Challah is the centerpiece of our Shabbat meal. And I make some very fine challah if I do say so myself. I only know one person in town who makes it better, and she’s in the business.
I love challah. It’s pale yellow from the eggs and sweet from the honey, but it’s the texture that I love the most. When I have made it right, and you tear it apart, it is sort of delicately ropey, like risen pastry. One could live on this bread and this bread alone. I think it sustains the soul as well as the body.
One cannot eat the first bite without giving it a good sniff to test it for excellence. I read once that the mark of a true baker is that they smell bread before eating it. You can tell good bread by it’s smell. It’s yeasty, but not sharply so and there should be a wheaty smell, sweet and clear. I can always tell breads that were baked from frozen dough in the supermarket bakeries, they smell of chemicals. Ugh.
Anyway, if I could, I would send you a piece to judge for yourself, but alas my golden challah cannot be digitized. So you must take my word for it that it is “practically perfect in every way.” *
*Mary Poppins
The following is a poem about challah that I wrote last summer after the third meal of Shabbat, just before the ending of the day when we do a ceremony called “Havdalah” to mark the end of Shabbat.
Challah Dreams
When I am become challah,
I want to be breadcrumbs
On the Rabbi’s table
At the third meal of Shabbos.
Watch me as I dance
When the table is pounded
As the sons of Abraham
Sing praises to God.
I will leap for joy
On the table of the Rabbi
Leftover challah,
Rejoicing with the daughters.
Don’t talk to me
Of the banquet halls
Of Olam Ha Ba*
Give me the table in exile.
Where all around me
The sons of HaShem*
Do many mitzvot*
And change the world.
Oh if I could just be
This crumb of challah
On the Rabbi’s table
At the ending of Shabbos.
I will lie in disarray
Among the firstfruits of summer
In this seeming chaos
Of the third meal.
I will hear the words
Of Pirke Avot*
From the mouths of men
In the realm of malchut,*
And change the world,
And change the world.
*
Olam Ha Ba – the world to come
HaShem - The Name (of God)
Mitzvot - good deeds
Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Fathers
Malchut - kingdom (of this world)