🤗 Order Sourdough for the Holidays!

Donations this month are going towards repairing an antisemitic world

Good morning bread friends!

The fact that you're reading this means you're still here. I'm deeply grateful that you choose to remain engaged in this Bread & Justice community.

Six months ago, I decided to take a "summer break" from baking. The idea was that I'd just take two months off during my kids’ summer break from school and then jump right back into baking. For the previous 18 months, I had successfully carved out time each week to bake between 32 - 48 loaves of bread in the morning before work.

After two months of not keeping that routine, it turns out I struggled to figure out how to get back into the habit of baking early in the mornings. That time I had previously protected for baking unexpectedly felt impossible to find again.

As I send out this letter, I must confess that I still need to find a solution for a new sustainable routine. However, with the slowdown of the holiday season... I am confident that I can pull off a big bake next week.

I can’t fully express how excited I am to get my hands back into a huge batch of dough. Just please know that I'm deeply grateful to those of you who have patiently waited to order bread from me again.

Bread & Justice is a philanthropic enterprise where each month we donate 100% of our profits to a different nonprofit working to make the world more just. It has been heavy on my heart recently that I want to do a bake for a specific issue that has been disturbing me.

It seems that antisemitism has been remarkably flagrant lately. And somehow it needs to be repeated that hating people for their religion and/or ethnicity is evil and has no place in our society.

As folks prepare to celebrate Hanukkah, Bread & Justice stands by our friends and neighbors and is committed to donating 100% of our profits from this bake to the Jewish Federation of Madison. Since 1940 their mission has been to enrich Jewish life and assist those facing hardship here at home and around the world.

I'm deeply sorry to see that Jewish people have recently become the target of so much fear-mongering & vile cowardice. It is disturbing to see numerous celebrities and public figures normalize this behavior. Sadly this is consistent with the trend of Anti-Jewish hate crimes rising steadily for years.

Jewish people are estimated to be about 2% of the U.S. population overall, but for over 30 years, they have often been the target of between 9-13% of overall hate crimes, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

In that same report, CSHE found that among the cities where they collect data, Anti-Jewish hate crimes rose 59% in 2021.

2022 data is incomplete so far, but if 2022 data maintains this trajectory, it would be only the third time since national record-keeping began on the topic that hate crimes (overall) rose for four straight years in our country.

This is a dreadfully sobering reality.

However, I am in the business of turning righteous anger into action steps... and since you are reading this, you probably are too.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has a great video from a few months ago articulating what antisemitism is. At the end of the video, they call us to never ignore, overlook, or accept antisemitic comments.

This is similar to the recommendation I often give to folks searching for a way to be a force for good when the world seems so overwhelmingly hateful. My advice is always to be proactive about using your voice in your spheres of influence.

In this case, if someone you know is saying things that are perpetuating untrue, unfair, or harmful things about Jewish people as a whole… your superpower in that situation is that you know each other. You can address them in a way that a stranger on the internet simply can’t. Based on your existing relationship they will hopefully trust that you are not attacking them but rather questioning why they think that, correcting any misinformation, and empathetically directing them to sources of truth.

If you are a teacher (or you just appreciate organized learning materials) the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has a helpful body of resources for teaching about antisemitism.

And since we are donating 100% of our profits to support the Jewish Federation of Madison… another small way that you can help is to buy some sourdough bread :)

Here is the plan for holiday bread:

If you’d like a loaf of sourdough bread this month, you can place an order right now on the website for pickup on Wednesday (Dec 21st) of next week. Please note that this is a pre-order for a week ahead of time, and bread pickup is NOT happening this week.

I’m super excited to get bread in your hands soon. If you’ve never bough bread before, or if it has just been a while, know that you’ll get full instructions for how & when to pick up bread from my house when you place your order on the website. Supply is limited, and I expect it will sell out.

Thanks for everything!
I love you all.
Mo Cheeks

P.S. Last year I learned the term Tikkun Olam from a friend & bread customer. In modern expression, this Hebrew term means to ‘repair the world’. As my friend was explaining this concept within Judaism to me, they shared that the social justice committee at their synagogue is regularly looking for ways to be proactive about contributing to a more just society. They were inspired to act on their social justice mission and decided to very generously pre-order what amounts to nearly a literal metric ton of flour from Meadowlark to be used by Bread & Justice. While they never requested to receive any public recognition for this kindness, I want to take this opportunity to publicly share my deep gratitude for the fact that Bread & Justice has been quietly supported in part by Beth Israel Center’s social justice committee since the summer of 2021. ♥️