PILOT PROGRAM
Breaking Bread
Where Connection Begins
Breaking Bread is a student-driven culinary and cultural initiative built on a simple belief: when people truly see each other across difference, they find more in common than the world told them to expect. Piloted at UCLA in partnership with UCLA Hillel, the program brings students from vastly different backgrounds together at the exact moment in life when it matters most, not to debate, but to cook, eat, compete, and connect. Food, with its universal power to disarm and invite, becomes the medium for something lasting.
At Challah and Soul, we believe these moments matter because they meet young people before assumptions harden into identity. Breaking Bread gives students a space to build relationships shaped by curiosity rather than the narratives they've inherited, laying groundwork that carries forward long after they leave campus.
One Evening, Four Courses
The UCLA prototype unfolds across a single evening: a screening of the documentary Breaking Bread, which profiles Jewish and Arab chefs in Israel co-creating dishes across cultural lines, followed by a student-facilitated panel on food, heritage, and connection. The evening's centerpiece is a family-style dinner developed collaboratively by student chefs from every culture in the room, and it closes with a Chopped-style culinary competition, where mixed teams cook using ingredients drawn from their own traditions.
The program is also a leadership experience. A student planning committee representing every community involved manages outreach, logistics, and creative direction, the same coalition-building skills Rekindle and Exodus Over Dinner cultivate in their own participants.
