I’ll have mine sliced

October 6, 2008 - 9:20 PM by Jessica

As the country gears up for Yom Kippur, beginning on Wednesday night, the preparations are happening all over the place, in varied ways. There’s the greeting that people use during this time of year, when they say Gmar chatima tova, or chatima tova, meaning, may you be written in the Book of Life. That’s a switch from last week, when people were just saying Shana Tova, or Happy New Year. Chatima tova is kind of a heavy greeting to be tossing out to everyone you see, and you gotta hope that it’s heartfelt, because otherwise, what book will you end up in?

And those are just the greetings. There are those of us who are seriously thinking about repentance and forgiveness. And there are those of us who are thinking about the 35th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. And then there are those of us, yours truly included, who are thinking about the food needs for the next five days, given that Yom Kippur ends and then Shabbat begins. I’m thinking about it because of a food incident last week, before Rosh Hashanah.

I was at Rafi, our local bakery, to buy challot for the chag. Truth to tell, I don’t usually like their challot, but I do like their babka, and in the interest of time, we were willing to eat their challot for the holiday. So I got there at 10:30 am on erev chag, which is usually early enough to have your pick of the challot, and lo and behold, there were no challot to be had. The shelves were empty and people were lined up at the counter, waiting for the huge, round challot to come out of the oven. I got lucky, and snagged one tremendous challah right away, and then a fresh batch came out of the oven, fulfilling all of my challah needs.

But as I was waiting to pay, an American guy runs in, bicycle helmet still on his head, and asks, in English, if there’s any sliced challah available, or if the bakery has a slicing machine. A hush immediately sets in over the crowd. Who would want their challah pre-sliced? What kind of person is this? The owner, of course, said no, because who ever wants their challah pre-sliced?

The saga continued. He called his wife from his cellphone, asking if she still wanted challah given that it wouldn’t be pre-sliced. “Yes, yes, I promise I’ll slice it very carefully, you’ll never know that it wasn’t sliced in a machine,” he told her. “If they don’t slice it here, I can’t imagine that there’ll be another bakery where they do.” The rest of us looked at each other, shrugging our shoulders, because, hey, clearly there’s no bakery that slices challah ahead of time.

Anyway, I took my pile of challot home, where they all got eaten (torn, not sliced), and now I’m thinking that I’d better get to the bakery much earlier on Wednesday, and on Friday. Because I’ll tell you one thing: I may not like their rest-of-the-year challot, but their High Holiday challot? Fab-o.

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