Challah

• 1. Introduction

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  Challah is the braided loaf that Jewish households set on the table for Shabbat and for the major holidays. Two occasions are excluded, Passover and Yom Kippur. In Central Europe the same bread was known as berches.

  Yet the word challah is slippery. It can name the golden, glossy loaf that sits beside the candles. It can also name something that never touches an oven at all.

  That double meaning opens a set of stranger questions. Where did the braid come from, when historians cannot agree? Why does a meal with this bread need salt within reach? And why does a Sabbath table call for two loaves when only one of them is usually eaten?

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• 2. A Pierced Loaf

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  In Biblical Hebrew, challah meant a kind of loaf or cake. The word grows from the root chet-lamed-lamed, which means pierced. The scholar Ludwig Köhler pictured the result as a bread with a hole through its center, made so that it could hang over a post. The ancient Aramaic translation of the Bible uses a different word for the same thing, and that word also means loaf.

  Rabbinic writers gave the word a second life. The biblical verse that commands setting dough aside calls the separated piece a challah. That piece was a tithe meant for the Kohenim. The act itself came to be called separating challah, or taking challah, and the food baked from the remaining dough took the same name. Through a figure of speech called synecdoche, the name then spread to the whole loaf.

  One detail surprises many home bakers. The obligation applies to any loaf of bread, not only to the Shabbat bread. Even so, it is traditional to bake the Sabbath bread in a way that creates the obligation on purpose, as a way of dignifying the day.

  Whether that loaf was always braided is another matter, and one with no agreed answer.

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• 3. The Braid Mystery

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  Maggie Glezer, author of A Blessing of Bread, places the first braids in 15th century Austria and Southern Germany. In her telling, Jewish housewives there followed their non-Jewish counterparts, who plaited the loaves they baked on Sundays.

  Professor Hasia R. Diner offers a symbolic reading instead. For her, the braids were meant to evoke the hair of the Sabbath bride.

  A third theory reaches back further and farther south. The food historian Hélène Jawhara Piñer, a scholar of medieval Sephardic cuisine, points to a 13th-century Arabic cookbook from Spain, the Kitāb al-ṭabīẖ. It contains a recipe for a leavened, braided bread whose preparation closely resembles challah.

  The resemblance has limits. The bread in the cookbook was flavored with saffron and fried. The book describes it as the making of braids, which the Spanish translation renders as guedejas. In Hebrew, the term would be peot.

  On Piñer's analysis, the bread traveled with people. After the Sephardic Jews were expelled from Spain, they carried it northward through Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries.

  Each of these routes ended in a loaf that communities named in very different ways.

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• 4. Names and Cousins

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  In Poland the bread is commonly called chałka, a diminutive of the word chała. In Ukraine it appears as kolach or khala, and in Belarus and Russia as khala. Some English speakers call it cholla bread.

  Yiddish-speaking communities had an even longer list. Across Europe they said khale, berkhes or barches, bukhte, dacher, kitke, koylatch or koilitsh, and shtritsl. Kitke is still in use in South Africa today.

  The name koylatch links challah to a wider family of festive loaves outside the Jewish tradition. These include the Russian kalach, the Serbian kolač, the Ukrainian kolach, the Hungarian kalács and the Romanian colac. In Hungary, the Jewish version is set apart under the name Bárhesz. All of these names descend from the Proto-Slavic kolo, meaning circle or wheel, which points to a round loaf.

  In the Middle East, Shabbat breads simply took the local word for bread, such as noon in Farsi or khubz in Arabic.

  Braided, egg-enriched breads turn up well beyond Jewish kitchens. The Czech vánočka and the Slovak vianočka are very similar to challah and are traditionally eaten at Christmas. The Polish chałka is sweeter than challah. The Romanian colac is presented at holidays and celebrations, including the Christmas caroling known as colindat.

  Bulgarian and Romanian cooks make cozonac. Tsoureki, also called choreg or çörek, is popular in Armenian, Greek and Turkish cuisines. In Macedonia, a sweet braided bread called milibrod joins the dinner table at Orthodox Easter. Germany, Austria and Switzerland have Zopf, with a sweeter version known as Hefezopf or Hefekranz. Brioche is egg-enriched too, but it is not braided.

  In Finland, the cousin is pulla, a small braided pastry seasoned with cardamom that is very popular in Finnish cafés.

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• 5. Dough and Debate

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  A traditional Ashkenazi recipe calls for numerous eggs, fine white flour, water, sugar, yeast, oil and salt. The oil is often vegetable or canola. A so-called water challah leaves out the eggs and has a texture like a French baguette, which typically suits vegan diets. Modern bakers may swap the white flour for whole wheat, oat or spelt, and the sugar for honey or molasses.

  Sugar can become a question of religious law. In Sephardic observance of halachah, a bread with too much sugar counts as cake. That changes the blessing from Hamotzi, said over bread, to Mezonot, said over cake and dessert breads. A loaf that needs Mezonot cannot be used for the Kiddush on Shabbat. Braided breads do appear in Sephardic cooking, but they are typically regional breads such as çörek, eaten by Jews and non-Jews alike.

  Egg challah sometimes contains raisins or saffron. After the first rising, the dough is rolled into ropes and braided. Local shapes exist as well, including hands in Lithuania and fish or hands in Tunisia. A seasonal round loaf may carry a bird's head at its center.

  Ashkenazi bakers may add poppy or sesame seeds, while Sephardi bakers may use anise or sesame. Both egg and water loaves are usually brushed with egg wash for a golden sheen.

  Challah is always pareve, containing neither dairy nor meat. That matters under the laws of Kashrut, because the bread is typically eaten with a meat meal. Brioche and other enriched European breads, which contain butter or milk, do not share this status.

  In the State of Israel, Shabbat breads are especially diverse. They reflect Persian, Iraqi, Moroccan, Russian, Polish, Yemeni and other communities, each topping its loaves according to its own minhag.

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• 6. Two Loaves on the Table

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  Five meals each begin with two complete loaves. Three are Sabbath meals, held on Friday night, Saturday lunch and Saturday late afternoon. Two are holiday meals, one at night and one at lunch the following day.

  This double loaf, called lechem mishneh in Hebrew, commemorates the manna that fell from the heavens while the Israelites wandered in the desert after the Exodus. No manna fell on the Sabbath or on holidays. Instead, a double portion fell the day before, enough to last for both days.

  Both loaves are set out and the blessing is recited over both. Most communities, however, require only one of them to be cut and eaten.

  The braiding itself can carry meaning. In some Ashkenazi customs, each loaf is woven from six strands of dough. Together the two loaves have twelve strands, which alludes to the twelve loaves of the showbread offering in the Temple. Three, five and seven strands are also common.

  Occasionally a baker uses twelve strands in one loaf, known as a Twelve Tribes challah. Some individuals, mostly Hasidic rabbis, go further and set twelve separate loaves on the table.

  Extremely large challot also appear at a wedding or a Brit milah, though without any ritual attached.

  At the Sabbath table itself, the loaves follow a precise order of actions.

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• 7. Blessing and Salt

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  Before anything is said over the bread, the challah sits under a dedicated cover cloth. Normally a blessing over bread would come before a blessing over wine. Covering the loaf lets the Kiddush come first.

  Kiddush is recited over a cup of wine. Each person then ritually washes their hands in preparation for eating bread. In some communities the washing comes before Kiddush. It is customary not to talk between the washing and the eating of the bread.

  The cover is lifted and the two loaves are held up together. The head of the household then recites: "Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha'olam, hamotzi lechem min ha'aretz." The translation is: "Blessed are you our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth."

  The bread is sliced or torn and salted, and the pieces are handed to everyone at the meal. Details differ. Some dip the bread in salt before the blessing. Others bless first, cut or tear the loaf, and only then dip or sprinkle the pieces. Some communities make a nick in the bread with a knife. According to some, if no salt is on the table, a person may ask for it before the blessing, despite the silence rule.

  Salting is considered a critical part of the meal. Customs vary on whether the challah is dipped, sprinkled, or merely has salt nearby. The requirement covers any bread, but it is observed most strictly at Sabbath and holiday meals.

  The reasoning begins in the Temple. The Torah requires that sacrifices to God be offered with salt. After the Second Temple was destroyed, Rabbinic literature suggested that a table set for a meal symbolically replaces the altar. For that reason, the blessing over food should be recited only with salt present.

  The rabbis considered a meal without salt to be no meal at all. A person who eats without performing a commandment is protected by the covenant of salt. In the Torah, salt also stands for the eternal covenant between God and Israel. Because salt is a preservative that never spoils or decays, it signifies the immortality of that bond.

  On one holiday of the year, salt gives way to something sweeter.

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• 8. Holiday Shapes

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  On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, the challah may be rolled into a circle, sometimes called a turban challah. The circle symbolizes the cycle of the year, and raisins are sometimes baked into the dough. Some people keep eating circular challah from Rosh Hashana through Sukkot. In the Maghreb, which includes Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, many Jews bake the turban shape year-round.

  The top may be brushed with honey to symbolize a sweet new year. According to some traditions, the Rosh Hashanah challah is dipped in honey or sprinkled with it, instead of salt. Some continue using honey through Sukkot.

  A very different custom arrives on the Shabbat Mevarchim before Rosh Chodesh Iyar, which is the first Shabbat after Passover ends. Some Ashkenazi Jews bake shlissel challah, or key challah, as a segula for parnassa, a propitious sign for livelihood. Some press the impression of a key into the top. Some lay a key-shaped piece of dough on the loaf, and some bake a real key inside.

  The earliest written source is the Ohev Yisrael of Avraham Yehoshua Heshel, who lived from 1748 to 1825. The book was published in 1863. It treats the custom as already established and offers several kabbalistic interpretations. Critics, however, have charged that the custom comes from Christian or pagan practices.

  Challah rolls go by the names bilkele, bulkele, bilkel or bulkel, with the plural bilkelekh, and by the Polish bajgiel. They are egg-enriched bread rolls similar to a challah bun, and they often serve as the bread for Shabbat or holiday meals.

  There is also an Easter challah, a cross-shaped bread. It is usually prepared by Christians of Jewish descent in the weeks between Passover and Easter. In that loaf, the braided bread of the Sabbath table meets another tradition's calendar.

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