Braid of heaven: globe-trotting Challah Prince spreads joy of Jewish baking

Known as the “Challah Prince” to his almost one million followers on social media, Idan believes you should relax when baking and embrace it as a positive experience akin to meditation.

He says: “People have a lot of expectation from themselves and from the process, and they are afraid of failure. And once you smile and just take it easy, it makes the process fun, because this is the way it should be.”

The 40-year-old has led baking workshops everywhere from Paris to Guatemala. He discovered his vocation in 2017 when he was living in Berlin. He recalls: “I went to the bakery to buy challah, but it was super-dry and super-dense, it was not good challah. So I had no choice but to bake my own.

“I just fell in love with the process. I really could feel that this is beginning of something, and that I was willing to put a lot of effort into making a good challah.”

Two years previously, during his first winter in Berlin, he had suffered depression, until he joined a meditation group. “It really saved my life,” he says. Idan says making challah has similar benefits for the mind and soul. “I started to recognise a lot of similar principles between between meditation and baking,” he explains.

“My workshops today include a lot of breath work principles, meditation principles, mindfulness principles. And I think this is also my language to reach people, to touch people and nourish people, because I feel they need it. People don’t know they need it, but they do, and once they feel it, and once they’ve touched it, they cannot deny it any more.”

Sadly, even this spreader of joy was subject to the eruption of hate that followed October 7.

“In the first week, I lost 10,000 followers,” he says. “I tried to speak out using my voice, but I felt like it was too much for me, it was overwhelming.”

In the end, he decided to do what he does best, and let his baker’s hands do the talking. “I created challot in the shape of Magen David. Usually I do it only for Yom Ha’atzmaut, for Independence Day, but every weekend for six consecutive weeks, I had a new design, and people loved that.”

The experience also helped Chabasov to define his true calling. “Food is for everyone, and I always wanted to reach not only Jewish communities, but October 7 really helped me to to be more clear with my purpose. I realised that I’m here for the Jewish people, my people. And no matter what, this is my goal.”

In the five years since Idan created his Challah Prince Instagram account, he has held in-person baking workshops everywhere from Canada to Hungary to Costa Rica, and in cities across the US. He hopes to be coming to the UK very soon.

But his goal remains the same as when he first bit into that disappointingly dry bread in Berlin almost a decade ago. “To be famous thanks to my challah is just a side effect,” he says. “It’s not something that I’m searching for. I never planned to be the Challah Prince, I just wanted to have a good challah.”