sarah in nyc

 Today is my father's fourteenth Yahrziet. Last night I attended a Shiva minyan and recited Kaddish.  This morning I put up a batch of challah. We will be spending the weekend with dear friends so I am baking challah for my hostess. As I did all of the familiar tasks that make up making a batch of challah I thought about how my father used to bake challah. I thought about our very different approaches to the task. My father was much more methodical. Once he figured out a formula for challah baking he stuck to it with no variations. My father had difficulty braiding the dough so he baked his challot in a loaf pan. Each pan held five quarter pound lumps of dough. My father made up a much bigger batch of dough at a time than I do making at least a dozen loaves at a time.  Despite the differences in our challah baking styles and probably in our approaches to life---doing this act today, of all days connected me to my father.  Today I ran into our rabbi and found out that...