July: WAR IN ISRAEL #9
Baruch Hashem, one rabbi's curation of the month's best videos, media and moments.
PHOTO OF THE MONTH
COMEDY OF THE MONTH
TORAH THOUGHT OF THE MONTH
VIDEO OF THE MONTH
SONG OF THE MONTH
NOACHIDE HERO OF THE MONTH
JEWISH HERO OF THE MONTH
ANIMAL HERO OF THE MONTH
MEMES FOR ISRAEL
*Editor’s Note: Please download and share! #UnitedWeStand
PRO-ISRAEL MOMENT
CHARITY OF THE MONTH:
SHIDDUCH CORNER:
STORYTIME FOR CHILDREN
ARTICLE OF THE MONTH:
“Challah: The Transcendent Bread, For More Than a Hundred Generations” by RENEE SKUDRA
I live in the South, in an area where Jews are not the norm. Jewish life must consequently be painstakingly searched for and teased out which can mean traveling hundreds of miles in our 20-year-old car which inordinately seems disinclined to do. Even finding a challah to buy is a daunting experience. There is, however, one tiny bakery in Greensboro, North Carolina which every Friday has three or four of the quintessential braided Jewish breads for sale. Being very financially challenged right now, due to a job loss in our home, we watch our pennies carefully but always make sure that there is money enough for our precious purchase. Each time we do this I remember how my father, a former Yeshiva boy from Ceciny, Poland and a direct descendant of Rabbi Jonatan Eybeshutz of blessed memory, walked seven or so blocks each Friday to a Jewish deli in Toronto (his new home) so that we had a challah for our Sabbath meal. The securing of the Challah felt like nothing less than a sacred act and a small way of the obligation to pour holiness out into the world.
On a Friday several weeks ago we traveled to the bakery, under a darkening sky which suddenly let loose a torrent of rain. Ducking into the shop, I spotted the bread with its shiny, egg-washed golden crust, waiting on the counter , most probably for its only Jewish customer. Having been raised in a mostly secularized way and living in an area where Jews are scarce, I have for the past year undergone a spiritual sea change and have been wending my way back to Judaism for the past year, to deepen my understanding of both my Ashkenazi and Sephardic origins.
Joining synagogue services each Friday with my son has deepened my resolve to draw closer to the teachings of Jewish theology and embed the two of us more closely into the fabric of an universal Jewish community. I have taken into reading some Torah teachings and trying to make their wisdom a part of our daily lives. Recently I learned that according to Jewish law, there are three commandments that Jewish women are required to observe: 1) challah, 2) niddah (laws of family purity) and 3) hadlakat nerot (the lighting of candles on Friday evening before Shabbat and on holidays). This has made an incontrovertible impact. In a past year of difficult and overarching difficulties, I am choosing to start with some simple steps. One of them is to make my own challah, recalling the famous mantra “start where you are.”
Towards this preliminary step I have done a small amount of research about challah, and discovering that the Hebrew word actually refers to the two loaves of bread that form the Shabbat meal’s core. From the Chabad.org website I learn that challah, halachically speaking, is the piece of dough that is separated and consecrated to God each time that bread is baked. We call this action hafrashat challah or separation of the challah. First a blessing is recited when separating an ounce of dough: “Baruch Ata Adonai, Elohenu—Melech Ha’olam acher Kidechanou bemitsvotav vetsivanou l’hafrich challah.” (“Blessed are You, Lord, our G-d, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us with his Commandments and commanded us to separate challah from the dough”). After the challah is separated, one burns it by wrapping it in a piece of silver foil and placing it in the broiler or oven. The dough is burned to the point where it is inedible and can then be thrown out.
Although I know from my reading that there are 613 mitzvot, I didn’t realize that the separation of Challah is one of them and that for more than a hundred generations, Jewish women everywhere have fulfilled this commandment. According to commentators on the website Chabad.org “Challah is G-d’s portion in our bred, in our life. It expressed the belief that all of our sustenance truly comes to us through G-d’s hand. Just as we may not use the bread dough unless we have separated challah, so too, a portion of our livelihood is always reserved for the giving of charity.”
Before eating the challah, with its traditional cover over it, now has the Hamotzi blessing recited: “Blessed are you, God, Ruler of the Universe, who creates bread from the earth.” At least now I am on familiar religious terrain and recall the beautiful cadences of the blessing in Hebrew. I recall how my Polish father, on Friday nights, would bless the challah in three languages – all heavily accented --- English, Yiddish and Polish -- which to my childish ears seems to confer even more honors upon it. I feel I am finally ready to bring my own Challah in the world in the following weeks and I have found an excellent old family recipe (augmented by an iteration or two of my own making). In my mother’s native Germany, the word for Challah was berches (or barches) and I distinctly remember hearing it as a child when her family congregated in our upstate New York home such that it is a happy memory. I have included the recipe for the reader’s dining pleasure and believe it will not disappoint:
Ingredients:
8 cups all-purpose flour , sifted
2½ tablespoons active dry yeast
½ cup sugar
5 tablespoons sunflower oil
1 tablespoon golden sesame seeds
2 teaspoons salt
2 eggs + 1 egg white , beaten
2 cups warm water (more or less depending on the flour used)
For the top
2 teaspoons water
2 egg yolks
White sesame (and/or poppy seeds)
US Customary - Metric
Instructions
Mix all the ingredients in the large bowl of a stand mixer, except the water and salt. Stir in water slowly while kneading.
Add salt and knead the dough for 10 minutes by hand or 5 minutes with a stand-in mixer. The dough should be soft and slightly sticky.
Place dough in a large airtight container or a container covered with a clean cloth. Let rise in a warm, area, draft-free area for 60 to 90 minutes, until double in size.
Place the dough on a work surface and divide into several pieces that will be used as strands.
Flatten each piece of dough with a rolling pin to degas the dough and form strands.
Form braided breads. For medium size breads, each strand must weigh about 3 oz (80 g). For large loaves, each strand will weigh 4 oz (120 g).
Place each challah on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, spacing them 2 to 3 inches (5-8 cm) apart, to give them room to rise a second time, as well as during baking.
Cover the loaves with a clean cloth and let them rise again for about 30 minutes in a dry and draft-free place.
Preheat oven to 350 F / 180 C.
In a small bowl, combine water and egg yolks. Beat well. Brush this mixture on each challah. Sprinkle sesame and / or poppy seeds.
Bake for roughly 20 minutes or until the loaves are golden brown.
For the moment however the just-purchased Challah from the Spring Garden Bakery in Greensboro, North Carolina, graces our table. It has been a good day full of kindnesses and pleasantries and hope-fueled endeavors. As we look at the challah, I remark to my son that its are representative of bringing people together and that by eating a freshly baked Challah we have (as Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein averred) “a taste of divinity …(we) ingest godliness by eating (the same).” My boy, not to be outdone, changes the topic and mentions a wonderful thought which I am unfamiliar with – that Kabballah teaches that every Friday night we have angels that coming visiting our home as we are celebrating the Sabbath.
At this moment the room is noticeably filled with a sudden incandescence and I truly do expect to see an angel who gives us both an invisible embrace this stormy evening without any regard to the raging winds and rain falling outside.
BOOKS BY RABBI WELTON:
