In the ancient world, our ancestors would routinely take a small part of their dough, called the “challah,” and donate to the cohanim, the Temple priesthood. When the Temple was destroyed, and the priestly bureaucracy with it, this custom fell into disuse. But the rabbis, in their wisdom, instituted an echo of this rule that is followed even to this day.

When one is preparing to bake bread, they should take a small piece of dough, recite the following blessing, and make a declaration as follows:

BA-RUCH A-TAH A-DO-NAI ELO-HAI-NU ME-LECH HA-O-LAM A-SHER KID-SHA-NU B’MITZ-VO-TAV V’TZI-VA-NU L’HAF-RISH CHAL-LAH

Translation:

Blessed are You, L-rd our G‑d, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to separate challah.

Separate a small piece of dough, approximately one ounce, and say: “This is challah.” And then throw it into the oven and let it burn up. The baker is thus making a sacrifice, an echo of a world lost to the ages.

Now, this is a ritual that would take less than a minute, so we can zoom past it without a second’s thought and then put a check next to our mitzvah checklist (assuming we have a mitzvah checklist!). But this would be a real lost opportunity, because this simple ritual—like most rituals—actually has the potential to connect us to elemental forces that govern our lives.

This can be a bit clearer if we study the following beautiful poem by an old associate of mine, Lynn Gottlieb:

Prayer for Burning the End Piece of the Challah

(Numbers 15:18-21)

With this challah, I honor my mothers,
Who enticed wisdom from grain.
I honor the fire,
Which transforms again and again.
I honor the love which flows through my hands,
And I honor the Spirit
That brings forth this bread from the earth.
Amen.

We can unpack this poem a little bit to explore its power. Doing the challah ritual connects us with our mothers, who had an extraordinary capacity to take the simplest ingredients (flour, water, eggs, etc.) and create something extraordinary from them. Baking bread—indeed, cooking in general—is a miraculous talent, what our Bible would call simply: wisdom. Think of all the different challahs you have had, all the different tastes, all the different ingredients, and symbolic shapes. And now think about the fact that all of that came from…wait for it…grass.

Yeah, that’s wisdom all right.

The fire to which the poet refers is first and foremost the fire of the hot oven. But we use fire to make virtually all the major transitions in our lives: we light candles for shabbat and holidays, separating the holy from the mundane. We light candles on Saturday night, to mark our departure from holy shabbat and our return to the secular week. We light candles when we marry, we light candles to mark a yahrzeit. We light candles to cite the miraculous times of Chanukah, and we light candles (now, mostly electric bulbs) to mark our entrance into the sacred space of a synagogue (it is in fact the ner tamid, the eternal light, that makes a building a synagogue). So indeed, light transforms us in so many ways.

“The love that flows through my hands.” For me, this is a very special image, because it makes me think of my beloved Ruth-Ann, z”l. She never did things for our family because she had to. She did them because she wanted to. Because everything she did, she did with love, and the more of that she expressed, the happier she was. And that is something we all can do for the ones we love, even with something so simple as separating the challah.

And then, of course we honor the One Who brings forth bread from the earth (an obvious reference to hamotzi). Now, the way G-d “brings forth bread from the earth” is a miracle in its own right. It involves G-d’s own creation of the seed-bearing grass, and then human beings harvestwinnowcleansoakthreshgristseparategrindmillblend the grass seed, and then the cooking happens. And that’s how G-d “brings forth bread from the earth.” Pretty nifty, wouldn’t you say? How G-d engages us in His work?

So there you have it. Three options. You can have your bread and simply eat it, unthinking; or you can separate out the challah sacrifice and blow past it in 45 seconds; or else you can take a moment while separating the challah sacrifice and find your place in the universe.

Your choice.