The Jewish woman's skill in challah baking must be in her
genes, dating back to Sora Imeinu.
What does that mean, exactly? What does it mean to have a
song in your hands? What is a song of challah-making? And how
can every Jewish woman have one of those songs in her hands,
even those of us who have never baked our own challahs?
We are always busy doing with our hands. Chopping vegetables,
spreading out the blankets, brushing hair, writing down our
thoughts, pushing open doors, holding open books. At odd
moments on the bus or waiting for the bus, these hands are
motionless.
At times, they bear our need to express the love we have.
They rest lightly on a cheek or hold tight to a little hand.
They bear an emptiness when there is nowhere to go with the
love we have.
My grandmother's hands were restless without a button to sew
or a pot to wash or a child to love. They were moving in her
lap, still doing, without having what to do.
Our hands stand at the border between ourselves and the
world out there. They can reach across between this tangible,
visible world and the unseen world. Everyone's hands can
heal, can move, reveal, remove, and enlighten, once we are
awake to their ability to do so.
Take a bowl of flour, water, salt, sugar, eggs, oil and
yeast. Mix it all with a long, wooden spoon. Then lay the
spoon aside and put in the hands.
Knead this mixture into a mass. Once it has come together,
keep on kneading to bring in the air. Turn the bowl to reach
every part of the dough. Try concentrating on the feeling in
the hands as they grasp the dough and firmly push it away
with the heel of the palms.
After a few minutes of kneading, beads of perspiration form
on our foreheads, and our arms begin to feel heavy. So where
does the song come in?
The hands are singing to the dough. They are coaxing the
heavy flour and water mixure to receive from the air and turn
the dough into a light, fluffy challah. They are gentle,
loving agents of transformation. This song of challah-making
is a song weaving between a pounding endurance and a
breathing of life into those lifeless ingredients.
These hands are singing in thankfulness for the ability to
transform dough into the holy fragrant challah that will be
eaten at the Shabbos table. In these hands are the songs of
all the Jewish women back to our mother Sara whose challah
was so other-worldly and full of goodness that its freshness
remained from one Shabbos to the next.
That is the nature of hands. They can sing out when they are
moving. They are always singing as they are doing. But the
song they sing in the challah can be the culminating song of
a woman's whole week until that Erev Shabbos morning. Because
what have all her myriad, million-and-one gestures and
actions been for? Why is she doing all that she is doing?
Let the hands sing out her answer, her song. They are singing
even as she lays them flat on the dough and says the words of
blessing that separate the piece of challah for the
kohanim. Let the hands rest there for a moment, just
radiating into the dough her prayers for herself, her family,
the world and the rectification of all people, all families,
all worlds. Who is to know how precious are these songs and
these prayers in her hands?
There is nothing like the sweet smell of challahs baking.
