Many kids learn how to braid their hair. I learned how to braid bread dough.
Bread dough that leads to an easily transformable food that will always remind me of late weekend mornings and my grandmother in the kitchen — the braided, slightly sweet, Jewish bread known as challah.
Bread is a staple around the world for its simplicity, but it is often not given as much prominence as challah in Judaism. Jewish kids love to eat it and make it, and yet few teens are familiar with its origin. Challah has been a part of my entire life, and I never knew it as anything besides a loaf of bread, but, like any rabbi would tell me to do, I went and started looking for answers to my questions.
Challah did not start as delicious as it is today. It actually comes from a commandment in the Torah, specifically Numbers 15:17-21, where God says to Moses, “When you eat the bread of the land, you shall offer up an offering unto the Lord. You shall offer up a cake of the first of your dough.” That cake became known as challah. Once the days of burning sacrifices were over, Jews were still setting aside an amount of dough because of tradition.
According to a 2020 article published in The Nosher, Jewish women in the 15th century from both Austria and Germany began following the trend of their non-Jewish neighbors, who made plaited loaves on Sundays. However, the bread was not sweet yet. Sweeteners were not widely available, and bread was still primarily something hearty to add weight to often meager meals.
Across Eastern Europe, different ingredients were added to bread. Where sugar beets were grown, there was sugar added, but oil and eggs were the more common ways to spruce up a plain loaf of bread.
Like many cultures, challah underwent significant changes when it arrived in the United States. Eggs and sugar were more common and much less expensive. Yeast was another good that became more accessible. All of this led to larger, sweeter challah being made primarily by Eastern European Jewish immigrants. However, challah was largely a bakery item until even after World War II. Recipes were passed down through generations, including the addition of raisins as an additional flavoring to the challah. There were not many more changes to challah until the internet age, when more people than ever before are experimenting with challah and creating truly unique flavor combinations or designs. From twelve braids compared to the traditional three or salami-stuffed in the center, challah has come a long way from its hearty Eastern European roots.
Challah has become so deeply entwined in Jewish culture that I’m not sure if anything could replace it. It is baked weekly for the Friday night holiday of Shabbat. It is turned into a round “crown” shape for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, to symbolize longevity and the circle of life. And in its simplicity, it becomes extremely easy to pass along.
When everyone was baking sourdough during COVID-19, my sister, our cousins, and I would get on Zoom with our grandmother to make challah. It was a way for us to connect, even when we could not visit our grandmother’s house like we did every summer. Our grandmother taught us how to bake on our own, and the incredibly long rise times gave us time to catch up on what was going on in each other’s lives.
17-year-old Mylo Morantz remembers being a kid at synagogue, working with the congregant who made the challah for his synagogue, who was teaching a whole group of kids in the religious school how to make challah themselves. 16-year-old Suzanne Levy remembers being in third grade at an overnight camp and having an evening activity with the oldest campers, where they made mini challahs stuffed with chocolate chips and sprinkles.
Another reason challah has remained so relevant is the many forms it has taken. The most common is that it makes incredible French toast, but challah can replace bread in just about any dish.
Levy’s dad makes a challah pizza.
There are also so many flavors, from chocolate chip to the more traditional raisin to cinnamon sugar to blueberry. At my own synagogue, when Hanukkah and Christmas overlapped in 2024, someone actually made an Asian sesame-inspired challah to go along with the common “tradition” of Jewish people eating Chinese food on Christmas. Locally, Alon’s Bakery offers raisin, poppyseed, or plain baked fresh every Friday.
The reason I like challah so much is its versatility. Everyone makes it a little differently, and people have different preferences for how to flavor it. It represents a culture that disagrees about every way to do a ritual, but every opinion is somehow still correct. The sugary-sweetness in a challah stuffed with chocolate chips feels exactly like waking up late on the weekends, while the more traditional plain loaf has the joy of Friday night dinners spent with family and friends.
VOX ATL contributor Lexi Markham believes, “What we choose to eat is not just about the food we choose to consume but what recipes we think are worth remembering, what culture is worth honoring, and what traditions are important enough to carry forward,” and that is why it seemed so unique to me that challah survived. But maybe the simplicity of it is what kept it alive. People always need bread, but it has become something so much deeper than that.
Challah is so much more than what we are taught to think of it as. It’s a story, just like so much of Judaism is a story. The braids in the dough weave across maps and through time. Challah is tradition, but it is also family, childhood, or just simply love. It is something so simple in nature, but it fills so many of my favorite memories.
I am still not good at braiding, either with hair or with dough. Standing over a flour-covered kitchen counter trying to remember how to braid, though, feels less silly of a task now. Because there are so many generations before me who probably struggled with this same task, and I think they would be proud that Jewish people are still baking challah.
