H eadlines
Couple Connects to Community, One Loaf at a Time
L OCA L
SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
RAN BETITE AND Yael
Cooperman’s first year in
Philadelphia was full of surprises.

The couple moved to Queen
Village from Tel Aviv in
September of 2019. Cooperman
planned to take a medical
residency and Betite wanted
to continue his mechanical
engineering career. The couple
was also planning for the
birth of their second child and
wanted to be near Cooperman’s
parents in Maryland.

The coronavirus pandemic
didn’t stop baby Rafael from
arriving in April, but the crisis
stalled most other aspects of
the family’s life, including
Cooperman’s medical licensing
exam and Betite’s green card
hearing. Cooperman took a job
writing content for a health care
company while waiting for her
exam to be rescheduled, and her
husband turned to a popular
quarantine pastime: baking
sourdough. Betite was not a total bread-
making novice; he had made
bread for friends in college
and once took a baking class
while on vacation in Paris. In
Philadelphia, he began making
sourdough for his family.

“We really couldn’t find
bread we were looking for in the
neighborhood. So, I just started
to make the bread we eat,” he
said. “If you’re already eating
bread, why don’t you make it
the best bread you can find?”
Betite’s sourdough is made
from whole wheat flour, spelt,
rye and other grains, which
makes it more nutritious than
typical white bread. Once the
pandemic hit, he spent his extra
time watching baking videos on
YouTube to hone his craft.

He was baking so much
and so often the couple started
giving away his loaves on
the Buy Nothing Project, a
Facebook group for neighbors
looking to exchange groceries,
furniture and more.

“All of a sudden, people sort
of reached out and were like,
‘Oh, my God, can we get some of
this please?’” Cooperman said.

This fall, the couple launched
the bakery pop-up Metuka
Freshly Baked. Metuka, which
means “sweetie” in Hebrew,
was also the given name of a
long-deceased woman who
lived in the couple’s Tel Aviv
apartment before they rented it.

During an intensive renovation
process, they discovered photo-
graphs and documents with
information about her life.

Betite bakes around 120
loaves per day in a commer-
cial kitchen on North Broad
Street, where he rents space.

The kitchen features a steam
oven designed for baking
sourdough. The project has been an oppor-
tunity for the couple to connect
with Philadelphia, particularly
the Jewish community, at a time
when opportunities to meet new
people in person are limited.

Betite and Cooperman sell
bread, babka, muffins and other
baked goods at local farmers
markets and online, where they
get to chat with customers. They
are searching for retail space in
Queen Village to expand further.

It took Betite a while to get
his challah recipe right, but he
managed to perfect it before
the High Holidays after tasting
his in-laws’ loaf. The morning
before Yom Kippur, the couple
set up shop outside Cohen
& Co. Hardware and Home
Goods on Passyunk Avenue.

“That’s when we really got a
chance to connect with Jewish
members of the community
because it was Rosh Hashanah,
and so everybody was super
excited about getting a challah.

And that’s when we really got
to connect with people. We
got a million messages, people
wishing us a happy new year,
and it was really nice to sort of
get connected with people that
way,” Cooperman said.

Betite also makes basbousa,
a semolina cake, using his Iraqi
Jewish grandmother’s recipe.

“It comes from an Arabic
kitchen, which is part of my
culture,” he said. “I try to bring
some of my culture into the things
that I do and into the kitchen —
things that are not necessarily an
American staple — because I feel
like that’s showing my identity in
the food that I make.”
Although Betite
and Cooperman are not religious,
maintaining a connection to
Judaism after leaving Israel
was important to them. They
attended events at Society Hill
Synagogue, South Philadelphia
Shtiebel and Chabad before the
pandemic. To Cooperman, the feeling
of preparing for Shabbat was
especially important.

“When you’re in Tel Aviv,
when you’re in Israel in
general on Fridays, everything
shuts down and people are
all getting ready for Shabbat,
LO C AL
ANDY GOTLIEB | JE MANAGING EDITOR
6XQGD\ 2FWREHUWK
:KDWHYHU,W7DNHV $0
/HDUQPRUHDQGEX\\RXUWLFNHWDWMHZLVKUHOLHIRUJ OCTOBER 15, 2020
Photo by Yael Cooperman
and there’s like this sort of
last-minute rush to get every-
thing in place so you can go
your family’s house for dinner,
and people run out and buy
challah, flowers and whatever
they need. There’s a feeling in
the air,” she said.

Betite said the commu-
nity has helped his family feel
settled in their new home while
also supporting his baking
ventures. “I feel a lot of love from
Je w i s h c om mu n it y i n
Philadelphia, and I want to
say thank you. It’s a beautiful
thing” he said. l
spanzer@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
Kosher Bakery, Soft
Pretzel Maker to Merge
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10 Ran Betite holds a challah loaf.

JEWISH EXPONENT
BENJAMIN TEHRANI and
Hakeem Moore already shared
an unusual business pairing
culturally, so adding another
element to the stew certainly
doesn’t seem out of place.

Starting Oct. 18, the I
Want Moore Bakery owned
by Tehrani (an Iranian Jew)
and Moore (who grew up in a
Muslim and Christian family in
Philadelphia and Virginia) will
merge with Tasty Twisters, a
longtime pretzel bakery owned
by the Greek Loucas Louca at
5002 Umbria St. in Manayunk.

About three years ago,
Tehrani and Moore opened I
Want Moore Bakery, at 220
Krams Ave. in Manayunk,
where they sell bread, tarts
and cakes, among other baked
goods. The bakery, super-
vised by Keystone K, doesn’t
have a storefront, but it
does have an online store at
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



H eadlines
Name: Lions Gate
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Comment: JE 10/15
Ad Number: 00092014
SKILLED NURSING
The revamped interior of Tasty
Twisters, which merges on Oct. 18
with I Want Moore Bakery.

Hakeem Moore and
Benjamin Tehrani
Photos courtesy of I Want Moore Bakery
iwantmoorebakery.com. Moore said business was
really picking up earlier this
year, and then the pandemic
hit. The bakery lost as much as
80% of its wholesale business.

“Synagogues and schools
were our primary clients, and
they weren’t open or having
events,” he said.

I Want Moore Bakery needed
a change in plans. And before
he retired to Israel, Rabbi
Naftoli Eisemann, who served
as the kashrus administrator
for Community Kashrus of
Philadelphia (Keystone-K), put
the bakery in touch with Tasty
Twisters, which is also certified
by Keystone-K.

“We didn’t know they were
this close to us,” Moore said.

“They were just minutes from us.”
Aside from pretzels and a
few other items, the store will
carry I Want Moore’s nondairy/
pareve and dairy pastries, as
well as coffee, with delivery
available through Uber Eats
and GrubHub.

“We’re going to start slowly
just to see how it goes,” Louca
said, noting that customer
feedback will determine how
the merged bakeries evolve.

If the partnership goes well, the
product mix might be expanded
and the small shop remodeled.

“It seems like people
are very interested and very
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM excited,” Louca said. “I get a lot
of positive comments.”
Tasty Twisters’ web site said
the business is family-owned
and operated, with “roots tracing
back to the early 1900s both in
the United States and Europe.”
Tehrani and Moore’s
partnership developed in a
roundabout way.

After the Iranian Revolution
in 1979, Tehrani moved to
Pennsylvania, where a brother
lived. Eventually, he and two
brothers started a rug business.

After more than 40 years of
running Tehrani Brothers
Oriental Rugs, Tehrani wanted a
change, so he became a mashgiach.

Moore, meanwhile, gradu-
ated from the Art Institute of
Philadelphia in 2010, then worked
for a series of bakeries, becoming
interested in the idea of one day
having his own establishment. He
had his first experience making
kosher baked goods at Six Points
Kosher Events in King of Prussia.

Moore and Tehrani met at
the since-closed Dairy Express
in Merion Station, where
Tehrani worked as a mashgiach.

That’s where the two met,
starting an improbable chain of
events, with Moore handling the
baking and Tehrani overseeing
the business side. l
agotlieb@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0797
Get to know
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OCTOBER 15, 2020
11