Eli Winkelman
Eli Winkelman has been an entrepreneur for as long as she can remember, setting up lemonade stands and even starting a mail service at her elementary school. She often combined these works with tzedakah, donating the profits from the lemonade to her synagogue to buy prayer books, for example.
When Eli started at Scripps College in Claremont, CA, she had just spent a year in Israel and the semester before that interning in Washington, DC. Shabbat and food were the constants that helped her adjust to the new college environment -- so she started baking challah and soon realized there was a huge demand for this delicious bread. Challah for Hunger was born in the fall of 2004.
With the success of Challah for Hunger in Claremont, students at other campuses became interested in the program; there are now more than 20 chapters. Together, the chapters have donated more than $100,000 to humanitarian aid in less than five years. Eli has been involved in politics, at the local and national levels, working in both campaigns and legislative offices. Eli’s effort, as well as the way she helped her idea go viral and be adopted on many other campuses, was one of the inspirations that helped lead to the Jewish Community Heroes campaign. We hope that the Heroes program will spark the spread of formerly local service programs, whether they are leading vote-getters or not.
