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Lipkin’s Bakery Finds New Home,
Partner in Overbrook Park’s Best Cakes
A Courtesy of Paul Spangler
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
fter closing its Northeast
Philadelphia location in May,
Lipkin’s Bakery has found a
new home to sling knishes.

Last month, Lipkin’s Bakery
reopened as Lipkin’s Best, merging with
Overbrook Park’s Best Cake Kosher
Bakery after it acquired Lipkin’s. The
bakery on Haverford Avenue just east of
City Avenue will maintain Best Cake’s
Keystone-K kosher certification.

Previously, Lipkin’s Bakery was super-
vised by Ko Kosher services; it served
dairy products and was open on Shabbat.

The bakery will con-
tinue to produce most of
Lipkin’s original menu,
bar its dairy knishes, in
compliance with the
pareve hechsher. Lipkin’s
pizza knishes will remain
on the menu but will use
dairy-free vegan cheese.

Lipkin’s Best will also con-
tinue to serve cakes and
challahs but will be closed
on Saturday for Shabbat.

“I figured, you know,
two kosher bakeries are
better than one,” said Lipkin’s owner
Steven Nawalany about the new
partnership. In July, Best Cake owner Paul Spangler
approached Nawalany about a potential
partnership. Spangler was a longtime
customer of Lipkin’s and had previously
worked with Nawalany on business
endeavors that never got off the ground.

When Lipkin’s closed in May, the two
had an opportunity to finally bring a
partnership to fruition.

“Lipkin’s has an iconic name in the
Philadelphia market,” Spangler said.

“Along with that, they have a very loyal
customer base. And so for those reasons,
along with others, it was a good marriage.”
Nawalany closed Lipkin’s Northeast
Philadelphia location — the bakery’s
home for 47 years — due to the rising
cost of ingredients and trouble hiring
front-of-house staff. Lipkin’s move to
Best allowed Nawalany to keep his
back-of-house bakers and serve more
wholesale clients.

Lipkin’s Best’s Keystone-K hechsher
and location near Lower Merion offers a
chance to expand the bakery’s Orthodox
clientele. So far, Nawalany said the part-
nership has been successful. Halfway
through Rosh Hashanah, the bakery sold
out of knishes, having exceeded what they
planned to sell over the two-day holiday.

“I didn’t realize how big of a demand
there was for these knishes,” Nawalany
said. Though Nawalany and Spangler plan
to expand wholesale endeavors and con-
sider catering options, Nawalany hopes
Lipkin’s can maintain a wholesale pres-
ence in Northeast Philly.

The fruitful business of the new bakery
may have come with some ease, but Lipkin’s
transition to Best Cake’s Keystone-K
hechsher took some elbow grease.

In addition to Nawalany and his bakers
making the move to Best Cake’s location, so
too did Lipkin’s 1,700-pound knish lamina-
tion machine, which needed to be kashered
before being transported to the bakery’s
Overbrook Park location. Nawalany and
Spangler disassembled the machine and
thoroughly cleaned each part.

According to Keystone-K adminis-
trator Rabbi Yonah Gross, because the
knish machine does not generate heat
(like an oven or stove would), the kasher-
ing process was not as elaborate.

However, Spangler did go the extra
mile to ensure the equipment was suited
for his bakery: The removable parts of the
machine took a dip in the mikvah.

Cleansing objects in the mikvah is not
always necessary in the kashering pro-
cess, but in this case, certain parts were
submerged to satisfy any doubts regard-
ing its origin. Though the theory is not
certain, the idea behind dipping objects
in the mikvah has been compared to
the reasons why a person converting to
Judaism enters the ritual bath.

Because Spangler is Jewish and owns
a kosher business, dipping the knish
machine in the mikvah was an import-
ant part of the bakeries’ partnership.

“When a person first converts to
Judaism, they now can use their body
towards more sanctified purposes,”
Gross said. “So, too, these products
are now going to be used for sanctified
purposes.” Gross clarified, tongue-in-cheek,
that, indeed, making kosher knishes
for the Philadelphia Jewish commu-
nity would hopefully fulfill a sanctified
purpose. JE
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