The Actual Meaning of "Challah"

D’var Torah 6/4/18

שבת שלום

This parasha brings us to the border of the Promised Land! We read today שְׁלַח לְךָ֣ which is Numbers 13:1-15:41. In today’s portion, Moses is told to send 12 scouts into the Promised Land, one from each tribe, and he does so. They come back with fruit and stories of a land flowing with milk and honey – and ten of them also warn that the land is inhabited by giants, next to whom the Children of Israel would be like grasshoppers. Moses and Aaron fall on their faces in disgust in front of the people, Joshua and Caleb try to assure the people that this is not true, pandemonium erupts as the people prepare to stone them – and God explodes in fury and wants to wipe them all out. Moses appeases him, but God vows that nobody over the age of 20 except for Caleb & Joshua will ever get into the Promised Land. Some of the people are regretful and try to storm their way in but are defeated because this is not the will of God. The ten negative scouts perish. The parasha is fleshed out with commandments about making sacrifices, including the first of the bread that is baked, not violating the Sabbath, and putting fringes on the corners of their garments.

Reading this parasha transported me back to my teenaged years, asking my grandmother to teach me to make challah. Some of you may have had similar experiences – you take a glass of water, and then she laughs at me as I measure the water in the glass – you take “enough” flour – and she laughs some more as I determine how much THAT is. You do this, you do that, you knead your dough, you let it rise, you’re about to shape it – and you pinch some of it off and throw it in the trash! I was horrified! MY BEAUTIFUL DOUGH! She didn’t explain and perhaps couldn’t, and my mother certainly knew nothing about this but assured me that I didn’t have to waste any of my dough that way because it made no sense. So I never did, because I never understood until the first time we got to this parasha in Torah study and I realized that this “k’zayit” was a sacrifice that I could make as a woman, even to this day! The word “challah” in fact actually refers to the portion of dough that’s pinched off for the kohenim, not the rest of the loaf of bread that we enjoy on Shabbat as we might believe.

Under Biblical law, challah is only taken within the boundaries of the Promised Land. But our Rabbis later caused us to take challah outside of Israel, too, so that the mitzvah would not be forgotten. According to the Sefer HaChinuch, a text written in Spain in the 13th Century that systematically listed and explained all 613 of the mitzvot, this mitzvah is only valid as written in the Torah when a majority of Jews live in Israel. So today it has Rabbinic validity but is no longer a Biblical mitzvah. Just before you shape the dough into your loaves, you pull off the piece “k’zayit”, say the prayer בָּרוּך אַתָּה יהוה אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֱלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶר קִדְּשֳנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָנוּ לְהַפְרִישׁ חַלָּה מִן הָעִסָּה [Blessed are you O Lord our God, king of the universe, who has sanctified us with his commandments and commanded us to separate challah], burn it (on an open flame or in the bottom of the oven while preheating and then baking the bread), and throw it away (or some just throw it away, as my grandmother did).

The Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE. There are no more laws that are still valid today concerning all of the sacrifices described in the Torah – EXCEPT for the taking of challah. I have never really been fond of the notion of animal sacrifice and am grateful that we haven’t done that for almost 2000 years. I did however like the meal sacrifices – making cereals and other such grain mixtures and then burning those as an offering to God. That seems more pleasing to a vegetarian than the smell of burning flesh. And if I think that every time I bake bread, I am continuing a custom that began upon entering the Promised Land under Joshua and is the only type of sacrifice that has existed continuously for these several thousand years, I am overcome by humility and awe and also joy. May you have a sweet Shabbat and look at the challah on your tables with fresh eyes.

כן ׳ה׳ רצון