A braided hallah
A round hallah
I had never seen a hallah until I came to America in
1961, but once I discovered it I began to like it very much.
Why am I writing this piece on hallah?
Recently, I was contacted by the
leadership of the town of Soncino, Italy, requesting information about the use
of bread among Jews for a special “bread festival” in their region. This
prompted me to think a bit more about the role hallah played in Jewish
life.
Hallah (often and misleadingly
transliterated as “challah”) is the quintessential Jewish bread that is eaten
on Shabbat and Festivals. As a yeast-risen bread, it comes in different shapes
and textures, mostly with eggs but others with water, and each baker claiming
to have the best recipe. On Shabbat it is braided; on Rosh Ha-Shanah (Jewish
New Year) it is round, with all kinds of fancy religious, even mystical,
meanings ascribed to it, such as all life is intertwined; roundness stands for
completeness and perfection. Its long
history goes back to biblical times, and its meaning and function have changed
over the centuries.
The word hallah comes from
the Hebrew root hll, “to pierce,” and originally meant a thick, round
and perforated cake often made with oil. The Book of Samuel tells us that King
David distributed hallat lehem, maybe ring shaped bread, to the people after
they brought Yahweh’s Ark into a special tent (II Sam. 6: 19; I Chr. 16: 3,
which calls it kikar lehem, a round loaf). According to the temple
ritual, twelve hallot (pl. of hallah), made of fine flour, were
placed at the altar (Lev. 24: 5). Outside of the temple, all Israelites, during
the process of baking bread, were
required to set aside a loaf (hallah) of bread “as a gift to the Lord”
(Num. 15: 20), which the prophet Ezekiel
interpreted as being donations to the priests (Ezek. 44: 30).
In post-biblical times, in line with
this temple practice, the Rabbis ordained that a small portion of dough must
be taken out and burned, so that “the law of hallah may not be
forgotten” (BT Bek. 27a). The discarded
dough was now called hallah. This is the basis of the contemporary
custom of marking boxes of Passover Matzah with the words, “Challah has been
taken,” to indicate that a portion of dough has been removed before the matzah
was made.
How did hallah become the
most favorite Jewish bread? It goes back to the medieval times, when in South Germany
(15th century) Jews started to adopt from their neighbors this type
of bread for the Sabbath and holidays. Sephardic Jews, like me, who were not
exposed to this custom, did not use hallah for religious occasions, and
continued to eat regular bread or pita during all meals.
So, hallah, which did not
originally mean “bread” but a certain kind of holed-cake, and was adopted from gentiles,
in time became the most popular bread in the Jewish world. My favorite is a
sweet egg-based hallah. Yum!
Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D
Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D
Aug. 2013
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