Brooklyn Women Bake World's Longest Challah Certified By Guinness World Records

Two years ago, South Africa's Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein had an idea. Wouldn't it be wonderful if most South African Jews kept one Shabbat together, publicly? We posted the story last year, when the idea expanded into a worldwide Shabbat observance, The Shabbos Project.

Last week, the event was repeated in Cape Town, with 1,700 women baking challah. They were joined by women at similar events in 560 cities around the world, including Brooklyn, where women in the Park Slope neighborhood set an official Guinness world record for the world's longest braided bread measuring 20 feet long.

As Brian Pellot wrote for Religion News Service,

Goldstein attributes the movement’s enormous growth — from 1,800 partner groups around the world in 2014 to 5,000 this year — to its grass-roots nature and social media appeal.

“What’s given the project real space to move at such a rapid rate is that it belongs to the people. It’s not a hierarchical organization,” he said on the phone from Israel, where he helped lay the groundwork for community events before returning to Johannesburg on Wednesday.

This week’s global Shabbos Project features yoga events and picnics in San Diego, a 3,000-person street dinner in downtown Los Angeles and major events in 560 cities around the world. In Johannesburg, 5,000 women registered for a challah bake Thursday featuring a live video link with thousands of women in Tel Aviv.

Here's a video of the Guinness official measuring the challah and certifying its length, followed by a video of the mega challah bake in Boca Raton, Florida last week.

Enjoy and Shabbat shalom!

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