Hafrashat challah party

amother

White

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 8:31 pm

Someone in my shul has been inviting me to hers on an almost monthly basis.
Everyone makes a batch of dough on thier own, brings it to her house and makes the Bracha out loud.
I just don’t get it.
Is it some sort of hiddur? Does it improve or enhance the mitzvah in any way?
It seems like such an inconvenience getting in my car to make the Bracha, then driving home to braid and bake.
This last time she invited me she ended with please try to come cuz I’m trying o get 40 women together. And I wondered if I should be feeling bad that I have no interest in joining

Anon cuz I’ve been bringing this up every time I meet this woman in shul

amother

Lavender

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 8:53 pm

Anon too because I have a similar problem. Maybe I'm not the only one. I like having that special time to daven quietly for the people I know in the privacy of my own kitchen. Just as an aside, I'm fine lighting candles with my mother, mil, sisters, sil's, when we're spending Shabbos or Yom Tov together but when I've been at hotels, lighting tea lights at a table with a bunch of strangers, I also felt like I was missing an important moment of my week.

zaq

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 9:08 pm

Don’t let anyone guilt you into anything. It’s a new trendy-frum mishego—er, thing to do. From Devorah Heller the High Priestess of challah making and separating, who has made encouraging and teaching women to make and separate challah her life’s mission, this has morphed into a fashion for such assemblies.

Is there any genuine reason to shoot for 40? If there’s a proven kabbalistic reason, no one seems to know about it. Forty is a nice round number, enough to qualify as “rov am” perhaps, though 40 women or 400 don’t constitute a minyan. It’s one of those numbers that appear over and over in Jewish tradition, but so are three, four, seven and ten.

Usually the gatherings are al menat to pray for some zechus for someone in need: refuah for a sick person, e.g. The reasoning is that many people praying together will be more effective than one person praying alone or even many people praying separately.

I believe this is one of those things that someone invented, garnished with a bit of pseudo-kabbalah, and labeled an ancient tradition. It became popular and the result is what you see.

It’s a pleasant female-bonding event, does no harm, encourages performance of a mitzvah, and for all we know may even have some toelet. So there’s nothing to deplore but neither should you allow yourself to be bullied into joining. You will not be turning your back on the tradition of millennia of Jewish women who came before you.

I could be 200% wrong and this may be a modern revival of a custom that stretched from Temple times to the middle ages. What is known is that in many places where people did not have their own ovens, they would bring their loaves to a communal oven and bake all the bread together. But this would have been after separating challah , which would have been done at home, and a daily necessity unlikely to have had quite the same party atmosphere.