QUESTION: Since being diagnosed as a coeliac, I have been desperately trying to find gluten-free challah. But I have been told there is no such thing, since challah can only be made with five flours — wheat, barley, rye, oats or spelt, which coeliacs must avoid. Am I to be permanently excluded from a basic Jewish practice?

An Orthodox View - Naftali Brawer

It is correct that the mitzvah of separating challah only applies to the five grains you have listed. The source for this is the Mishnah Menachot 10:7.

However, it appears that you are conflating the mitzvah of separating challah with the soft braided bread colloquially known as challah. The actual mitzvah of challah has nothing to do with how the bread is braided. It involves separating some of the dough before the baking process and setting it aside as a consecration in memory of the portion of dough traditionally given to the priests in temple times (Numbers 15:17-21). 

Today, this consecrated dough is burned after reciting a special blessing. The ritual invokes an awareness of God’s bounty and invites us to offer up to God a choice portion.

The mitzvah of separating challah applies to any bread, crackers or cakes made from the five grains. The same obligation applies whether one is making a fluffy braided challah in honour of Shabbat or a loaf of rye bread on an ordinary weekday.

The baking of matzah also requires that challah be taken, although it is taken later in the baking process, unlike ordinary bread. The reason the soft braided bread took on the name challah was most likely due to the propensity of Jewish families preparing this particular bread in honour of Shabbat and since they would have separated challah in the process, the name transferred from the process to the finished product.

A similar misnomer applies to the term eruv, which many assume refers to the poles and wire or other street furniture that makes up the boundary, transforming a public domain into a private one and rendering it permissible to carry items on Shabbat. 

In reality, the eruv is a designated loaf of bread, or typically, a box of matzah that is placed in the synagogue or other communal building signifying a shared community meal. It is the availability of this shared meal that symbolically “binds” a disparate public into a single unit. The poles and wire create the enclosure necessary for the eruv to be effective. 

So, regardless of your restricted diet, you can perform the mitzvah of separating challah if you bake a bread for others consisting of any of the five grains.

As far as enjoying the fluffy braided bread typically called challah, there is a wide availability of gluten free options.

Rabbi Brawer is Neubauer executive director of Hillel

A Progressive view - Jonathan Romain

I often tell my community regarding other issues: “Where there is a rabbinic will, there is a rabbinic way. The question is: is there a rabbinic will?”

We know that in the past rabbis have overturned biblical precepts, such as Hillel’s prozbul on repayment of loans, citing “the needs of the time”. Alternatively, they have interpreted away biblical laws, such as reading “an eye for an eye” as fiscal compensation rather than literal revenge.

Unfortunately, this reforming zeal has ground to a halt in some quarters, which is why an unjust and immoral law such as the agunah, the chained woman unable to obtain a get from her husband, has not been ameliorated.

So when can and cannot the law be changed to meet new conditions? As Hillel might have put it: “If back then, why not now?”

This conundrum applies to your question. Traditionally, the challah over which one can say the blessing hamotzi can only be made from the five flours you list, none of which you and other coeliac sufferers can eat.

However, this is not even a biblical rule, but a rabbinic declaration from the Mishnah (Challah 1.1) and so is even more open to being adapted if new circumstances arise. This would surely apply to medical conditions that were not known about at that time.

It is certainly possible to make gluten-free challah, using other ingredients, such as rice-flour or potato flour components, and which looks exactly like normal challah.

Is your intention to flout the law or disrespect tradition or take a lazy short-cut? Of course not. On the contrary, you wish to honour Shabbat and maintain the challah tradition. You will have to put effort into making gluten-free challah.

On the basis of another adage I often use — that “tradition has a vote, but not a veto” — challah from the five types of flour  should be the default position, but if that is impossible on health grounds, other types should be permitted.

Your concern to be as observant as possible is praise-worthy and I see no reason why you should not say hamotzi on your gluten-free challah, doing with pride in your handiwork.

There are times when what counts is the spirit of the law, rather than the letter of the law, and this is clearly such a time. In addition, it is also appropriate to change the letter of the law when necessary, as here.

Rabbi Romain is rabbi of Maidenhead (Reform) Synagogue

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