Schlissel Challahs.

Happy Chag Ha’Atsmaut even if for some it is already over. There was much to celebrate.

And now or something different!

Something I never heard about it as a child, neither in my yeshivas nor in Yerushalayim, and not for most of my life. But now it is all the rage everywhere. The Schlissel Challah! How do you explain this?

On the 1st Shabbat after Pesach there is a custom is to bake a Challa, either in the form of a key or in some cases with a key backed inside. This is said to be a way of ensuring that one’s financial situation will be blessed and guaranteed for at least the rest of the year. The term used is parnassa , literally maintenance, financial support, but more often translated as making money to live off. And as you would expect with such generalized hopes there is no empirical evidence that it works. 

Where does this come from?  The Apter Rebbe, Avraham Yehoshua Heshel of Apt ( 1748-1825) the founder of a small Chassidic movement claimed that this was a custom going back a long time even though there is no record of it other than his. And he claimed that a Schlissel Challah would help his followers succeed in life.

 For 100 years hardly anybody either Chassidic or non-Chassidic had heard let alone practiced this custom, which now seems to be so accepted. Where does this come from? The Talmud says, “ There are three keys in this world that are exclusively in God’s hands, the key to rain, the key to life( children) and the key to resurrection” (TB Taanit 2a). Rain in the agrarian Land of Israel was synonymous with agricultural and material wealth, which is parnassa. 

Why after Pesach, after all we pray for rain on Succot? The Torah says that the Mana that sustained the Israelites during their time in the wilderness stopped the day after they celebrated Pesach on the way into the Land of Israel. The Israelites had to take care of their own provisions from that time onwards. Putting these themes together you have a rather remote and recondite argument about an additional prayer for parnassaeven if there are plenty of other suitable occasions throughout the year and within the liturgy to pray to God for sustenance.

Now we come to a fascinating non-Jewish element. On Easter throughout the medieval Christian world, and until this very day, people bake cakes and bread and buns on Easter, very often decorated with crosses. Hot Cross Buns we called them in my youth. Now almost out of fashion as Christianity is receding in the western world. And Easter and Pesach often coincided.

 Jews living in Poland and Catholic countries would have been fully aware of this easter custom and will have wanted to create their own alternative. In much the same way that many Jews today adopt non-Jewish festivals. That’s how we arrived at the idea of the Schlissel. The alternative to a cross! And the key in non-Jewish medieval societies was always a lucky charm, a token of love as well as a privileged entry into a city. But for some strange reason this particular custom of the Challah has now exploded into a universal custom, from Chassidim to Mitnagdim, Sephardi to Ashkenazi. 

You might have thought that customs like this would have been confined to the Chassidic community along with their very unique form of dress and head covering. And each Chassidic movement has its unique special holy days relating to the history of previous great rabbis who themselves often innovated in order to distinguish themselves from others. 

I suspect this has something to do  with another even more recent custom of having special challah bakesaround the Jewish world as a fun way of getting more Jews involved in religious life without it being too heavy a commitment or simply as a way of introducing them to the beauties of Shabbat rather than the terrifying obligations. All well and good I say. But this Schlissel thing raises another issue.

There is a fundamental principle that originates in the Torah of not following the rules and laws of other nations. The technical name of the law of Chukat HaGoyim, laws of other nations. Like many rules and statements in the Torah a simple face value explanation or interpretation is not helpful, because there are so many qualifications and exceptions both in theory and in practice. 

For example, Maimonides expands on this issue:

“We may not follow the statutes of the idolaters or resemble them in their [style] of dress, coiffure, or the like, as [Leviticus 20:23] states: “Do not follow the statutes of the nation [that I am driving out before you],” as [Leviticus 18:3] states… Jews should be separate from them and distinct in their dress and in their deeds, as they are in their ideals and character traits. One may not wear a garment which is unique to them or grow the tresses of our hair as they do. We may not shave our heads from the sides and leave hair in the center or shave our heads as they do… (Hilchot Ovdei Cochavim 11:1)

So much of Jewish custom and usage over the millennia  has been adopted from non-Jewish sources. Astrology was the science that everybody in the universe adhered to once.  It was adopted enthusiastically by Kabbalah and still plays a very large part today right across the Jewish spectrum together with charms, amulets and faith healing.  Many of the superstitions and customs of the medieval world have found themselves adopted by the Jewish world. And all, on paper at least, are forbidden, yet found in Jewish communities and no one thinks very much of it. 

We have borrowed so much over the ages ( as have others from us).

The tune for Chanukkah’s Ma’oz Tsur was taken from a Napoleonic march. Much Chassidic music was adapted from Polish and Russian songs. At the end of the Seder, we sing two songs Who Knows One and Only One Kid completely adapted from earlier non-Jewish sources. And celebrating  Independence Day, Yom Ha’atzmaut was taken from the non -Jews too.

We would be poorer in so many ways if we were not to adopt and adapt from other sources. So why not something as weird as a key in Challah?

Jeremy Rosen

April 2025