Challah

My wife Barbara is a descendant of Polish-Russian Jews known as Litvacs. As a child Barbara heard stories of the old country as it was before her grandparents endured the hard voyage riding in the stinking bowels of the ship from Europe to New York. Barbara's great-grandfather was a baker in a Jewish village lying on the border of Poland or Lithuania and Russia. Throughout history the exact location of borders were constantly in dispute, so the little village was sometimes in Russia, other years it would be in Poland, and still during other times the village was part of Lithuania. It depended on who happened to be winning the local wars during and before the time of Napolean and the Czars.

In those days European countries had kings, queens, and other nobility. Most of the rest of the people were poor servants to the rich in one way or another. Barbara's family lived in a town like the one in the musical Fiddler On The Roof. Her great-grandfather was the baker, and he was an excellent baker. The wonderful aroma of the baking bread could be smelled from far across the fields away from his house. Challah, pronounced [halla] is a favorite Jewish hard crusted bread that is long and twisty shaped. They don't slice it. They tear off pieces and love to eat it while it is warm from the oven. The crust is shiny and hard, and the bread inside is soft and sweet tasting. Because they don't cut the bread it is called "breaking bread" when you eat some of it, and the bread is often used with wine in religious ceremonies. Bread was so important that when they ate any kind of meal it was called "breaking bread" even when they didn't serve any bread.

A pogrom is the word used to describe "putting the Jews in their place." Since Jews were not Christians they were not allowed to be regular citizens, couldn't own land, were not allowed to have certain jobs and were made fun of. The Christians could not understand why the Jews stayed Jews instead of joining the gang and being Christians like everyone else. Anyway, the rulers didn't trust or like the Jews and even encouraged the young Christian men to ride their horses over to the Jew town to have a pogrom and beat a few folks and burn a few barns. The Russian army had horsemen called Cossacks who were known throughout the world as great fighters on horseback. They had learned to ride from the Mongolians in south Russia, and the men carried sabers and spears. The Mongolians were fierce fighters who played a horseback game using a severed human head as a polo ball.

Every now and then a group of Cossacks rode close to the border village of the Jews. The captain of the Cossacks might have said, "Men, it's about time we teach those Jews a lesson. It's a good day for a pogrom. Let's go take our exercise."

Hearing the horses hooves as the Cossacks charged, the baker quickly put fresh loaves of challah on the fences and window sills. The Jews knew better than to fight back. They knew from experience that the Christians would kill them easily because Hebrews were not allowed to keep weapons. The Cossacks speared the bread off the fences and retired to enjoy eating it leaving the baker's family uninjured. Other families lost goats, sheep, chickens and sometimes even human life in the pogroms.

Eventually Barbara's grandfather made the unpleasant trip riding steerage on a ship with many other sea-sick refugees to the new world to work for his freedom. At first he was not able to understand the new language. At first he was not treated much better in New York than he had been treated in Poland. But eventually he saved money and sent for his family. Soon he owned his own grocery store and raised a fine family of children who became educated in grade school. The new Americans loved knowledge and remained faithful to their old religion but were not as strict as their parents. On special occasions they always included challah to make a blessing to God.