We have discussed the custom of putting the key in the Challah many times, and people still alway ask what the story is.
This year I gave a class to a seminary on this topic, in a more concise fashion, which I will share:
Many people have the custom (it’s a custom of Hasidic origin and definitely not a halacha) to place a key in their Challah for the Shabbat immediately after Pesach.
Some people say this custom comes from copying the Goyim, which is not proper to say about great Hasidic rebbes.
Women bake and are Mafrish challah, and put a key in it when they bake it, the first Shabbat after Pesach.
We have three basic questions about this:
1- Why this Shabbat? It’s always a Mitzvah to take challah.
2- Why the key?
3- Why put the key in the bread?
Firstly, we have to understand that the Gemarah tells us we are judged four times over the year.
-On Rosh Hashana people are judged,
-On Pesach we are judged on the grain,
-On Shavuot we are judged on the fruit, and -On Succot we are judged on the water.
Each one of these has a Mitzvah to bring blessing in that judgement
We bring the Korban HaOmer, which is a grain offering of barley, to bring blessing in the grain,
We bring fruits/ Bikurim to bring blessing to the fruit,
and we libate water to bring blessing to the rain.
So we do a mitzvah to bring blessing to each one of those areas.
Why the Korban HaOmer specifically? What’s the message of that?
The Korban is comprised of a barley grain, and the amount of the offering is a measurement called an Omer (approximately 3 lbs).
It’s odd that the Korban was called Korban HaOmer, because it was made out of barley. Imagine a cake that you make on Passover, like an apple crisp, that you bake in a 12 inch baking pan. Do you call it Apple Crisp or would you call it the “12 Inch Baking Pan Cake?” You would call it an Apple Crisp. So why is it called Korban HaOmer, and why is Sefirat HaOmer also named for a measurement?
The answer is that there is a special significance to that measurement:
There are three times the Torah mentions the measurement of an Omer.
The first is in reference to the mann that God sent for 40 years in the desert. Some people gathered a lot and it shrunk down to an Omer, and some people gathered a little and it came to an Omer.
Whether you added or subtracted, Hashem showed you that you are getting what you are supposed to get. The Omer was the measurement that God provided for 40 years in the desert. He decided how much we were supposed to get. And it was an Omer. So when we hear the word Omer it reminds us of the message that God provides for us now, as He provided for us in the desert.
The second reference is that every year, at the beginning of the grain season, they used to bring a Korban, to say “We no longer see open miracles, we are working in our fields, but we want to retain that same message that God provides.”
So the Korban HaOmer was in order to remind us of the Omer of Mann.
The third reference to an Omer is the Mitzvah from the Torah, given to the women in the times of the Bet HaMikdash, in Israel. When a women made an Omer worth of dough, she had to separate some and give it to the Kohen.
This was for the same reason: to remind the woman in her kitchen of the Omer measurement of mann. Just like the mann came from heaven and God controlled that, God is in your kitchen.
The man had the message that God is with him in the field, with the Omer’s worth of barley at Korban HaOmer at the time of Pesach, and the woman had a message with her Omer worth of dough in her baking.
Since the Bet HaMikdash was destroyed we lost the Korban Omer.
What is the next best thing, to send a message at this time of year, that we believe that God is in charge of our sustenance? The Challah, which is also an Omer reminder.
Thus, the custom became that this Shabbat is an opportune time for women to make challah and be mafrish challah- to give that message. Of course, every week,the challah is there to remind us of the mann. We have two loaves of bread, to remind us of the double portion of the mann that came down on Friday for Shabbat.
So we have a built-in automatic reminder of the mann in the Lechem Mishne, and we have a mann reminder every time a woman makes challah, if she’s thinking, and understands that the challah is there to remind us of the mann, and that God sustains us. In the times of the Bet HaMikdash, a piece was given to the Kohen, because he is God’s man, and God told us to give to him. We have to realize that it is God’s dough, and He tells who to give it to.
This answers two out of three of our questions.
Number one was why this week? And the answer is, because it’s the first opportunity to bake after Pesach.
And now we know why we use challah- because it reminds us of the Omer.
Now we can answer our third question:
Why do we use a key?
This goes back to the story of Eliyahu Hanavi. The Gemara in Masechet Sanhedrin (113) explains that Eliyahu prayed to G-d to entrust with him the key to rainfall. As the Gemara teaches us elsewhere (Taanit 2), there are three "keys" which G-d holds for himself, but may, on occasion, entrust to a prophet. Eliyahu was given the key to rainfall, and he turned off the rain, so-to-speak, declaring a drought upon the Land of Israel for 3 years, because they were worshiping idols.
G-d then instructed Eliyahu to move to a place called Tzorfat, where he would find a widow who would support him. Sure enough, Eliyahu found a poor widow in Tzorfat, and requested something to eat. The woman swore to Eliyahu that she had nothing other than a small bit of flour and small jug of oil, which she was going to use to bake something for her and her son to eat, expecting that afterward they would die of starvation. Eliyahu assured the woman that the small supply of flour and oil would miraculously last until G-d would again bring rain and cause the land to produce food. However, he told her that she must first give him some of the bread she was baking, before she or her son ate. Indeed, a miracle occurred and the widow's supply of flour and oil was never depleted.
The Rabbis explain that Eliyahu was a kohen, and he instructed the woman to first give him a portion of her food, in order to fulfill the mitzva of Challah. He knew that the merit of this mitzva would bring a miracle. By giving Challah to Eliyahu, she gained access to the key to parnasa, which he held, and thereby secured her livelihood.
So we see that one of the ways to connect to the key of parnasa is through Hafrashat Challah.
Therefore, in order to remind God of the concept that giving challah brings the blessing of the key of parnassa, we put the key inside the Challah.
So that’s why we put the key in.
Hafrashat challah has 2 points:
1-It reminds us of the Omer,
2-It reminds us of the key to Parnassa, so we put the key in the bread.
But it is all really one message. The message is that what brings you beracha is realizing that God sustains you, takes care of you, and is in charge of you.
That is what brings blessing.
If you just think that you’re just going to go to the bakery and buy bread with a key in it, and that will bring you a beracha, that is a little off. Maybe when people scream that this is a bad custom, this is what they are referring to. It is a bad custom, if you just take the external and don’t know what is going on.
It is a wonderful custom to take challah every week, because of the important mitzvah, and the important lesson that God sustains us. This is why we separate challah this week, and why we put the key in.
Have a great day and a Shabbat Shalom.