’ve seen firsthand how access to both religious and secular learning opens doors — and how its absence closes them. Some have even stepped in to fill the gaps themselves, teaching their sons to read and write in English at home.
These women want schools that honor their faith while preparing their children for the world beyond it. And supporting yeshivas in moving toward this balance would fulfill a core Jewish value: helping others achieve dignity and self-sufficiency.
We cannot accept a reality where tens of thousands of Jewish children graduate without the basic skills they need to earn a living and support their families. Stronger education standards must ensure that Hasidic and Haredi students gain the tools to thrive as adults.
But elected leaders cannot take action without knowing which schools are denying students an education. And because the state has shirked its role in requiring comprehensive school assessments, existing public data on Jewish school curriculum is sparse. The mayor and the New York City Department of Education can play a key role here by compiling information on what institutions are teaching. Mayor-elect Mamdani should fulfill New York City’s responsibility to track what students are actually learning.
New York State has betrayed Jewish students by gutting education standards and failing to monitor what they are being taught. As the next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani must stand up for the right to learn – ensuring that every Hasidic and haredi Orthodox Jewish child receives an education that honors both their faith and their future.
The well being of the Jewish community depends on it.
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Toronto City Hall Announces Plan to Fly Palestinian Flag Next Week
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow speaks to reporters in Toronto, March 8, 2025. Photo: Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press via ZUMA Press via Reuters Connect
A Canadian nonprofit organization has succeeded in persuading the city staff of Toronto to fly the Palestinian flag at city hall next week in recognition of the “State of Palestine’s Independence Day” on Saturday.
Braman Thillainathan, press secretary for Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, explained that the city’s protocol office had made the decision requested by the International Center of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) to fly the flag this coming Monday, not the mayor or city council.
“City Council provided city staff the authority to manage the public flagpole booking process based on policy approved by council in 1999,” he said in an emailed statement to Canadian media.
“The use of the city’s courtesy flagpole neither implies nor expresses support for the politics or policies of nations and/or organizations but raises the flag in recognition of those citizens or members that have made the request,” a spokesperson for the city of Toronto told the CBC.
ICJP lawyer Shane Martinez framed the raising of the flag as a move to counter racism.
“Visibility is something that’s particularly important,” Martinez said. “Anti-Palestinian racism is carried out in large part through attempts to erase Palestinian identity, erase Palestinian voices, and ensure that they don’t have a place in society, that they’re stigmatized, that they’re tabooed, that they’re othered and sometimes that their existence is denied altogether.”
Martinez described the activist move as “really a statement as to Palestinian resilience in the face of oppression, in the face of unprecedented oppression by Israel.”
The statement came days after members of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter led a mob that spilled blood and caused the hospitalization of at least one Jewish student after forcibly breaching a venue in which an advocacy group had convened for an event featuring veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Bashar Alshawwa, a Palestinian activist living in Toronto, called the raising of the flag “symbolic,” but said he believed it would “encourage other parties and institutions, individuals inside Canada, to join the journey for human rights and equality and justice regarding the issue of Palestine.”
The decision to raise the flag follows Canada recognizing a Palestinian state in September and Prime Minister Mark Carney saying he would support arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Earlier this month, Jewish groups also began circulating a petition calling for Chow to resign after the mayor chose to use the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s war to defeat the Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip.
“The genocide in Gaza impacts us all,” Chow said on video. “A common bond to shared humanity is tested, and I will speak out when children anywhere are feeling the pain and violence and hunger.”
The Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation pushed back against Chow’s rhetoric, stating that “the only Gaza genocide was the massacre perpetrated by Hamas and its allies against Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. Somehow, we doubt that’s what the mayor was referencing.”
The Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) called the mayor’s statement “reckless, divisive, and dangerous.” The group added that “the Jewish community expects the mayor to make this right by addressing the harm caused and taking immediate action to restore trust and ensure our safety.”
Toronto and Canada more broadly have seen antisemitism surge over the past two years, following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities and amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
In May, the J7 Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism — a coalition of Jewish organizations in Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States — released its first J7 Annual Report on Antisemitism.
CIJA provided the data and analysis on Canada, reporting that the Jewish community “was easily the most targeted religious minority, accounting for some 70 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes (with 900 total hate crimes against Jews recorded). Hate crimes against Jews increased by 71 percent from 2022 to 2023, and 172 percent in total since 2020.”
The report also documented that Toronto police tallied 164 hate crimes against Jews as of October 2024, representing a 74.5 percent jump from the previous year.
“What is at stake is not only the safety and well-being of our community, but the future of a Canada where everyone can live free from fear and discrimination,” CIJA interim resident Noah Shack said in a statement.