Skip to main content

Thoughts as my Challah bakes

 Just before Passover, I washed my bedroom curtains. I noticed that the lace curtain, the one that Victorians would call the glass curtain because it is the one next to the glass window had developed holes.


These curtains had begun life as my living room curtains about thirty years ago. My husband kept saying that since they are made out of lace they ought to have holes in them. I think that he really wanted me to avoid unnecessary work.



The holes were beyond what I could tolerate. While my old curtains were the height of late 80s early 90s interior design style finding such curtains or even such yardage wasn't easy in 2025 where minimalism is prized.

Eventually a bit of internet searching turned up some yardage that would work well enough. The fabric arrived a few days ago and now,



we have a new pair of glass curtains in place and unfiltered morning light won't make my husband miserable.



They even look OK at night. Actual time to cut, sew and put up these curtains? probably less than an hour.

This Shabbat is the first Shabbat after Passover.



It is of course a challah baking week. The last few days my FaceBook feed has been filled with images of key shaped challot, called Schlissel challah.


A schlissel is a key in Yiddish. My feed has been filled with reminders to shape my challah into a key as a way to bring blessings, especially financial blessings on my and my family as well as offering up a "key into heaven".

As someone who  happily eats sweet things at Rosh HaShanah to user in a sweet year--I can't tell you how much this custom irritates me. This key is a symbol for Saint Peter. Many Eastern European communities bake key shaped loaves for Easter. I suppose that I would be somewhat more comfortable if this key challah custom were shifted to a different point in the Jewish year...maybe for the last meal before Yom Kippur or for the meal where we break the fast??

But coming so close to Easter these key challot feel too much like trying to find a religious justification for having a Christmas Tree in one's home at Chanukah. I know you didn't ask me...but just say no to this custom.

My own challot are baking away as I crankily type this.



What else are we eating tonight???

I found a mystery bag of cooked meat in the freezer that has turned out to be not brisket, but meatballs made in the pre-Passover frenzy of worrying if I had made enough food for the holiday.



Our vegetable matter will be this pan of roasted vegetables. I will probably make some couscous or rice as well. dessert will be left overs from Passover.


A heartbreaking song in honor of Yom HaShoah.





Shabbat Shalom to all of you.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

I love hearing from my readers. I moderate comments to weed out bots.It may take a little while for your comment to appear.

Popular posts from this blog

Barukh Dayan HaEmet - Blessed be the True Judge

In 1986, when I first began working for my synagogue, one of the volunteers was a teeny little Austrian woman. Ida was so little and cute, you could swear you could just put her in your pocket and carry her around. Ida also babysat for a little girl  in our community. When I saw the two of them running around together and laughing as if they were both four, I knew that when I had kids, Ida would babysit for my kids. In order to be sure that Ida would take care of my oldest, I told her I was pregnant at the same time I told my mother. Soon after my oldest was born,  Ida was ready. She was silly, but she was also Austrian. She had her rules. She would care for a child only until they could walk. She felt that she was too old to chase children. She would work only twelve hours a week. The baby had to be fed, dressed and ready to go out when she showed up. Ida's rules made sense. It taught me, and my oldest, the value of having a schedule. Ida and ...
1 comment
Read more

Two funerals and a birthday

 I know that it has been a while since I posted. We went to Boston last weekend to celebrate the bar mitzvah of a family friend. I may post about the weekend in a different post. Two disparate topics in one post is all I can manage today.  Yesterday was a busy day and filled with big emotions. We began the day at the funeral  of a young man who was a Hebrew School classmate of my older son's. I had such fond, fond memories of the sweet, funny, kind and exceptionally bright young man who also had terrible struggles. I kept remembering the young man both  as a delightful child full of promise and the suffering that he and his family have been through for the past many years. I sat with two women whose children attended preschool with the young man. We three held one another in our sorrow. Yesterday was also my husband's birthday. My husband is not someone who wants things.  When we were  at Bingo---the kosher version of Costco I spotted a large package of ste...
Post a Comment
Read more

It All Feels Like Yesterday

Today, an oponion piece in the Wall Street Journal had the headline These Days, It All Feels Like Yesterday. It seemed a perfect way to sum up how we live our lives these days. I have been far more willing during this Covid time to do the sort of slow going work that I tend to avoid like the plague during normal times. I have been working away on Max's tallit. I had decided to get the lettering on the atara in a new to me way. Actually, to be completely honest, this is a method I have read about since I was a kid. You draw the design on a bit of what is called "waste fabric". Then you embroider the design and then you pull away the waste fabric thread by thread. The embroidered design remains, but all of your guidelines are gone, as if by magic. I had more or less finished embroidering the letters. (There were little bits of letters I hadn't quite finished but knew that I could add after the purple fabric was pulled away.) I began by picking out all of my red basting ...
2 comments
Read more