How a Southern Methodist family, a mikvah, and a luncheon menu led to Challah & Soul
By Judi Leib, Founder & CEO, Challah and Soul
My mother was raised in Georgia, the daughter of a deacon in the Methodist Church. Around 1966, when I was four years old, she converted to Judaism. It was a Reform conversion, and at the time no one questioned what that meant for me. I was her daughter, so I was Jewish.
The bigger conversation was about my grandfather. His colleagues at church wanted to know how he felt about his daughter's conversion, and they assumed he must be devastated. He wasn't. He told them he was at peace with it.
As he always explained it, his daughter had been a young woman with no path to G-d. As a man of G-d, he was simply happy she had found one.
I grew up carrying both of those worlds: the Southern roots of my mother's family and the Jewish life she chose for us. I didn't know yet how much I would come to need both.
Fast forward to the early 2000s. I had married a Jewish man, just as I'd always planned, and the Conservative rabbi who married us never asked about my Jewish status. We had two daughters.
Then one day I read an article in the Jewish Journal about a woman whose Judaism had been questioned. Her story was mine: her mother had converted, but she herself never had.
I went to my rabbi and asked about my own situation. He was very kind, but honest. In the eyes of Israel and the Conservative movement, I might not be considered Jewish, and neither would my daughters.
I was upset. I never wanted my girls to feel "less than." But I also didn't want to spend months going through a conversion for a religion I already felt so deeply embedded in. So together, my rabbi and I created an Affirmation. I would sit before a Beit Din and immerse in the mikvah, and then I would immerse both of my daughters.
I went into the mikvah, reluctantly, but my guide changed everything. She walked me through each step with such care, explaining what was happening and why, so that nothing felt rushed or unfamiliar. When I brought my daughters into the water, she read poetry that felt as though it had been written just for me.
What I had dreaded as a hurdle became one of the most meaningful spiritual experiences of my life.
In 2021, Hadassah asked me to consult on a menu. One of their members, a Black Jewish mother, wanted to host a one-time luncheon for moms to show that we have far more in common than we have differences. They came to me because I'm a trained chef with deep Southern roots, and I know both Southern soul food and Jewish soul food.
Not far into the planning, as I listened to this mother's stories, I realized why the project resonated so deeply. Jews of Color are constantly asked how they are Jewish, as if their belonging needs an explanation.
I knew that question. My family had lived a version of it twice: people assuming my grandfather would grieve his daughter's choice, and decades later, my own Judaism being called into question. Hearing her stories made me see my own history in a new way.
That's when I knew this was more than a one-time luncheon. It was a movement. And so Challah & Soul was born.
At my core, I am Jewish. I am also my mother's daughter and my grandfather's granddaughter, and I bring both sets of values into this work. From my Southern roots, I learned that feeding people is how you make room for them. From Judaism, I learned that welcoming the stranger is not a nicety but an obligation, and that every person carries a story worth hearing.
Challah & Soul brings Black and Jewish communities together through food, storytelling, and shared experiences. But underneath, it grew out of everything I come from: a Southern family, a Jewish home, and a question my family has lived with for generations.
I had no idea how much that first meeting would change my life. I only knew that I recognized the question in her stories, because it had been asked of us too.
And at our table, no one has to explain how they belong.
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