Suffern, N.Y. Marks 12,000th Freshly Baked Challah Milestone

by Ellen Braunstein – chabad.org

The Chabad Jewish Center of Suffern, N.Y., recently celebrated a major milestone—the baking of 12,000 challahs for the community since the Covid pandemic began. For many, the challah-baking has quickly become an “act of love, friendship and care,” Devorah Gancz, who co-directs the Chabad center in Montebello, N.Y., told Chabad.org.

To mark the occasion, Gancz, together with her husband, Rabbi Shmuel Gancz, invited Congressman Mike Lawler, who serves New York’s Hudson Valley, to lend a hand in braiding and baking the milestone 12,000th loaf.

Addressing the volunteers in the couple’s kitchen, sporting an apron and a big smile, Lawler said, “Such acts of kindness strengthen neighborhoods.”

The initiative began during Covid, when the Ganczes felt that everybody could use an uplift, especially a spiritual one. At one point during the pandemic, some 1,300 challahs were baked over a two-week period in a non-commercial kitchen. Now volunteers bake 50 to 100 challahs each week, which are distributed to community members for births, birthdays, graduations, sickness and yahrzeits.

“We’ve met and made so many connections through challah-baking and delivery,” said Gancz, whose cooking crew keeps track of the numbers of challahs on a chalkboard in the kitchen. Five Bosch mixers are lined up, each one making eight challahs in a single batch.

For the Community by the Community

About 90,000 Jews live in Rockland County, N.Y., representing 31 percent of its population. It has the largest per capita Jewish population of any U.S. county, so the demand for freshly baked challah is there.

The shipping and delivery of so many challahs was well-organized from the start. “We asked Chabad members to become ambassadors to their block and identify Jewish residents,” Gancz said.

Volunteers put together a bag of Shabbat candles, a “table companion” with Hebrew blessings, prayers and songs, a card with the candle-lighting time and, of course, a challah.

When Howard Hochberg was sick with cancer, he received challahs. Since his health improved, the retiree delivers about two dozen challahs a week.

Hochberg said he told the Ganczes that “if G‑d is good and I survived, I would be delivering the challahs instead of getting them. So far everything is going OK, thank G‑d.”

“It’s something that really connects Jews, something that everybody knows about,” Gancz said. “Everybody has a warm taste, a memory.”

In addition to servicing local community members, College students and graduates from CTeen, the Chabad teen network, have been receiving various forms of support to uplift them amidst the antisemitism they’ve been experiencing on campus.

It started with “Am Yisrael Chai” T-shirts, necklaces with Jewish star-shaped challahs, and Shabbat candles accompanying the weekly challah gifts. And as some teens have shared their plans to host Shabbat dinners in their dorm rooms, the Ganczes made and shipped them challah to serve.

Cathartic Giving

The Gancz home kitchen has become a gathering place for volunteers on Thursdays. “Women who are available will just come over and help knead and braid.”

The volunteers, three to six at a time, have essentially taken over. Gancz, a mother of nine, is not often in the kitchen anymore.

Friends and business partners, Jodi Rabinowitz and Stacy Caridi, the deputy mayor of Montebello, often lead other volunteers in the baking process.

“They know everything about the mitzvah of challah, and they’re able to inspire any new women who show up,” Gancz said.

According to Gancz, the prompt of the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory—to seek out every Jew with love, is at the core of what they are trying to achieve.

“The Rebbe’s idea of one Jew at a time, touching each soul and giving them the warmth of Yiddishkeit,” Gancz said.

“I thought it was a great opportunity to do more within the community during COVID,” said Rabinowitz. “Here we are four years and 12,000 challahs later.”

“Every batch we make, we make the blessing on the challah, which is something that really makes us think about other people, a blessing for someone we know is ill, to think about them, to pray for someone who is going through a rough time,” Rabinowitz said.

“It was so special to know that we touched 12,000 hearts,” Caridi said. “You’re getting a challah that’s baked with love.”