Talk:Challah/Archive 1

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I'm translating texts about Jewish holiday quisine and customs, and have found the Wikipedia pages very helpful. When I came to the challah page, though, I was surprised that there were things that looked far too commercial for Wikipedia here -- such as the name and address of the bakery under the challah photo, and also the link to "organic whole wheat" challahs in New York City or whatever it was, in the External Links section below the text. Is this really appropriate? It kind of turned me off. I thought I should point this out, just in case. 195.146.150.48 08:13, 9 October 2007 (UTC) Christina

Pictures

Would it be possible to get a picture of what more common Challah looks like, with the egg batter and seseme seeds as a additional picture? yeah

Prayer

The words of the special prayer will be interesting to know. What are they? How old are they? This is a gesture of very great antiquity, clearly, with parallels in the Ancient Near east and the Aegean. The identical egg bread, formed as a braid, is part of Portuguese cuisine too. (Im familiar with both.) Wetman 04:16, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Which prayer? The one before eating bread, or the one before separating the challah from the dough? Flourdustedhazzn 04:46, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Many Jews prepare challah

I was just watching "New Jewish Cuisine", a TV cooking show, and they were preparing a challah recipe. My question is whether Sephardic Jews also had a tradition of preparing Challah.

Challah is an Ashkenazi bread similar to other festive breads found throughout Europe. Different non-Ashkenazi Jewish cultures (usually inaccurately lumped as "Sefaradim") do have their own special Shabbat breads, but they do not generally resemble challah. The closest you're likely to get is Moroccan pain petri, which is a round loaf containing eggs and anise seed.

This is a bit inaccurate and, especially, unnuanced. Similar breads are not found "throughout" Europe, but only in certain regions of Europe -- central and eastern Europe, particularly; southern Europe, to a lesser degree, including Greek, Armenian, and Turkish loafs. In few of these cases are the breads "festive". Finally, while it may once have been true that non-Ashkenazim rarely included hallah among their shabbat foods, that is not true today: it has become common among many "Sephardic" families and communities, just as many Sephardic customs became common among Moroccan Jews, etc.

I was going to comment on the "traditional challah uses eggs" when actually traditional Sephardic challah avoids using eggs. Using eggs makes the item mezonot --> cake, so no bread blessing. more on this from someone with more expertise than I? --mkg

The Hungarian term 'kalács' primarily means sweet bread with eggs and milk. Therefore although the term could have been used for challah, is absolutely not identical with the meaning of challah in Juadism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.100.121.165 (talk) 12:14, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Hebrew transliteration / vocalization

The text of 'birkat hamotzi' given in the article gives the shem adnut ("Adonai") intact, but gives a truncated second name ("Elokim"), presumably in order to avoid writing God's name. Why the discrepancy? I feel that the K ought to be changed to an H — text on a computer screen is not halakhically considered to be writing, and therefore cannot be erased.

Midrash about challah?

What is the source for the midrash about Eve's hair? My understanding is that challah postdates most classic midrash by several centuries. Flourdustedhazzn

Also called egg bread?

Should egg bread redirect here? 69.143.26.71 06:25, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Why was the external link to the Virtual Challah Lessons deleted?

It's a popular tutorial about all the aspects of making challah, on a non-commercial site, was listed as an external link. It has been used to help many people - and a number of groups - learn to bake challah.

Please explain.

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Yeast?

Does challah contain no yeast? A leavening agent is conspicuously missing from the discussion of ingredients. Since challah clearly is not an unleavened bread, whatever is used to leaven it should be mentioned along with the other ingredients. I assume it must be yeast, since challah doesn't have the characteristic taste and texture it would have if sourdough or baking powder were the leaven. However, routinely using yeast to leaven bread may be a relatively modern development, so challah may use some other leaven I'm not familiar with.--Jim10701 (talk) 20:15, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Challah and non-practicing Jews & gentiles

I think the article needs a rewrite of the intro. The way the article is currently written would be fine if this where strictly a Jewish encyclopedia but it's a general encyclopedia and as such I have a few issues with the text of the intro. First, the article seems to imply that Challah is strictly a a religious bread eaten on the sabbath and holidays when in this day and age may Jews, especially non-practicing ones eat it all the time and may not impart any religious significance in it. To them it's just another type of bread. The article should start with mentioning that it's a type of Jewish bread, then mention it has religious significance to practicing Jews, but also make it clear that many people consume it just as regular food. Second, Challah is sometimes called "egg bread" among gentiles/non-Jews as is the case in the Joy of Cooking cookbook and this alternate name should be included in the intro. --Cab88 (talk) 18:44, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Salt and Sugar

All actual modern recipes include sugar and salt; bread without salt is unappetizing. The section on Salt should clarify that the ritual salt is additional, or is challah made for a formal meal specially baked without salt? Since sugar as an ingredient didn't exist in antiquity, the Ingredients section should also clarify whether the ancient version contained honey, etc. The present wording implies that honey is a modern alternative.165.121.80.24 (talk) 10:18, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Removal of "other" names for the bread

I have boldly removed the following from the lede, as it seems frankly irrelevant:

It is also named khale (eastern Yiddish and German), barches (western Yiddish, Czech and Slovak), berches (Swabian), Zopf (Switzerland), barkis (Gothenburg), bergis (Stockholm), birkata in Judeo-Amharic, vianočka in Slovak language, Tsoureki in Greek, kalács (Hungarian), chałka (Polish), colaci (Romanian), and kitke (South Africa).

While the information is properly sourced and presumably fundamentally correct, the paragraph is confusing since several of the linked articles are to various local non-Jewish variations of the recipe that are not used in Jewish custom, whilst this article is about the Jewish-specific bread and its use in Jewish custom. AnotherNewAccount (talk) 16:15, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree that this information doesn't belong in the lead. However, it contains two useful kinds of information: other names for this bread in Jewish communities; and related breads in non-Jewish communities. Both of these belong somewhere in the article, probably not just in See Also. --Macrakis (talk) 17:33, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I have mentioned this briefly in a short introductory section after the lede. AnotherNewAccount (talk) 22:24, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I would say, the other Jewish names for the same bread must be put back to the lede, as before in bold, as these denote the same bread. The names of similar breads in other cultures should be put somewhere in a separate sentence, may be closer to the end of the article, and put in italic or, where available, as links to the respective other articles. --Off-shell (talk) 19:23, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

But how many of these are alternate words used in common parlance in English, and how many of these are simply foreign language words for challah? The article isn't a translation dictionary.

From reading the sources, the only one used in common parlance is kitke in South Africa, and possibly kahle. Do Ethiopian Jews use "birkata" in English or Hebrew at all? I have personally never heard anyone use anything but "challah". AnotherNewAccount (talk) 22:24, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

At least Yiddish is a purely Jewish language, hence Yiddish words should be mentioned, even if not used in English. "I personally never heard" is a bad argument :). The terms identified as Jewish by a reliable source such as [1] above ("Volume III of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research’s Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry...") should be mentioned, unless you prove that the source is not reliable, or that these terms are and were historically so rarely used that they are not worth mentioning. (Historical usage is also important.) --Off-shell (talk) 23:51, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Have just noticed that the part I removed may well have been a copyright violation from [2], so I was right to remove it. AnotherNewAccount (talk) 22:44, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

The referenced article was published on July 7, 2012, while the basic list of the different names was on this Wiki page since 2005 (check the history). The sentence was expanded and modified over time. It was almost stable since 2008. (Originally there were only Jewish words in the list, but later other similar breads were added to the list.) So it is probably vice versa: the author of that article took the list from this page. --Off-shell (talk) 23:51, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Translation

The translation of the Blessing on Bread strikes me as odd. There are a bunch of words that are not in the Hebrew text and I'm not sure why they're there. I've highlighted them in bold. Transliteration of original: "Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha'olam, hamotzi lechem (Le Khemekh) min ha'aretz." Translation: "For a slight moment I bestow LORD our God, The King, The Universe, who executes by force the bread from the earth."

I think this translation on Chabad.org is much more accurate: "Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who brings forth bread from the earth." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zetametroid (talk • contribs) 12:30, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm interested to know where that wacky translation it had came from. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ari1891adler (talk • contribs) 05:20, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Keying a Challah

In modern talk, to "key" a car is to mark or scratch it with a key. (Arrests have been made for this).

Some groups have "keyed" their bread to make a cross on it; that doesn't mean we can't place a key inside a Challah - Shlissel Challah. To key the Shlissel Challah section of a nice article with "some this" and "some dispute" -- isn't needed. An External Link has been added to an article on this, and the dispite is for now parked here:

This practice has been criticized for its alleged origins as a non-Jewish custom.<ref>{{cite web |last=Alfassa |first=Shelomo |title=The Origins of the Non-Jewish Custom Of 'Shlissel Challah' (Key Bread) "The Loaf of Idolatry?" |url=http://www.mesora.org/Shlissel.html |accessdate=April 22, 2012}}</ref> However, others dispute this claim, and assert that there is no evidence connecting schlissel challah to [[Christianity|Christian]] custom.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://5tjt.com/schlissel-challah-an-analysis-by-rabbi-yair-hoffman/ |title=Schlissel Challah – An Analysis |last=Hoffman |first=Yair |date=April 3, 2013 |work=[[Five Towns Jewish Times]] |accessdate=April 4, 2013}}</ref>

The practice of baking Easter breads, also known as [[hot cross bun]]s, have been documented to exist at least since the 1500s. Two cross-marked buns have also been found in the Roman city of [[Herculaneum]] in modern-day [[Italy]] dating back as early as 79 CE.<ref>[http://ireland-calling.com/lifestyle/the-hot-cross-bun-origins-and-superstitions/ The hot cross bun - origins and superstitions]. Retrieved July 3, 2017</ref> It is uncertain, however, how cross buns are similar to 'shlissel challah', other than the fact that people have always made signs or symbols on their bread.

The External link is:

• http://www.5tjt.com/schlissel-challah-an-analysis-by-rabbi-yair-hoffman
• April 3, 2013
• Schlissel Challah – An Analysis BY Rabbi Yair Hoffman

Pi314m (talk) 06:59, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Spelling Schlissel as Shlissel

Since

• both spellings have similar usage/"hit" counts (7,420 vs. 7,520), and
• YeshivaWorld and VosIzNeis use both

both can be in the article. Note that "Shlissel" looks more like the way it's pronounced. Pi314m (talk) 07:33, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Meaning of the word Challah

I don't seem to find a source for the paragraph which claims (incorrectly) that the original meaning of the word challah is the tithe from the dough. The addendum that it "sometimes means a kind of loaf" at the end of that paragraph is in fact the original meaning, with the meaning of the dough tithe not appearing until Rabbinic Hebrew. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ari1891adler (talk • contribs) 05:10, 18 November 2019 (UTC)