We have gathered around a round table not just to break the bread of interfaith fellowship, but to bake it with Judy Tashbook. Judy leads hands-on workshops in which participants bake challah, make matzah balls, and learn Torah in a warm and friendly environment that nourishes mind, body, and soul. Judy’s Torah workshops feel like you’re spending a comforting few hours in a Jewish mother’s kitchen, learning the stories, and absorbing the wisdom just as the Children of Abraham and Sarah have for thousands of years. You won’t feel like you’re studying, but you will learn from sources as wide and deep as the Chumash (the five books of Moses), Psalms, Proverbs, Prophets, and the Talmud. Judy mixes Jewish history and classical rabbinic teachings while she mixes dough and teaches Jewish prayers and songs as our challah and spirits rise. We look forward to learning the Book of Esther and how to make hamentaschen, and to a parenting/grandparenting class that draws from The Ethics of the Fathers while we roll and fill varieties of sweet rugelach, just as these time-honored techniques were passed down from generation to generation of mothers.
Judy Tashbook Safern, publisher of Dallas Jewish Monthly, the lifestyle magazine for the fastest-growing Jewish community in North America, and Advisory Board member of Texans for a Safe Israel, is an alumnus of Bais Yaakov Academy’s seminary in Brooklyn, the University of Texas, and The New School for Social Research. The proud Ima of two teenagers currently learning in eretz Yisrael, Judy can be reached at DallasJewishMonthly@gmail.com.