22 | APRIL 8 • 2021 

the Sunday class to make 
their dough alongside 
Turkin. An educator from 
Partners Detroit will also 
join the class to share details 
on the many positive influ-
ences that challah can instill 
in a woman’s life.
“Pam is an experienced 
baking teacher,” Fink says. 
“She has a successful busi-
ness of teaching people to 
bake all kinds of things over 
Zoom, but challah is really 
her passion.” 
Fink and Turkin, who 
are longtime friends, have 
recently been studying the 
mitzvah of challah and the 
blessings it can bring to 
those who are involved in it.
When Turkin had the idea 
of sharing this knowledge 
with others and turning the 
art of challah into a class 
people can participate in, 
Fink says Partners Detroit 
was all for it. They collabo-
rated with nonprofit Jewish 
engagement and literacy 
organization PJ Library, plus 
JFamily Detroit, to get the 
idea off the ground. They 
developed advertising, what 
the program would look like 
and how to get it out into 
the local community.

‘A HUGE SUCCESS’
Generating excitement 
wasn’t difficult. “It’s really 
been a huge success,” Fink 
says. Flour Power has even 
seen three generations of 
women in a family sign up 
for the program together, 
connecting while fulfilling 
a timeless Jewish tradition. 
They practice different types 
of funky braids, ranging all 

the way from a heart shaped 
challah to a nine-braid loaf.
In each class, women get 
a chance to reminisce on 
their memories of making 
challah or other meaningful 
Jewish memories, something 
Turkin often asks partic-
ipants to share with the 
group. It’s part of the reason 
why Flour Power limits 
classes to small sizes, despite 
demand. “Once 12 people 
register for any given class, 
we’ll close registration for 
that class,” Fink says. “We 
don’t want to give up the 
intimacy of it.”
Fink and Turkin plan to 
continue the program up to 
the summer, when they’ll 
take a short break from 
classes, and then resume 
later. “We’re definitely happy 
to go forward with it for as 
long as we can,” Fink says 
from a Partners Detroit per-
spective. “We’ve found that 
people, even people who’ve 
never made challah before, 
love the experience.”
Fink explains there is 
something “deeply satisfy-
ing” about baking, especially 
when baking is connected 
to a spiritual element. Flour 
Power gives participants 
a chance to learn to make 
challah from the comfort of 
their own homes, creating 
a variety of new challah 
breads for Shabbat and 
beyond.
“Challah taps into our 
feminine energy,” Fink says. 
“It’s really been a special 
class.” 

To register for Flour Power, visit 

partnersdetroit.org/flour-power.

“CHALLAH TAPS 
INTO OUR
FEMININE ENERGY.”

— PARTNERS DETROIT’S SHAINDEL FINK

FLOUR POWER continued from page 21

OUR COMMUNITY

F

or Seema Selmar, her 
chosen career path to 
become a lawyer hit a 
speed bump early on. She was 
living in Israel where she had 
just started her undergraduate 
law degree, when her family 
decided to move back to the 
U.S. With law being a postgrad-
uate subject in the U.S., Selmar 
had to choose another profes-
sion to study, landing on busi-
ness and ultimately becoming a 
credit analyst in New York. 
Then came marriage to 
David and seven children, 
including one with special 
needs, so Selmar’s career was 
put on hold while she brought 
up her family. 
Selmar of Oak Park, a mem-
ber of Dovid Ben Nachum 
Synagogue and affiliated with 
Yeshivah Gedolah, eventually 
worked part time as a teacher. 
However, she “kept going back 
to my initial career idea, some-
thing in the legal field, but I 
didn’t know how to make that 
work,
” she said. 
Six years ago, Selmar heard 
about Women to Work, a 
four-week course run by JVS 
Human Services that provides 
critical skills to women who 
have been out of the workforce. 

Participants are given a myriad 
of resoucres vital to securing a 
job. The program has helped 
approximately 2,000 find a new 
direction for their working lives 
since its launch in the 1980.
For Selmar, now 63, the pro-
gram led training in civil and 
domestic mediation, and she 
now works as a volunteer for 
the Oakland Mediation Center 
and is considering opening her 
own mediation business.
Judy Richmond, Women to 
Work coordinator, says there 
has never been a more import-
ant time for her program. “The 
pandemic has hit women in 
the workforce especially hard. 
Some have had to stay home 
with children when schools 
were closed, others were in jobs 
which simply dried up as busi-
nesses closed,
” Richmond said. 
“Learning new and vital skills 
can make all the difference to 
finding work quickly.
”
The next virtual session of 
Women to Work runs from 
April 20-May 13 and includes 
eight sessions on Tuesdays and 
Thursdays from 9-11 a.m. For 
more information and to regis-
ter, contact Richmond at (248) 
233-4232 or jrichmond@
jvshumanservices.org. 

DAVID SELMAR

JVS Human Services’ Women to Work 
program changes lives.

Forging a New Path

ALISON SCHWARTZ SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS 

Seema 
Selmar

