Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

How A Tel Aviv Café Is Helping The Needy With Free Challah

A Tel Aviv coffee shop is offering free challahs for those who need them in a novel way — by leaving challahs on café tables for an hour each Friday afternoon.

Coffee Station at 152 Ibn Gabirol Street, the street Israelis pronounce as Even Gvirol, will have challahs on tables from 3:30-4:30 p.m each Friday, owner Shay Kares posted. Quantities are limited.

“Just come and take,” Kares wrote.

The café is known for elaborate iced-coffee drinks and bagel sandwiches, though this columnist recommends a simple café hafuch and a chocolate ball. Coffee Station is a chain, but the challahs are only available at the Ibn Gabirol branch.

A full-size challah in Tel Aviv generally costs between ten and twenty shekels, and the high cost of food has resulted in social-media campaigns.

One man rebelled against the cost of cottage cheese, and another posted his grocery receipts from Berlin, to highlight the difference in price for items like chocolate pudding with whipped cream on top — known as Milky in Israel. Those grocery receipts went viral.

In response, the deep-discount supermarket chain Cofix offered Milky pudding at the price of two for five shekels. The chain also sells small challahs for six shekels each.

Aviya Kushner is The Forward’s language columnist and the author of The Grammar of God (Spiegel & Grau, 2015). Follow her on Twitter at @AviyaKushner

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.