Thousands of women across the globe unite annually on the Thursday night immediately preceding The Shabbos Project for its kick-off event, the Great Big Challah Bake (GBCB). This year, on November 12, the northern New Jersey event was held at Factory 220 in Passaic, and it’s a good guess that this bake was one of the largest, with about 700 women and girls participating. The GBCB brings Jewish females together to learn about, and participate in, the mitzvah of challah, its relationship to the holiness of Shabbat and the spiritual secrets of baking challah with a bracha.
Jordana Baruchov emceed this year’s event, explaining to the overflow crowd the origin of the mitzvah, and what “challah” actually means: literally a portion of what is removed from the batch of dough, rather than the actual loaf that is baked and eaten. Together with Debbie Rosalimsky, Baruchov walked the women through the process of the spiritual and physical components of preparing challah dough, along with the meaning and power of the blessing recited on this mitzvah. She explained that the private prayers one recites upon making the blessing can have great and far-reaching impact. A full minute of complete silence was then observed to absorb, process and optimize the auspicious opportunity of these prayers.
Next, it was time for the dough to rise. And to facilitate the rising dough, the room exploded into a hurricane of song, dance and friendship, driven by the irresistible energy of iMove with Naz and DJ Shimmy Samouha. At this point, it felt more like a wedding than a challah bake!
Following about 45 minutes of continuous dance, the dough was ready for the final step: braiding into loaves. Most are familiar with the three-strand braid of traditional challah. But since this was no ordinary event, it called for an extraordinary challah motif. So Rosalimsky demonstrated how to make a six-strand braid. Finally, the loaves were wrapped and ready to take home to bake or refrigerate overnight for the freshest baking before Shabbat.
In addition to the challah making itself, there was a silent auction of numerous donated items and an information table by one of this year’s major program sponsors, One Family. The mission of One Family is to “strengthen the families of terror victims in order to prevent terror from claiming even more victims during the months and years following an attack.” Founded in 2001, One Family was started from a selfless idea of bat mitzvah girl Michal Belzberg. On her 12th birthday, a suicide bombing took place at a Sbarro restaurant. Fifteen people were murdered and 150 others were wounded, many of them seriously. Belzberg cancelled her bat mitzvah party and contributed an amount equal to the cost of the would-be party to the victims of the attack. She encouraged friends and family to give to the victims what they had planned on giving to her. From there, One Family has grown to provide support as well as multiple services to families that have suffered the experience of terrorism. In 2011 One Family received the Presidential Citation for Volunteerism from Israeli President Shimon Peres.
The Great Big Challah Bake was also sponsored by Jewish Journeys. Jewish Journeys of northern New Jersey is a grass roots organization whose mission is to strengthen Jewish homes by connecting Jewish families to their Jewish heritage. Numerous social and spiritual programs run year round, including life-altering group trips to Israel for men and women. More information is available from www.jewishjourneys.org.
To learn more about One Family, visit www.OneFamilyTogether.org.
By Ellie Wolf
