Challah

This article is about the type of bread. For the article on the separation tithe of challah, see The Mitzvah of Challah.

Challah

Challah sprinkled with sesame seeds
Alternative names	Hallah
Type	Bread
Region or state	derpland candy
Main ingredients	eggs, fine white flour, water, yeast, sugar
Media: Challah

Challah (plural: challot/challos) (Hebrew: חלה) is a special Jewish braided bread eaten on Sabbath and holidays.
It is also named khale (eastern Yiddish, German and western Yiddish), berches (Swabian), Zopf (Switzerland) barkis (Gothenburg), bergis (Stockholm), birkata in Judeo-Amharic, vianočka in Slovak language, τσουρέκι in Greek, kalács (Hungarian), chałka (Polish), colaci (Romanian), and kitke (South Africa).

Religious significance

According to Jewish tradition, the three Sabbath meals (Friday night, Saturday lunch, and Saturday late afternoon) and two holiday meals (one at night and lunch the following day) each begin with two complete loaves of bread. This "double loaf" (in Hebrew: lechem mishneh) commemorates the manna that fell from the heavens when the Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years after the Exodus from Egypt according to Jewish religious belief. The manna did not fall on Sabbath or holidays; instead, a double portion would fall the day before the holiday or sabbath. Each single loaf is sometimes woven with six strands. Together, both loaves have twelve which may represent each tribe of Israel. Other numbers of strands commonly used are three, five and seven. Occasionally twelve are used, referred to as a "Twelve Tribes" Challah.

Ingredients and preparation

Preparing braided challah

Traditional challah recipes use numerous eggs, fine white flour, water, sugar, yeast, and salt. Modern recipes may use fewer eggs (there are also eggless versions) and may replace white flour with whole wheat, oat, or spelt flour. Sometimes honey or molasses is substituted as a sweetener. The dough is rolled into rope-shaped pieces which are braided and brushed with an egg wash before baking to add a golden sheen. Sometimes raisins are added. Some bakers like to sprinkle sesame or poppy seeds on top for flavor.

Challah is usually parve (containing neither dairy nor meat, important in the laws of Kashrut), unlike brioche and other enriched European breads, which contain butter or milk.

Hafrashat challah ritual

Main article: The Mitzvah of Challah

Two homemade challahs covered by a traditional embroidered challah cover

The term challah also refers to the Mitzvah of separating a portion of the dough before braiding. This portion of dough is set aside as a tithe for the Kohen. In Hebrew, this Mitzvah is called "hafrashat challah."

Traditional Sabbath meal

It is customary to begin the Friday night meal and the two meals eaten during Sabbath with a blessing over two challot. After kiddush over a cup of wine, the head of the household recites the blessing over bread: Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha'olam, hamotzi lechem min ha'aretz" (translation: "Blessed are you, LORD, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth").

Special challah

Rosh Hashanah

On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, the challah may be rolled into a circular shape (sometimes referred to as a "Turban Challah"), symbolizing the cycle of the year, and baked with raisins in the dough. Sometimes the top is brushed with honey in honor of the "sweet new year."

Schlissel challah

For the Shabbat Mevarchim preceding Rosh Chodesh Iyar — i.e., first Shabbat after the end of the Jewish holiday of Passover — there is a custom of baking schlissel challah ("key challah") as a segula (propitious sign) for parnassa (livelihood). Some make an impression of a key on top of the challah before baking; some place a key-shaped piece of dough on top of the challah before baking; and some bake an actual key inside the challah. The earliest written source for this custom is the sefer Ohev Yisrael by Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heshel, the Apter Rav. He calls schlissel challah "an ancient custom," and also offers several kabbalistic interpretations. He also writes that after spending forty years in the desert, the Israelites continued to eat the manna until they brought the Omer offering on the second day of Passover. From that day on, they no longer ate manna, but food that had grown in the Land of Israel. Since they now had to start worrying about their sustenance rather than having it handed to them each morning, the key on the challah is a form of prayer to God to open up the gates of livelihood. This practice has been criticized for its origins as a non-Jewish custom. However, others dispute this contention and claim that there is no evidence connecting Schlissel Challah to Christian custom.

Challah rolls

Shabbat Challah rolls, known as a bilkele or bulkele or bilkel or bulkel (plural: bilkelekh; Yiddish: בילקעלע) baigiel (Polish) is bread roll made with eggs, similar to a challah bun. It is often used as the bread for Shabbat meals or for meals during the Jewish holidays.

Mizrahi Jewish custom

Mizrahi Jews have no tradition of using a braided loaf. Instead, the Middle Eastern Mizrahis use a flat bread resembling pita. In some traditions twelve pitta breads are used, to represent the twelve loaves of showbread in the Temple. They are arranged in two layers in the formation :••:, with the central two breads of the upper layer used for the blessing. Mizrahis of Central Asian-Bukharian descent eat a bread called leeposhka.

Salt

According to Jewish law and practice, salting Challah is a critical component of HaMotzi, the blessing over bread. Salt has always played an indispensable role in Jewish life and ritual dating back to the biblical period of ancient Israel. With high quantities located in the Dead Sea region of the historical land of the Jewish people, salt was considered the most essential and common of all elements.

In the Bible, salt has come to symbolize the eternal covenant with God. As a preservative, the mineral never spoils or decays, signifying the immortality of this bond. Moreover, adding taste to food, salt represents a covenant with God that has meaning and flavor.

The religious significance of salt is discernable in the Temple Period as portrayed in Jewish liturgy. The importance of salt in ritual is symbolized in the ceremony of the covenant, or the Temple sacrifice to God. As the most important necessity of life, salt is a requisite for the ‘food of God,’ or the Temple sacrifice. As commanded by God in Leviticus 2:13, “with all thy sacrifices, thou shalt offer salt.” It seems in this verse that salt is required for meal-offerings only; however, Rabbis later concluded that just as no sacrifices can be offered without the presence of priests, no sacrifices can be offered without salt.

Following the destruction of the Temple, Jewish ritual was redefined to exist in a Diaspora. Rabbinic literature constructed a concept suggesting that a table set for a meal was to symbolize the Temple altar. Resultantly, salt should be placed on the table and the blessing over food should not be recited without it.

The ultimate significance of salt in the blessing over Challah and in the tradition of Judaism suggests that a meal without salt cannot be considered a meal. As Soferim 15:8 suggests, as the world could not do without salt, neither could it do without Torah. The Challah bread, blessed and eaten on the Sabbath, is a part of this obligation; especially considering the Challah was the priest’s portion of the bread during the Temple period.

It is customary for guests to remain silent between the recitation of the blessing over the Challah and the consumption of the bread. However, a man is permitted to ask for salt in the case that the bread is inferior and salt has not been placed on the table.

The custom of assuring salt is included in the blessing over bread is highlighted and debated further in rabbinic literature. Upon eating at a meal without performing a commandment, the covenant of salt protects them. It is now custom to dip the Challah or bread into salt before the HaMotzi.

This custom is illustrated further within the Jewish tradition. A Yiddish proverb declared that “"no Jewish table should be without salt" which is in accordance with the homily that makes one's table "an altar before the Lord" (cf. Avot 3:4).

In Jewish Midrash, Yalkut HaReuveni tells the following story:

The world is one part wilderness, one part settled land, and one part sea. Said the sea to G-d: "Master of the Universe! The Torah will be given in the wilderness; the Holy Temple will be built on settled land; and what about me?" Said G-d: "The people of Israel will offer your salt upon the Altar."

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi interpreted this story as such: “The wine is like the wilderness—fermentation requires wild, airborne yeast. The bread is like the settled land—bread is created through cultivation and human intervention. Salt is like the ocean—the sea, where life began and purity begins.” These are the three realms of the world and are framework of what unifies the altar within the Jewish home. Thus through the Sabbath blessing over wine and Challah, the covenant with God is manifested.

See also

• Hallot
• Israeli cuisine
• Jewish cuisine
• Hefekranz
• Terumah
• Tsoureki
• Kalács