Zoom Baker

JEWSIN THED

LEFT: Screenshot from Shaindle’s Zoom Baking class for JARC residents. RIGHT: Jonathon Washington — Grosberg Home. Zoom Baker

Shaindle Braunstein skipped out on the Great American Baking Show to lead JARC.

STACY GITTLEMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

If JARC CEO Shaindle Braunstein were a baked good, she’d be a French macaron: delicate, JOHN HARDWICK interviews for JARC’s top position. Braunstein made it through the final rounds of yet complicated. This is a rigorous casting process the answer the mother and was considering leavof four and grandmother Shaindle Braunstein ing town for a month of of two gave during a filming in England when 2018 interview with the she also got the news that casting producers for the Great JARC offered her the CEO American Baking Show as she position. Though she never was also going for rounds of went to compete on television, Braunstein still put her amateur baking prowess to good use.

As the months of the pandemic wear on, her interactive Zoom baking classes have become one of JARC’s most popular activities among the organization’s clients living in dozens of adult homes across Metro Detroit. In her own right and in her students’ eyes, she has become a baking star.

“I made the best decision,” Braunstein said, in skipping the trip to England to take the new job. “It was always my dream to have my own baking show, and when I am teaching over Zoom, the residents make me feel like I am a YouTube star. Our staff have been incredible providers in their roles of creating dynamic programming like this that provide opportunities of social engagement even during the pandemic.”

Since early childhood, Braunstein has been an avid baker. Her living room in Oak Park is stocked with cake and cookie boxes ready to be filled with the latest batches of cakes, cookies and challah. She sees baking as a way to nurture friends, family and colleagues and turns to baking shows for relaxation.

‘I COULD DO THAT’

“I would watch baking competitions on the Food Network and thought, ‘I could do that.’ So, I applied in the spring to the Great American Baking Show,

Chocolate cake, Colorful cookies and Shaindle’s Signature Marble cookies created for the Great American Baking Show.

Nichole Rubin — 12th Estates Home.

not for the monetary gain of it but for the competition itself. I love the precise nature of baking. Follow a recipe exactly, and things turn out great.”

Months later, after applying and starting to interview, she realized the increasing chance she’d need to take a month off from her previous job as chief operating officer at Jewish Family Service. Everyone there who had been on the receiving end of Braunstein’s confections at staff and committee meetings was supportive of her potential baking fame.

“When I approached my boss, Perry Ohren, about the possibility of taking a month off, he turned to me and said, ‘We’ll figure out a way to make it work.’”

At the same time she was being quizzed about specialty flours and precise baking temperatures and times by the show producers, Braunstein was also making her way through the final rounds of interviews for the top post at JARC.

As she Zooms from her own kitchen into the kitchens of her JARC friends, all who know her by name, Braunstein patiently teaches how to measure out flour and other ingredients for challah, cookies and cakes. Until they can bake together again in person, Braunstein said JARC has put technology to good use to teach a new skill and to cultivate a sense of pride.

One of those students is resident Nichole Rubin, who enjoys baking challah at Braunstein’s instruction.

“It is lots of fun,” said

“I MADE THE BEST DECISION.”

— SHAINDLE BRAUNSTEIN

Rubin. “I get to see Shaindle bake over Zoom, and I enjoy all the amazing treats she comes up with.”

As an observant Jew, Braunstein has always taught the mitzvah of hospitality. When she teaches from her home kitchen in the evenings after a day at the home office, she feels like she is welcoming guests into her home.

“As we bake, students will call out, ‘Is that your kitchen?’ It’s like they are here with me in my house, and it makes us feel more connected. There is not a client at JARC who does not know me by name or does not think of me as their friend Shaindle. If anything, that has resulted from baking over Zoom, it has brought these relationships to a deeper level.”

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