A Georgia Democratic candidate for the state Senate, Nathalie Kanani, came under ridicule over the weekend after a Passover ad published in the Atlanta Jewish Times reportedly featured challah, the braided Shabbat loaf, traditionally avoided during the holiday of unleavened bread.
The controversy spread on Saturday after Atlanta Journal-Constitution political reporter Greg Bluestein posted about the ad on X/Twitter.
Kanani, who is running for Georgia State Senate District 14, has publicly described herself as a candidate focused on affordability, healthcare, housing, education, and workers’ issues. In a LinkedIn post published about a month ago, she said she had officially qualified to run for the seat.
Basic misunderstanding of well-known Jewish tradition
The issue appears to have stemmed from a holiday greeting in the Atlanta Jewish Times Passover edition, which was published this past week and included a wide range of Passover-themed community messages and content.
Bluestein wrote on X that a Georgia Senate candidate’s Passover ad in that week’s Atlanta Jewish Times “features challah,” adding, “It’s the thought that counts, I guess.” His post helped push the item into broader political and Jewish social media circles. For many Jewish readers, it signaled a basic misunderstanding of one of Judaism’s best-known observances.
The mockery built quickly.
Raw Story, which aggregated the reaction, quoted conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg joking that the image was like serving a “Yom Kippur BLT sandwich,” while progressive commentator Molly Jong-Fast called it “incredible” and added that “Veep [the sitcom starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus] was a documentary.”
The same report also cited Georgia state Rep. Esther Panitch criticizing the mistake and noting that, as the only Jewish member of the Georgia General Assembly, she was available for “holiday consults.”
As of Sunday, Kanani’s campaign had not issued any publicly visible response in the sources reviewed for this report.