Holocaust Survivor and Teens Connect Over Challah

Lelah Hopp, a Holocaust survivor in her 80s, was pleasantly surprised to open the door to her home last Friday in Oxnard, Calif., to find two teenage girls presenting her with homemade challah for Shabbat.

“It means so much when you girls think of me!” she exclaimed, as she accepted the freshly baked loaf from Eden Reese and Chaya Muchnik, both students in the eighth-grade graduating class of Lamplighters Jewish Academy in Oxnard, a beachfront community about 60 miles up the coast from Los Angeles. The challah delivery is part of their graduation project, “Challah With a Twist.”

Typically, graduating classes undertake projects to raise money for a graduation trip. At Lamplighters, the concept was turned on its head: The academy gifted the class with a trip to New York in February, and in turn, the students gifted the community by baking challah to be distributed to isolated and elderly neighbors. They also offer community members the opportunity to share in the mitzvah by sponsoring the challah-baking and distribution for a small donation or to purchase challah for themselves.

“What I like best is visiting people,” said Reese. “They appreciate it so much, and it brings us closer to our community.”

She related how Stephanie Moro, who lives in a senior mobile-home park, was thrilled when the girls surprised her on her 89th birthday with balloons along with the challah. Moro, a retired nurse, remembered baking challah with her grandmother, and brushing the egg onto the unbaked loaves with a chicken feather.

Chanie Davidson, a third member of the class, said she loves the baking. “It’s the first time I’ve ever baked challah,” she said. The girls do their baking in the local Chabad House, Chabad of Oxnard, headed by Chaya Muchnik’s parents, Rabbi Dov and Racheli Muchnik, who also run Lamplighters Jewish Academy.

In addition to learning how to mix the dough and braid the loaves, the girls learn about and perform the mitzvah of hafrashat challah, separating a small piece of dough and burning it.

They have even branched out to offer challah made with spelt flour, and sometimes they bake other treats, such as biscotti.

Serving a diverse student body

Sheldon Katz receives challah from Chaya Muchnik.

Lamplighters, now in its fourth year, serves 40 students of different ages who interact in multi-age classrooms. The diverse student body includes both children of Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries in the region and children from the community, some of whom have limited Judaic backgrounds.

“ ‘Challah With a Twist’ personifies the idea of being a lamplighter,” said Rabbi Zalmy Kudan, educational director at Lamplighters. “A Chassid is meant to light up the world and inspire others to do so as well. Here, the girls are not only brightening the environment for their neighbors, they are also enabling their parents and other community members to become lamplighters as well.”

The challah recipients receive even more than a delicious treat and a friendly visit. “We tell them about challah and the significance of that week, or upcoming holidays,” explained Chaya Muchnik. “For example, the week after Pesach, it’s customary to bake challah in the shape of a key, which represents the key to a good parnassa [livelihood]. When the Jews entered Israel after wandering in the desert, they stopped receiving the manna [food supplied miraculously in the desert], and needed to start earning their own living, so that’s why we make a key challah this time of year.”

Roz Resnick displays the "key challah" she received from Eden Reese and Chaya Muchnik.

Muchnik is no stranger to baking challah or to seeking out Jewish people in her community to bring them closer to Judaism. Five years ago, when she was 9, she was one of nine finalists in a national competition, Jewish Kids Got Talent, sponsored by Tzivos Hashem, the world’s largest children’s club, for her project, Chaya’s Challahs, in which she organized women in the community to bake challah and deliver it to seniors and unaffiliated Jewish neighbors.

Today, “Challah With a Twist” is continuing the trend by cheering people throughout Oxnard, such as Mort Resnick, who for years attended Shabbat services at Chabad of Oxnard on a weekly basis. Now, he is often unable to attend due to health challenges.

“Receiving the challah from the girls was heartwarming,” said his wife, Roz. “It made us both feel better!”

Lamplighters Jewish Academy eighth-graders Chanie Davidson, Eden Reese and Chaya Muchnik at an apartment complex in Hollywood Beach, where they distribute challah as part of a regular program.