How the COVID-19 Baking Craze and Jewish Rituals Surrounding Bread Cast Light on the Meaning of Passover

One of the odd side effects of the pandemic has been a burst of enthusiasm for at-home breadmaking, as Americans sought to fill their newfound spare time, and perhaps avoid trips to the grocery store. For many Orthodox Jews, Sara Wolkenfeld reports, the trend took on an additional significance as the ritual removal of a piece dough—a commemoration of the tithe mentioned in Numbers 15:20, known as “taking challah”—became an opportunity to offer a prayer for a relative or friend suffering from the coronavirus. As Passover approaches, and with it the commandment to refrain from the consumption of leaven, Wolkenfeld reflects on the sacred significance of bread:

Jewish law dictates that we recite a blessing before taking a bite of the freshly baked loaf: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, Sovereign of the Universe, Who has brought forth bread from the earth.” As we do in all of the blessings recited upon consumption of food, we recognize God as having brought bread from the earth. Yet this blessing might be read as containing a kind of false modesty. We recognize the Divine for having brought forth bread, but a voice inside our head says: “It was us! Human labor cultivated the land, ground the wheat, and took flour, water, and a bit of yeast and transformed it into the loaves you see before you.”

The Talmud recognizes that bread can lead us to believe a little too strongly in our own human powers. . . . Leavening, in [one talmudic passage], is analogous to the yetser ha-ra, or evil inclination; it is that voice that inflates our egos, that makes us believe we are better, stronger, and more deserving than others. It puffs up our souls with overconfidence, like the air bubbles that make the dough rise. No, says the blessing, you never could have produced that bread all by yourself!

Passover, which we will celebrate this month, forces us to confront our limits. But it also reminds us that it is not about the bread. Passover is full of ritual foods, sustaining in both the physical and emotional sense. Taking—or baking—challah represents something tangible, a change in the world that we can see, and so it is a moment for meditation. For those who refrain from eating bread on Passover, as well as those who couldn’t find the time to invest in a baking project during the mania of the pandemic, the holiday presents itself laden with meaning and depth. It is a celebration of salvation, of survival, and of the resourcefulness of a basic dough repurposed at the last minute.

Read more at First Things

More about: Coronavirus, Food, Judaism, Passover

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society