The earliest apparent source for using the term ḥallah in connection
with the bread that is eaten on Shabbat can be found in the 15th c.
German work Leket Yosher (p. 49) [See John Cooper’s Eat and Be
Satisfied: A Social History of Jewish Food]:
וזכורני שבכל ע”ש עושין לו ג’ חלות דקות הנילושות בביצים ושמן ומעט מים. וחלה האמצעית נתן בלילה על השלחן באמצע שלחנו, כי שלחנו היה מרבע,
על המפה האמצעית. ותחת החלה היה ככר גדול שהוא שלם, אע”פ שהוא שחור ולא
על לחם לבן קטן גלוסקא שהוא זעמל. ובשחרית נתן החלה הגדולה וככר גדול על
השלחן כמו בלילה. ולסעודה ג’ לקח החלה הקטנה ולחם שלם.
I remember that on every Friday afternoon they would make three thin ḥallot that were kneaded with eggs, oil, and a little bit of
water. In the evening, since the table was square, the middle ḥallah
was put in the middle of the table on the middle tablecloth. Under the
ḥallah was a large whole loaf…In the morning the large ḥallah and a
large loaf were put on the table like in the evening. For the third
meal the small ḥallah and a small bread was taken.
Not only is the use of ḥallah in the context of Shabbat relatively
late, but it also wasn’t uniform. The following is from a Philologos
column that discussed the use by South African Jews of the word
“kitke” to describe the bread eaten on Shabbat:
Mr. Cole can find the answer to his question in Volume III of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research’s Language and Culture Atlas of
Ashkenazic Jewry, in which no fewer than nine pages, complete with
linguistic maps and charts, are devoted to the various words by which
Sabbath and festival breads were known to the Jews of Central and
Eastern Europe. Although “challah” has taken over completely among the
Jews of the United States, effacing all its rivals, a look at
Ashkenazic Europe from Alsace in the West to Belarus and Ukraine in
the East reveals, in addition to Western and Eastern Yiddish khale,
five other words for such a bread: berkhes, dacher, koylatsh, shtritsl
and — the word asked about by Mr. Cole — kitke.
Khale was by far the most widespread of these words, thus explaining its predominance in America. It derives from Hebrew
h.allah, which has the meaning in the Bible of a flat cake, baked on
coals, that constituted the simplest and most inexpensive of
sacrifices that could be offered on the altar. (Its association with
sacred ritual was very likely the reason that h.allah later became
attached to Sabbath and holiday breads.) Apart from much of Germany,
Czechoslovakia and Transylvania, khale was used in almost every part
of Ashkenazic Europe, often in conjunction with other terms. Sometimes
but not always, khale was the general term for a Sabbath and holiday
bread while another word designated to a local variety, or else khale,
referred to a plain bread as opposed to a fancier one. Thus, for
instance, the word koylatsh was used widely throughout Poland and
Russia to denote, in some areas, a braided challah; in others, a
decorated challah baked for weddings and celebrations, and in still
others, any braided roll, braided yeast cake, or even filled cake or
pastry. (The word koylatsh itself, though its ultimate etymology is
unclear, already was in use among French Jews in the lifetime of
renowned 11th-century rabbinic commentator Rashi; he speaks of a
coilush as a kind of long, thin bread, like a baguette.) Shtritsl
(apparently from medieval German Struz, a swelling — as of dough with
yeast? — or a protuberance) had much the same range of meanings as
koylatsh but was more restricted in its geographical range and was
used occasionally to designate a festive Christian bread rather than a
Jewish one.
I mentioned this to my colleague Rabbi Jill Hammer, and she suggested
that I look into the connection between ḥallah and goddess worship.
Not really knowing what to expect, I found the following in The
Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects (p. 482):
The braided bread loaves of Germanic tradition were invented by the women of Teutonic tribes, who used to make offerings of their own
hair to their Goddess. Eventually they learned to preserve their
braids by substituting the imitative loaf, which was called
Berchisbrod or Perchisbrod, bread offered to the Goddess Berchta, or
Perchta. The name of the braided Sabbath loaf among German Jews,
Berches or Barches, was copied from this tradition.
Could it be that those nice braids that my wife makes when she bakes
ḥallah really have their source in pagan goddess worship? The linguist
Paul Wexler thinks that the original name was actually the German
Holle which was
the name of a pagan Germanic goddess to whom braided bread was once given in offering. [The German] Holle was replaced at a later
date-under the pressure of Judaization-by the [Hebrew] ḥallah, which
bore formal and semantic similarity. (See his book The Non-Jewish
Origins of the Sephardic Jews, pp. 68-69 and numerous other places in
his writings.)
