On This Shabbos: Shlissel Challah

By Challah baking expert Rochie Pinson

Pesach is over, the Pesach stuff is packed up (or if you traveled, then unpacked… )
We are firmly back in real time, and the house smells of Challah again.
And this week it’s not just any challah, it’s Shlissel Challah!

Jewish women of yore would bake a key-shaped challah (or a key baked into the challah – take your pick!) on the Shabbos following Pesach.

Every year, as the “challah lady,” I start getting questions about this minhag as soon as Pesach is over! “Is this a real thing?” “Is this ok to do?” “Where did this minhag come from?”

So, I figured I’ll clear up some of the questions by writing this up for you! (PS: all this information and more are also in my book/cookbook “Rising: The Book of Challah.”)

First of all, you may be surprised to hear that indeed this is a very authentic minhag yisrael.

Students of the Maggid already spoke of shlissel challah as an “ancient tradition”, and offered numerous interpretations for this fascinating minhag.
After 40 years in the midbar, the Jewish people continued to eat the “mon” until the first Pesach in Eretz Yisrael. They brought the Omer offering on the second day of pesach and from that day on, they no longer ate Mon, but food that had grown in Eretz Yisrael. Since this time of year is when they began to concern themselves over their sustenance rather than having it fall from the sky each morning, they key on the challah reminds us to still look upward and remember the Source of all sustenance, and daven that the gates of Parnasa should be opened up to us.

The Meiri says that while on Rosh Hashanah it is decided whether one will live or not, live in peace or suffer (ch”v), etc, on Pesach we are judged in regards to the grains.
That means that these are the days in which it is decided how abundant our parnasah (ie; livelihood… dough;) will be this coming year.

There are many traditions that have developed to correspond with this idea.
In Syria and Turkey the women would sprinkle grains around the corners of their home at the closing of Passover, the Jews of Morocco celebrate “Mimouna” on Motzei Pesach, and in Eastern Europe, the women would bake keys into their challah.

Whatever your particular minhag, or however you choose to “key” your challah- there is nothing like challah to reconnect us to the awareness that as hard as we work to bring in the ‘dough’… “lo al halechem l’vado yichyeh ha’adam” “man does not live on bread alone” – Ki al kol Motzei pi Hashem, yichyeh ha’adam.”

The ultimate sustenance is always a blessing from the Eibershter, and we ask Him that the gates of “oitzarcha hatov- Your treasure house of goodness,” should be opened wide to all of us in the most beautiful way possible.

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