Our Affiliation
We are affiliated with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the association of Conservative congregations in North America.
Our Community
Building Bridges-Judaism and Sikhism
Evening of Tuesday, May 3rd (Please click on the link above for all the details.)
HJC Mitzvah Bakery
If you start smelling the cozy scent of challah baking, you may be surprised to learn that the wonderful aroma is coming from the scarcely used meat kitchen. The HJC Mitzvah Bakery is being created as a mitzvah project to help deliver Shabbat challah to senior congregants who might not be able to get out to buy their own or who just would appreciate getting challah to have with their Shabbat dinner.
Beyond being of help to congregants, this mitzvah project aims to integrate many different sectors of the congregation. The plan is to have Nursery School parents (and others) volunteer to distribute the challahs to the homes of senior congregants. 
This way our newer community can meet some of our congregants who have been members for a longer time. The baking will be done by several different groups of interested participants and this will help foster a connection between volunteers who might not have had other opportunities to get to know each other. As most know, Jewish food preparation can be a very communal activity!
This past week, several volunteers got together to try to get this project off the ground. The first thing was to get the meat kitchen in working order. The custodians were of tremendous help in scrubbing the kitchen spotless. Then we had to figure out what works in the meat kitchen and what does not. There seems to be a debate over whether the ovens work or not and if the warmers are ovens as well. Thanks to Fran Weiss, the Bakery coordinator, for stocking the kitchen with all new supplies and to Sisterhood for providing seed money. We came armed with several different recipes, including one from Religious School Principal Tehilah Eisenstadt, to experiment with in the hope that we would find one that tastes terrific and has minimal rising time. Working with yeast is always challenging and figuring out the right amount of time to rise is really a science. Unfortunately, we haven’t quite figured it out because none of the 4 loaves we made actually rose enough to be called challah. They all tasted good, so we are half way there!
We are researching some other techniques, such as no yeast challah. If anyone has a fool proof method, please share!! We are always looking for volunteers to shop for ingredients as needed, to bake and to deliver. The idea is to have several different groups rotating the baking each week so it is not too much for any one group. We hope to be able to deliver challahs 1-2 times a month and to start before Passover. This is a fun, delicious way to perform a mitzvah! If you would like to be part of the Bakery, please contact either Fran or Andrea.
