Events at ChallahFest range from expert talks and Friday night dinners to limited-edition challah pop-ups and even a “challah rave”. Which are Oren most excited about? “Oh, I don’t have one baby that I love,” she says. “They’re all crazy, they’re so different. Even in London, as well as the panel discussion, [food influencer] Ben Rebuck is doing a week-long challah-themed takeover with [kosher restaurants] Bracha and Mazal.”
The restaurants, in Golders Green and Camden, respectively, will also be exhibiting an original photography exhibition Oren curated for the festival – a collaboration between fine-art and still-life photographer, Sivan Roshianu, and chef and multidisciplinary artist, Alexander “Zoonder” Lachnish, which “presents challah through a fresh artistic and conceptual lens, exploring its place in Jewish life.”
[Missing Credit]
Launched in 2020, Foodish was established to help people “connect to their Jewish identity and strengthen their sense of belonging to the Jewish people through food,” Oren says. The project quickly expanded from a digital platform hosting Jewish food stories and recipes to creating in-person events across Israel.
One particularly impactful initiative took place in the aftermath of October 7, Oren recalls. “We went down to the Dead Sea, where all of the people that were evacuated from the kibbutzim were sent, and we made workshops with them to help them, through the food, get a bit of sense of home,” she says.
“It was mostly elderly people, and at the end of one of the workshops, I went to wash the dishes in the hotel kitchen, and this woman said, ‘Can I help you?’ And I said, ‘No, it’s fine. You’re all set. Thank you.’ And she said, ‘No, no, you don’t understand. This is exactly what we’re missing.’”
Merav and her team are keen to connect with young Jews around the world (Illustration: Michal Herbstman for FOODISH)[Missing Credit]
Fast-forward three years, and Foodish is taking on a new lease of life as a global initiative – with a special focus on young people: “The younger generation around the world are getting more disconnected from their Jewish identity. But the way that they are getting back to it is meals, shared experiences, community events, and so on,” Oren reasons.
“This is why we decided to take Foodish global. We want to help young people connect to their Jewish identity through food and shared experiences. We want to give them tools to celebrate their Jewish identity and to make it theirs.”
For Oren, challah was the obvious vehicle for this mission. “I have this phrase I say to myself, which is ‘Foodish is challah, and challah is Foodish,” she says.
“It’s a celebration and it’s spiritual and it’s fun and it’s playful and it’s religious and it’s not religious and it can be everything.”
Later, speaking of the significance of the plaited loaf, she adds: “Challah, I think, is the only Jewish dish that there’s no argument that it’s Jewish. Everywhere you see challah in the world, you [think] ‘Jewish people’. So it’s the broadest and the widest dish that we can connect through.”
Break Glass – one of the images from the ChallahFest photo exhibition (Photo: Sivan Roshianu and Alexander Lachnish aka. Zoonder)[Missing Credit]
As for why food is such a powerful way to connect in the first place, she believes it is a “bridge”.
“Food is very important to everyone...It’s a way to connect. It’s memory, it’s identity.”
While Oren is currently utterly immersed in the world of food, that wasn’t always the case. “I do not come from the culinary scene at all,” she says.
The festival organiser is, in her own words, a serial entrepreneur who “did a lot of crazy stuff.”
There is more “crazy stuff” on the horizon too. Alongside ChallahFest, Foodish has just launched an initiative that will see 18 Jewish content creators from around the world head to Israel for an intensive eight-day culinary trip designed to give them the tools to become “ambassadors for the Jewish people”.
The department is also working on an AI-powered app to allow people to turn their Jewish food stories into physical books.
As for ChallahFest, Oren promises that this is just the beginning. “Read my lips: next year we’ll have at least two or three times the number of events,” she insists.
Tickets to Challah, Home, and Belonging: An Intergenerational Conversation, can be found at thejc.com/events
Merav Oren is the founder and CEO of FOODISH (Photo: Itay Selikter)[Missing Credit]