The online food world has become a cold house for Jews, but the hostility has made some influencers louder about their Zionism. Zoe Strimpel reports – and discovers their Chanukah treats
December 17, 2025 17:04
I’ve always loved food, Israel and, of course, Israeli food, and have enjoyed a sexed-up marriage with all three since I discovered the kaleidoscopic wonders of Instagram cooking content. One of the things I love about food reels is that you see wondrous things from cooks all over the world, with those in Indonesia, Turkey, Germany, France and India among the most creative.
But since October 7 I have been dismayed by what can only be described as the Gaza propaganda that has flooded this seemingly superficial hobbyists’ domain and the vile trolls – some of them, I suspect Russian or Qatari-bots – who leave grotesque comments under any openly Zionist or Israel-linked account.
As a result, I have become especially interested in, and feel warmly towards, those brave online cooks who hold firm in a sea of Cook For Palestine evenings and keffiyehs.
Three Jewish influencers who have impressed me with their bravery and delicious fail-safe recipes, are the LA-based Sivan Kobi, who has 1.2 million followers on Instagram, Boston-based Ruhama Shitrit, who has 1 million, and Tel Aviv-based Adeena Sussman, who has 250,000. Here’s what they have to say.
She was born in Israel as Sivan Sherman and comes from a line of professional cooks. Her grandfather was a Holocaust survivor who made it to Jaffa, where he worked in a pitta bakery, going on to open another one in Tel Aviv. In 1980, Sivan’s father and husband to her Iraqi-born mother, moved the family to LA and he opened his first bakery in the city. “I would always hang around there after school,” she says. Her dad then opened two more bakeries and a Jewish deli, where Sivan worked.
She met her husband when she was 15 and he was 20. “He was working in a kosher restaurant and his mom was the most incredible chef in her own right. We married young and had our first child when I was 19 and a half.” They now have four children and two grandchildren.
“I was at home – cooking, baking and picking things up for my dad. And I absorbed things from all the women who were cooking around me, writing down everything they did and said [about food].”
When he turned one, she decided to her make her fourth child’s birthday cake an ambitious fondant-frosted number.
I don’t care if I lose follower because of the haters. I follow my path, take me or leave me. We are talking about my heart, my everything, who I am
It was the start of a cake business, which she had for a decade. She got onto a reality show called Cake Boss, featuring people making “huge cakes out of fondant” back “when people were still watching actual TV”. An Instagram page called Sivan’s Cakes followed soon after.
Then came Covid, which for the internet-ambitious proved fruitful. One month into the pandemic, “my daughter came over, on Shabbat. The oven was full, the counters were filled with babka, cakes and other goodies. She said: ‘Why don’t you share everything you make on Instagram? Your English is so good, you know how to teach.’”
This was true. Alongside her kitchen work, Siva had qualified as a Hebrew teacher and a fitness instructor. “Everything I do has in some way to do with teaching.”
Learning the ways of Instagram was something else, though. “I had trouble navigating all the functions and would stay up until the early hours learning how to perfect reels.” Even now, she takes up to 14 hours filming and editing a reel.
But talking to her audience has never been an issue. “I have never had stage fright, and I think I have good stage presence. People loved me as a fitness teacher.”
Her Zionist Israeli identity is non-negotiable, and as being an influencer requires being “your authentic self”, it is also fundamental to her end product.
Still, it takes courage, a thick skin and a warrior-like mentality to be out and proud in public. “I don’t really care,” she says of the haters to whom she is always notably polite, even when they get aggressive.
“I don’t care if I lose followers because of them. I go with my path, take it or leave it. We are talking about my heart, my everything.”
And she gives short shrift to her fellow Israeli influencers who describe themselves as Middle Eastern. In fact, she says she is “disgusted” by them. “There are a lot of them out there.”
But as her honesty affected her collaborations? “Listen, some people are OK with it. But I don’t reach out to companies. This is a family-owned business. My husband is my manager, my daughters help me out. I’m not looking for a manager to start booking me. I work with companies I want to work with. Some people love selling a billion products and they make a lot of money doing it, but that’s not me.”
Instead, her business model revolves around events: cooking demos, challah bakes, and tastings in places as far-flung as Dubai and Panama.
“Embracing Jewish women all across the world,” is what drives her. “I touch people and reach people, it’s beyond money.” And a cookbook is in the works. “That, I feel passionate about – it’s a huge deal for me, a simple girl, to be getting a cookbook!”
Favourite Chanukah dish: I can’t let go of my father’s jelly doughnuts, his sufganiyot. Sherman’s were the best ever.”
@sivanskitchen
Traditional Chanukah jam sufganiyot (doughnuts)Getty Images
With her trademark “wow!” and guttural ‘h’ in tehina, there’s no doubting where Ruhama comes from. And her recipes are super tasty, super doable, and bursting with both Levantine and Ashkenazi flavours, albeit with with an emphasis on the former; both her parents were born in Iraq and when they made aliyah, settled in the Haifa area. Her Jewish-Iraqi t’beet, a basmati rice chicken casserole drizzled in sweet tomato sauce is stand-out good.
Like Sivan, Ruhama is a mother of four in her fifties, examples of the relative age-blindness of food influencerdom. Also like Sivan, she was a “very loved” teacher (who taught at a primary school) and at the start of Covid, it was her children, admiring her cooking, who said: “Ima, you should start an Instagram”. She and her family – her husband is in high-tech – moved from Israel to the Jewish enclave of Newton, near Boston, in America. when her first two kids were small.
“I was looking to do something more in my life and although I already knew I loved to teach, I felt I had more to show to the world. At first, I thought that might be a master’s or another course but then the pandemic began and at my children’s nagging, I posted a photo of one of my recipes. It got a few likes so I posted another.”
Encouraged, she then threw herself into learning how to film and edit, staying up long into the early hours watching “thousands” of tutorials on YouTube and getting help from her kids. “I became a student of social media life.”
And continued cooking. “I’ve been surrounded by cooking my entire life. Both my parents were amazing cooks and when we came to the States, I wanted my kids to taste Israel in their new home. But at the same time, I learnt about new ingredients in America – brussels sprouts, squash. I adapted.”
What she didn’t adapt, or mould in any way, was her Jewish identity.
My way of being true to myself is to cook my culture and to express my feelings, in my strong Israeli accent, on Instagram
“Being a Jewish influencer isn’t easy. You have to be unafraid to stay yourself, but I am very strong, nothing breaks me. And the truth is being Jewish today isn’t easy whatever you do. My way of being true to myself is to cook my culture and if something wonderful happens in Israel, such as the hostages coming home, to shout about it, to express my feelings, in my strong Israeli accent, on Instagram.”
She knows that “not all Jews” are out and proud. “Some people don’t do anything for Israel because they’re afraid, afraid for their business. I understand and respect everyone’s decisions. But I feel that I need to use my platform to stay true to myself. I hope that by doing what I do, the hatred on these platforms will diminish. So, yes, I get a lot of nasty messages, but I just delete and block. And despite all the nastiness, I know I have power in my hands and that I am helping to empower women from everywhere, not just Israel. Most of my followers are Jewish but I also have so many Christian and Muslim ones who write me beautiful messages, who tell me they love me.
“And I never forget that at the age of 50 I got to start a new career and for that I am very thankful.”
Favourite Chanukah dish: “Sufganiyah with strawberry jam. I don’t like the more modern takes. As for latkes, I return to my Iraqi roots and go for arouk, the vegetable patties with baaharat spice.”
@ruhamasfood
Jewish-Iraqi vegetable patties called aroukGetty Images
ADEENA SUSSMAN
Adeena is probably best known for her cookbooks, two of which she co-authored with the swimsuit model Chrissy Teigan. She wrote Shabbat: Recipes and Rituals from My Table to Yours (2018) and Sababa: Fresh Sunny Recipes from my Israeli Kitchen (2019) on her own and her next book, out in April, is a compendium of Tel Aviv-inspired recipes called Zariz: 100 Easy, Breezy, Tel Aviv-y recipes.
She was born in California’s Silicon Valley in a “laid-back Orthodox home in a place where there weren’t a lot of Orthodox Jews”, moved to New York and made aliyah 15 years ago with her husband Jay Shofet, who is director of partnerships at the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.
They don’t have children together but her life is, she says, full of family.
She has 250,000 followers on Instagram and primarily uses the platform to boost her cookbooks. She collaborates with brands including William Sonoma, which makes kitchen equipment.
When she was growing up, her father, a physicist, and mother, a teacher, cooked a lot because ”we couldn’t get a lot of kosher food. No takeaways for us. Lots of home-made challah and cakes instead.”
In 1988, when I left school, nice Jewish girls didn’t go to cooking school. So I went to Boston University and ate grilled cheese sandwiches. I wasn’t a foodie back then
But though her sister went on to become a nutritionist, Adeena’s food career was sparked by a trip to Israel in 1997 which, she says, introduced her to the concept of seasonal eating. “In 1988, when I left school, nice Jewish girls didn’t go to cooking school. So I went to Boston University and ate grilled cheese sandwiches. I wasn’t a foodie back then.”
But after her trip to Israel, she went to culinary school in America and then “started as a jack of all trades in the food world.” She met Teigan, they co-authored the three bestselling cookbooks, which were followed by her own.
She first went on Instagram in 2012, “when everyone else did and I used it for obscure photos of pine trees and other arty pictures.” When Covid struck eight years later, she was “thrust into doing tons of Zooms, Instagram lives, cooking in a way of develop my connection with my community.”
Today, she cooks up a storm from her Tel Aviv kitchen with dishes such as her signature gourmet latke squares. It’s fair to describe her brand as low-key. “What you see is what you get, no hair and makeup. Just me.”
From the outset of her influencer career, she made a decision to “never hide who I am. The first time I experienced online hate was during the Israel-Hamas conflict in 2021. I had to learn how to navigate it, to get a thicker skin, to work out which comments were from bots and which were from actual people.”
In the wake of October 7, she added a Star of David and yellow ribbon to her profile. “My feeling about antisemitism is that people will figure out who I am whether I am open about it or not.”
How bad is it? “On Instagram, it’s somewhat civil, though I get hateful messages for sure. If someone wants to have a meaningful discussion with me, I’ll take it offline and see if they want to talk to me. I don’t think of myself as an activist but I have doubled down on who I am.”
And what of the Jewish food community? “I think it has strengthened since Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza. Jews are looking for comfort and community and support and the Jewish food space is providing it, it’s a refuge, a safe space.
”So I really try to be there for the community. I cook with a lot of Israelis who tell their stories. Telling Jewish stories now feels more important than ever. My message to British Jews is: we love you. Life isn’t easy now but it’s easier if we stick together. So hang in there.”
Favourite Chanukah dish: Sheet pan latkes and yeasty, sugar-topped Moroccan doughnuts
@adeenasussman
Moroccan doughnutsGetty Images/iStockphotoTo get more from Life, click here to sign up for our free Life newsletter.