Shalom Shabbat

Flora and I in the midst of Hurricane Challah

Shalom shabbat, means "peace be with you for the day of rest," although my part in the staging of it was anything but peaceful! Friday afternoon I took on the role of Jewish housewife, and spent the better part of my afternoon making challah, the sweet bread for the start of shabbat. My first attempt ever at making bread was, of course, not without debacle. For starters, I freaked out because I couldn't find enoug yeast, called Michelle at work, and felt like an idiot when she guided me to its location, literally right under my nose. After soaking the new-found yeast in water, adding egg, sugar, butter and over a kilo of flour, the dough tasted good, but was incredibly sticky due to the olive oil, used out of necessity since we (of course) were out of what it called for (vegetable oil). I stuck my hands into the bowl, "punched" it down as the recipe called for, and got ready to braid it into the traditional three strands.....but removed my hands with nearly all the dough clinging to my digits!! I was thanking god at this point when Flora walked up, and was able to help me add flour to the dough to render it less gooey, something I am pretty sure Benji or Toby wouldn't have been able to do (they lost interest after they got to lick the bowl). It was a huge flour-y, doughy mess in the kitchen, but we emergedvicrotious over the tenaciously sticky Challah. Into the oven and half an hour later I hear Flora scram, "Maggy-eee, come see the challah!" Flashbacks of putting the wrong soap in the dishwasher and the subsequent foam party in my kitchen sent a knot to my stomach, as I imagined the horrified look on Michelle's face if she came home to over-yeasted dough emanating from her oven. I sprinted to look.....but alas, SUCCESS! The challah was a lovely golden brown color, hollow when tapped, and had filled the room with a sweet, pungent odor. Perfect, the only caveat being that it was monstrouslyovergown, 4x the size of a normal loaf!

Toby goes to an intensely Jewish school (which Marc and Michelle chose for its proximity to the house, not religiosity), and is obsessed with all things Jewish. So for him, Marc and Michelle try to do as many traditions of Shabbat that a "real" Jewish family would, even if we were are having daire and meat on the same plate. The children and the mother lit a candle together, the boys and men all work yarmulkes, and the kiddush, a decorative narrow metal cup was passed around for everyone at the table to drink from. We dug into the delicious challah, and I thought about how cool it was to be fulfilling my secret childhood wish to be Jewish (even if it was only for an hour). I wanted to stand out, be different......plus, I had watched the Rugrats Passover special about a hundred times, and was obsessed with "Molly's Pilgrim," an afterschool special about a 10 yr. old Jewish Russian immigrant who showed up all the snobby girls by being awesome at gymnastics (to my 8 yr. old eyes, the absolute epitome of cool). For me the shabbat dinner was more than just interesting and scrumptious, it appeased and evoked the desire of my curious school-aged self to stand out from the crowd, and to learn ways of life much different from my own.

Sitting at the table after dinner, full and happy from some amazing red wine, Michelle proclaimed, "this was great. The homemade challah was sooo much nicer than the (of course bio) store bought kind. We should do this every friday." Surely she only made this satement not having seen the state of trauma her kitchen had endured mere hours earlier, not knowing how much challah dough her children had greedily consumed.

The only fitting way to end this story, and to express my opinion on any future challah making endeavors....OY!