Blessing in the Dough    

Globetrotting, by all accounts, was never on Mrs. Suri Jaroslawitz’s bucket list, nor did she ever intend to become a public personality, but life has a funny way of blindsiding the most unsuspecting people and, well, here she is, a chassidishe-babbi-from-Boro-Park-turned-globetrotting public personality.

For many years, Mrs. Jaroslawitz and her husband were the owners of Mendel’s Pizza in Boro Park. She was a teacher, and later an assistant principal, when her husband decided to open the store.

“My husband needed my help, so my job was to be at his side,” Suri says simply. She quit her principal job, and for the next 30 years ran the busy Brooklyn establishment with the same drive and energy one would use to run a Fortune 500 company.

Twelve years ago, a friend walked into the store. “Suri,” she said, “you know my daughter didn’t have children for years. We needed a yeshuah, and I was advised by Rebbetzin Kanievsky z”l to organize 40 women to come and be mafrish challah together in one room, all answering Amen to each other’s brachos and davening together. By the next year my daughter was a mother, and now every year I do it again. Will you come?”