FAQ: Can I put ham on challah?

[jack]

What's the story with challah?

It's surprisingly simple. The history is comparatively short, and the customs are fairly similar amongst different traditions, and it doesn't make a difference whether you're in the diaspora or in Israel.

Really?

No, that was all a lie. It all starts in ancient hebrew some time after the exodus from egypt...

Uh, actually can we skip the ancient history?

OK. Up to five hundred years ago in eastern europe...

This is skipping the history?

Yes! This is skipping thousands of years of history.

Look, can I maybe find out how challah is used nowadays.

OK.

As a non-jew, what actually is challah?

Challah is a rich bread made with egg, where the dough is plaited together. It's traditionally used as the "bread" part of jewish prayers before meals, especially on the sabbath and on a few other festivals. But it's a common jewish tradition even if you're not observant.

Is it nice?

Yes, definitely. I also heartily recommend bagels, matza-lasagna, latkes, etc. I'm not sure about gefilte fish.

Is it ok for non-jews to eat it?

Yes, definitely. It's basically just a nice sort of bread.

Even at jewish meals?

Yes, definitely.

Is it ok to make it myself?

Yes, definitely.

Anything I shouldn't do

No, not really.

Is it ok to eat it with ham?

Yes! If you eat meat anyway, my jewish friends say there's nothing specifically wrong with ham-on-challah. Knock yourself out :)

Is it ok to eat it with ham and cheese?

Yes! Non-jews are specifically not supposed to follow all that stuff.

Is it ok if I pray to turn it into human flesh and then eat it?

*looks shifty* Uh, well. Empirically, you won't actually be struck by lightning. But you will make jewish people feel uncomfortable, it would be much better not to.

What happened to anything?

OK, ok, I forgot that one. But it turned out ok.

What about sacrificing it to different gods?

Um, I don't actually know, but I think it might be polite not to.

But other than that, anything's ok?

I think so. Oh...

Yes?

Sephardi tradition and some ashkenazi traditions say not to cut challah with a knife, because sabbath is not a time for weapons. It's specifically designed to pull apart easily. I don't think anyone will mind if you cut it when you're by yourself, but it would be nice to check if you're eating with any jewish people.

But anything else is ok?

Well, anything that would be normal for food. I wouldn't make a sword out of it. But that's more of a "common sense" thing than a "jewish" thing.

OK, and how to jewish people use it?

Partly just as nice bread.

But for meals (for people I know, mostly only on the sabbath, or only on big family festivals), you're supposed to have two loaves of bread and some wine, for which you say the prayers for bread and wine.

Bread and wine?

"staple food" and "staple drink" would be a more in-spirit translation. IIRC the some of the word in hewbrew which came to mean bread used to be used for multiple staple foods?

What does this have to do with challah?

People traditionally use nice bread. Often challah. Although anything nice-ish is also common.

OK, ok, a little history. Has the name "Challah" undergone synecdoche?

Yes. Very astute! When making bread, you're supposed to throw a small piece in the fire, in memory of giving the first loaf of a batch to the temple in biblical times. This piece is called "challah", but the name came to refer to this particular sort of bread.

And where did this sort of bread come from?

Eastern europe in the last 500 years. There are many similar non-jewish breads in different countries. Some use milk instead of egg (but challah doesn't because then jews can't mix it with meat).

Both challah and related breads come in lots of different shapes too.

Does that mean Sephardi challah is different?

Yes. I think it normally doesn't have egg. And I think it's not usually braided, but I'm not sure about that? There seems to be more modern mixing of the traditions.

OK, and the older history. Do you actually know about that or were you just bluffing?

Well, I read about it on a few websites, but actually, I still can't get it straight. Can anyone help?

I think the timeline is something like:

1. Post-exodus, "challah" means "cake" or "loaf"? And you were commanded to give the first (ie best) cake of a batch to the temple, for ritual purposes, and for the priest to eat, as described in detail in Numbers? Is that translation and ritual right, or have I conflated different traditions?
2. After the destruction of the temple, people burned a small piece (olive-sized) of bread, in remembrance of the earlier custom, as described in talmud? (Or had a custom of burning a small bit and attached the explanation of connection to temple sacrifices later?) Which came to be called "challah"?
3. People are supposed to have "nice" bread for sabbath?
4. In eastern europe, it became common to make plaited egg-bread for the sabbath.
5. This bread became associated with the name "challah"? And later on, most people only make a challah-offering from sabbath bread (after all most people don't make bread as a staple food any more)?

But I'm not sure what's from torah, what was still common in the first millennium, what's from mishna, and what's from later talmud. And not sure which bits were already common in early AD, and which bits only came later in eastern europe, and which bits are even more modern? And which bits people are theoretically supposed to do, and which bits are what people actually did?

Can anyone fill me in?

Comments

[wild_irises]

This is awesome! Thank you!

[jack]

Thank you!

[redbird]

Challah without egg is weird and much drier; I hadn't known that it was part of a non-Ashkenazi tradition, rather than just the bakery I'd been getting my rye bread at being weird. (If they offered egg and non-egg challah, rather than just labeling the eggless stuff "challah," I'd have been happier.)

Also, the people I've known thought it was entirely reasonable to have the bakery slice the challah for us (using a slicer that is a set of blades, so not actually a knife, but cutting rather than tearing apart). Of course, depending on the eater's level of observance and the bakery's, it's likely the bread was bought and sliced before the sabbath.

Also also, you're making me homesick, but that's not your fault.

[jack]

*hugs* Sorry for bringing it up :)

I hadn't known that it was part of a non-Ashkenazi tradition,

I'm not really sure. I wasn't sure how much non-ashkenazi challah is "nice bread", or "rich bread" or "just normal bread" or "used to be one of those but now is usually more like ashkenazi challah".

the people I've known thought it was entirely reasonable to have the bakery slice the challah for us

Doh! Someone below points out that everyone says "don't cut challah with a knife" but they mean on sabbath, apparently it's ok for everyone beforehand. Which sounded odd to me, but seems to be normal. FWIW, it seemed like it wasn't a level-of-observance thing, so much as a cultural-background thing, but I think you've more experience of this than me.

[redbird]

No apologies needed: I'd been grumbling about the poor quality of local bread anyhow, and back in New York I bought rye bread a lot more often than challah. And I'd settle for a decent baguette.

[lethargic_man]

On Rosh Hashanah, Ashkenazim have round challos, rather than plaited. This is what Sephardi challos ḥallot are like year-round.

[adrian_turtle]

You seem to be mixing up the custom of "eating challah on the sabbath" when some people don't use knives, and the nature of the challah itself. If you eat challah on Tuesday? Sure, use a knife. Or a cookie cutter. Whatever.

Putting butter *in* the challah, as an ingredient, is a problem for people who eat meat at festive meals and who separate milk and meat. That's why it's not part of any traditional challah recipes. But putting butter *on* challah is perfectly ok--it's just traditional to do it at other times. There is dispute about whether challah made with butter is really challah at all, or whether it is some other rich bread that just LOOKS like challah.

Lots of cultural traditions, not just Jews, have festive breads and bread-like things for holidays. It's an obvious thing to do, putting something rich or sweet in the daily bread to mark a day as special, and maybe going to the extra trouble to make it in a nice shape.

[jack]

I'm so sorry! I feel really silly. Everyone I saw said "don't cut challah with a knife", but I hadn't realised they took it for granted that was eating challah on sabbath, and didn't apply to just eating challah normally :(

[lethargic_man]

I have a special challah knife, labelled לכדוד שבת קודש ("for the honour of the holy Sabbath"). The custom you mention is far from universal; indeed amongst many it's customary to use a knife to mark the challah before making the blessing over it (so you spend less time afterwards choosing where to cut it, and can reduce the time between the blessing and the action it was meant for).

[gerald_duck]

Being an inveterate bread consumer, I've bought challah on a few occasions (assuming, as I suspect, that "cholah" is another spelling for the same stuff). My advice is that if you had in mind doing with it anything that would especially outrage Jews, you could always buy brioche instead, which to my palate is quite similar. That way, you outrage French people instead, and nobody cares if you outrage the French.

The "staple-food" and "staple-drink" understanding is, according to an interesting book I once read, significant and subtle: in many ancient cultures, where we have food and drink as two categories, they had staple-food, staple-drink and "dainties". (I gather some cultures and languages don't much distinguish between food and drink at all, conversely.) This explains things like the "locusts and honey" that John the Baptist is said to have consumed: locusts as a very basic staple; honey as a very basic dainty.

This also gives rise to the cool ancient Greek word that I feel should be far more widely used in modern English: opsophaginous — showing an excessive tendency to eat dainties rather than staples.

[adrian_turtle]

Brioche is somewhat different from challah. Proper brioche is made with butter and milk, as well as eggs, so it has a lighter texture (more like cake).

[lethargic_man]

About the staple food thing: לֶחֶם leḥem originally meant "staple food"; by the time of Biblical Hebrew it had mostly shifted to mean "bread", but relics of the older meaning persisted in verses like "man shall not live on bread alone". In Arabic, the word descended from the same root, لحم laḥm, came to mean "meat", which is why the name "Bethlehem" means "house of bread" in Hebrew but "house of meat" in Arabic.

The Challah of Magic

[hairyears]

Years ago, Kathryn and I made the discovery that Challah is the perfect bread for bacon sandwiches.

This is Bad and Wrong and Delicious.

Re: The Challah of Magic

[jack]

That's what I thought. But apparently, that's perfectly OK! Didn't you read the FAQ? :)

Cross-Town Treiffic

[hairyears]

I did indeed, ham and cheese included.

[geekosaur]

Post-exodus, "challah" means "cake" or "loaf"? And you were commanded to give the first (ie best) cake of a batch to the temple, for ritual purposes, and for the priest to eat, as described in detail in Numbers? Is that translation and ritual right, or have I conflated different traditions?

חלה variously rendered as "challah" etc. originally referred not to a specific kind of bread, but to the offering to the priests of a portion from any sufficiently large baking with flour (and, IIRC, the original meaning was in fact "portion"). Since most of what people baked with flour in large enough quantity to trigger that offering was the family's daily bread, "challah" eventually came to refer specifically to that, especially after the priestly offering was no longer possible (observant Jews will still toss a small portion into the fire or a corner of the oven, since it can't be offered to the priests any more). Later on, when bread wasn't the center of every meal and daily baking wasn't as necessary, it came to refer to the Shabbat loaves.