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If I shut my eyes, sit very quietly and take lots and lots of steps back in time, I can see myself — a seven-year-old with skinny legs and short, dark brown curly hair — standing on the first-floor landing of our family home peeking into the airing cupboard. This was a tiny room big enough to house a small boiler-heater unit and top-to-bottom shelving where laundry was laid in the winter to dry overnight.

Once a week, it was the place my mother put her bread dough to rise. The smell of yeast would waft through a crack in the door and meander around our home until it attracted my senses and had me racing upstairs two at a time so I could poke my head into the dark space to smell something that was out of this world, the rising of something that I anticipated each week — fresh-baked bread. The dough would be sitting plump and creamy in an oversized plastic bowl covered with a towel, even though the room radiated warm heat. I would lift up the towel edge, lower my exuberant face to the ridge of the dimpled mountain and grin. Yum! Something
wonderful was in the making.

Back then I didn’t associate dough with challah because that is not the way it was in our house when I was a child. Mum was bread; Mum was in charge of the kitchen and cooking meals. I stood on the sidelines taking it all in — how she shopped, how she stored provisions, how she prepared recipes from memory that Dad and all her friends “oohed” and “aahed” about around our busy kitchen table or in the dining room/lounge where my parents entertained at buffet-style meals.

Bread was served at each meal: fresh- baked when I was very young, bakery bought as I grew into adolescence. I preferred homemade; it was beautifully formed, golden brown and tasted deliciously wonderful especially when hot, with melted butter running like a river of warmness down my chin. Then there were tuna melts on special occasions —scrumptious hot tuna, cheese and tomatoes sandwiches from the grill. Funnily enough, it was the simple recipe of peanut butter, jelly and cheese slices that always won me over — especially when I came home from school.

Eventually bread lost its significance and other things took precedence. Bread was, after all, just bread — always there, dependable and available; the bread bin was always full; the supermarket shelves were always stocked; everyone at school always had as much as they needed, and that’s all that counted when it came to bread. Invariably, Sunday’s brunch bread was fresh- bought bagels with smoked salmon, cream cheese and cheese patisseries.

As I became a more worldly teenager, and then a professional twenty- something young woman, I recall noticing bread evolving in character when I traveled beyond England, the country of my birth. On my first trip to Budapest, Hungary, I remember the scarcity of bread, which, when procured, was a bland facsimile with a hard crust. In the south of France, I recall standing, nose pressed to a glass bakery window, mesmerized by the vast selection of bread emitting tantalizing aromas. In Italy, fresh-baked rolls were broken open and dipped in olive oil, which made one’s fingers delicious to lick. In New York, I tasted pastrami on rye with mustard for the first time, and realized that every country has its own version of the staff of life that, once tasted, is never forgotten.

When I began traveling further afield, my “anthropologist’s” antennae — fascinated by native cultures and their ways —noted bread’s value in family life; whatever its size, texture, taste and price, it was a staple in most countries. Some breads were made with yeast, some with eggs, many with neither — ground flour and water kneaded and baked on a curved metal dome over a fire was essentially the staff of existence for thousands.

In some countries people begged for money for bread. In other countries they were starving because they didn’t have the ingredients to bake bread. As I traveled farther East, bread was replaced by rice. In the jungle north of Thailand, I recall sheltering under a cluster of bamboo trees after a soft rainfall and peering out over an expansive vista suffused with the calm, graceful movements of the farmers picking rice in the paddy fields. So this is where rice originates, thought I, the princess who used to enjoy my serving of rice in elegant restaurants without a second thought of its source, or the One Who created it and watched over it while it grew for the world’s four billion rice eaters, many of whom substituted it for bread.

When I realized, at the age of twenty-eight, that I was not particularly happy with myself or my life, I started to look at life more carefully. I began asking a lot of questions. My journey to the Far East prompted me to rethink my value system and what I wanted from my life; in India, Thailand and China I not only saw people who were forced to live simply, but also people who chose to live simply due to their spiritual convictions. This was a new concept to me; to minimize material wealth so one could focus more time and effort on spiritual priorities. When I returned to my apartment in a wealthy London neighborhood, I felt estranged from everything that was once so familiar to me; I wanted to live differently but had no spiritual reality. A few months later I met an Orthodox Rabbi who invited me to his home for Shabbos.

The first time I tasted challah at a Shabbos table I was astonished; I had never tasted anything like it in my life. I made such a fuss about it that now I laugh when I think back at how I must have appeared to my hosts, an Orthodox Rabbi, his wife and three children. Imagine a twenty-eight-year-old making a hullabaloo over something they had eaten their entire lives. What was more astonishing is that my gracious hostess welcomed my response and made a point of talking to me at length about the benefits of eating challah and baking challah. To be given a fascinating and worthy discourse on something so seemingly ordinary as bread was most remarkable. Later, after I married a ben Torah who had been raised in a Torah home, when I extended a compliment to an Orthodox Jewish woman who had baked challah for Shabbos, I was treated to her unique perspective on challah-baking, and the significant contribution it made to her family Shabbos table.

As a wedding gift, a dear friend gave me Spirit & Spice— my all-time favorite kosher cookbook. One afternoon, a month before yom tov, I sat on our sofa selecting recipes so I could buy the necessary ingredients. When I reached the challah section, I read it slowly and with great interest; the narrative was so interesting and inspiring I decided to give it a try. I was about to bake challah for the first time.

I don’t know why I was so nervous; I had all the ingredients, I had many tips on how to do it right, I had a brachah for success from my husband who was very excited about the prospect of eating his wife’s challahon leil Shabbos. I guess I had seen and tasted so much delicious
challah since I had become a baalas teshuvah that I needed mine to be just as good, and I wasn’t sure I would succeed. With a prayer on my lips, I began. I followed the instructions to a tee, and was rewarded with delicious challah and a satisfied husband. But although I wasn’t sure what it was, something seemed to be missing. Over the years, I ‘talked’ challah with
many women who shared their recipes and techniques: how to test yeast, how to look after your flour, what to do when you put in too much salt, how to mix white flour and whole wheat.

Over the years, I tried different ways to satisfy my husband’s healthful requests; one year I baked challah with whole-wheat flour, the next with rye flour, another year without eggs, and yet another using spelt flour. On and on I went, experimenting with texture and shape, inspired mostly by my friends’ creativity and self-confidence with challah— three braids, six braids, balls formed in a circle to make round challah, raisins inside — then outside, oatmeal and brown sugar sprinkled on a top brushed with egg yolk, and challah rolls with chocolate chips. I enjoyed my growing list of fun and pleasing ways to make challah, baking challahwith my son on Thursday afternoons, and double-batching so I could give challahgifts to my mother-in-
law and friends. But there always seemed to me something missing; my soul was never totally happy with my efforts, and I could never understand why.

Then, one day, I found the answer to this nagging feeling; a spiritual ingredient was missing, one that no one had ever told me to add.

My discovery came about in a beautiful way. Before my second child was born, I wanted to attend a shiur so we would merit a baby infused with spirituality. When someone mentioned a woman who gave a shiur on the spiritual aspects of lighting Shabbos lecht, I was so excited I couldn’t wait to attend. The teacher was a refined woman who was learned in the three mitzvos of a bas melech; and although I was fulfilling these mitzvos, I didn’t know that out of the basic 613, three were bequeathed by Hakadosh Baruch Hu especially to Jewish women. I embraced the mitzvah of lighting Shabbos lecht with a new spirit of joy as I learned how it could increase Hashem’s blessings in my family and home.

The mitzvah of hafrashas challah was next on our wise teacher’s agenda. I was completely in awe; challah-baking had always given me great pleasure. How can a Jewish wife and mother not kvel when she sees her family eating the labor of her efforts? Challah-baking had become an act of love to my family, and I was thrilled that they embraced every step of its creation — from the sweet smell of dough rising to their hearty amein after I recited the brachah, to the delight on their faces when the golden- brown loaves came out of the oven, and the silent nods of approval and glints of pride in their eyes when our guests savored Mummy’s challah.

But there was more to challah-baking than what I had been doing. I had left out two vital ingredients — kavanah and tefillah. Our esteemed teacher taught us, in words and by example, how to prepare ourselves and our environment to bake challah, how to daven while we kneaded the dough, how to open the gates of our heart and soul so that our truest prayers can be articulated and heard by the One Who so desires our tefillah that He bequeathed the mitzvah of hafrashas challah to Jewish women.

For the next year our teacher and mentor taught us how to fulfill our potential as Jewish women through the mitzvah of hafrashas challah. I am not yet the most expert of challah-bakers, but when I bake challah I feel special inside; honored to be fulfilling the mitzvah,and happy when my husband and children come home and make a fuss about the fact that I baked challah. Their excitement inspires me, tells me I am doing something right in their eyes, makes me feel that this Shabbos my challah is going to be better than ever.

If you visit my kitchen on a morning when I am baking challah,you will notice the kitchen is neat and tidy. If it is Friday morning, the Shabbos food will be cooked or already simmering on the stove. The counters are clean and everything is in its place. On my kitchen table is an extremely large, pale-yellow plastic bowl. To its right is spelt flour, yeast, brown sugar, salt, olive oil and a jug of filtered water. Before I begin, I wash my hands and recite a brachah. I unplug the phone, then get my sefer Tehillim and the list of people for whom I will daven.I take a deep breath, clear my mind, and I think about Shabbos kodesh. I gaze at the framed photographs of my husband and children hanging on the wall and realize why I am baking challah. The photographs of Gedolei Yisrael hanging on another wall infuse me with a sense of responsibility; I feel ready to begin. I drop some coins into my tzedakah box, light two tea-lights, and invite an atmosphere of tranquility into my heart and my home.

I heat up the filtered water until it is mildly warm and mix it with sugar before adding the yeast, cover the bowl with a hand-towel, and let the mixture rise and react. I carefully count out the cups of flour while thinking about the essential ingredients that constitute the foundation of my family home — peace, understanding, respect, honesty, joy, singing, good — will. Then I add brown sugar and salt, and as I gracefully pour in the oil I envision the Kohen Gadol doing his holy work in the Beis Hamikdash and realize that my work as a wife and mother is also holy, that I am a holy member of a holy nation created by Hashem to Whom every mitzvah matters.

I pour the bubbly yeast mixture slowly over the mountain of flour in the bowl, add three and a half cups of room- temperature water, and then take my sefer Tehillim and davenfor shalom bayis in the world and shalom bayisin my home. When I begin kneading the challah dough, I continue davening and I cry. I daven for each member of my family using their Hebrew names, then I daven for everyone on my davening list, then I daven for myself; I plead, I beg, I beseech my Tatte in Shamayim for the strength and ability to serve Him as I should.

For twenty minutes I forget where I am, but I never forget who I am and the power of my tefillah. I never forget that my tefillah matters, that my prayers are heard, that Hashem loves me and wants to hear from me, that I am significant, and that Hashem always answers our tefillos in a way that is best for us. Sometimes, when I am daveningover my challah dough I see myself as I once was — a lone traveler roaming the world looking for a doorway to lead me to a more meaningful existence — and I sigh. Then I see myself sitting at the Shabbos table of the rabbi and rebbetzin who showed me the doorway and suggested I try turning the handle, and I sigh. Finally, I see myself at my Shabbos table with my family. It is then that I cry. What a long way I have come; what a long way there is yet to go.

I let my dough rise while I relax on the sofa, emotionally exhausted, yet invigorated by my holy work.

Two hours later I stand before the dough that is now infused with holiness, and prepare my kavanah for the mitzvah of hafrashas challah. I recite the words of the brachah loudly and slowly. I am not in a rush; what is more important than this moment?

I take the korban— the challah I have separated — wrap it in foil and place it on the kitchen counter to be dealt with later. I punch down the dough, watch it deflate in the center, and smile. My teacher taught me that a woman’s ego needs a touch of humility to enable her to rise to her true level of excellence in Torah and mitzvos. I cover the dough with a thin layer of virgin olive oil and a few towels, and leave it in a warm place while my brachah does its work. One hour later I form the challos and bake them.

Imagine that the fragrance in the house is a scent from Gan Eden; when my husband and children walk in the door, I feel like I have created a mini-Gan Eden in our home. I feel grateful; I have everything. It seems so amazing to me — only a handful of years ago I was single and lost, now I am married and have purpose; I have a job to do that is holy, and I love it. There is so much to be thankful for; all my prayers have been invested in my challah, and now it tastes so good, so right, so perfect.

When my guests compliment my challah I smile and thank them sincerely, because my gratitude is sincere. I am grateful I was granted the mitzvah of hafrashas challah.I am grateful my guests appreciate something that epitomizes the essence of Jewish spirituality; I am grateful to Hakadosh Baruch Hu for leading me to a shaliach who taught me how to fulfill the mitzvah of hafrashas challah properly.

Baking challah is my very special mitzvah, and what a beautiful mitzvah it has become.

Reprinted from Bina Magazine with the author’s permission.