Baker Beware
Schlissel challah is a tasty custom that's gone stale
A few brief words about Schlissel Challah Shabbat:
There are people who have a custom to bake schlissel challah, or “key challah,” to eat on the Shabbat immediately following Pesach. Some bake it in the shape of a key, and others put an actual key in the dough. Either way, according to Eliyahu Kitov, “This is to remind us of the Manna which began to fall in the month of Iyar [which begins during the week following this Shabbat] and also symbolizes that the key to our livelihood is in God’s hands. We pray that God will open for us His store of treasures and pour abundance on us.”1
If Rabbi Kitov’s description of Schlissel Challah were adopted by most practitioners, I would have little quarrel with it.2 Symbols are powerful; they add color to Jewish practice, when Halacha often appears in black and white. In the words of my teacher, Professor Marvin Fox z’l, “Even when [Jewish ceremonies] satisfy the standards of pure Jewish legal propriety, they are impoverished by the absence of the atmosphere and tonal quality of a true Jewish ceremony… [Some sincere Jews] would like to include in their ceremonial life not only the spare purity of the law, but also the beautiful poetry and art of ancestral Jewish custom.”3 Moreover, customs can help us experience and learn important theological concepts, or serve as an impetus to pray, or even help keep alive alternative understandings of Jewish law that would otherwise be ignored.
Schlissel challah, however, seems to be something different. Many people apparently use schlissel challah not as a hint to pray, or as a reminder of the Biblical narrative, but as a magical method to encourage God to shower us with material abundance. As one website explained, “The Jewish reason for baking a shlissel challah is for a ‘segulah for Parnassah,’ or an omen for good fortune. Translation: Bake a shlissel challah after Passover in the hopes of secure financial status for your family.” Or, in the words of a kiruv-oriented website, “Schlissel challah… is a post-Passover tradition symbolizing unlocking prosperity for the coming year. Think of it as a bread-y good luck charm!”
When a custom is seen as a type of magic, we have a serious problem.
Jewish tradition emphasizes the importance of developing a relationship with God. This relationship can change: sometimes we see God as a spouse, other times as a parent, other times as a sovereign. But we may never see God as an impersonal force which can be controlled or influenced by our own magical actions. Prayer is conversation; but schlissel challah, if used as a means of “unlocking prosperity for the coming year,” is an attempt to manipulate God so that we get what we want. This is quite literally the opposite of the way we are supposed to view our Father in heaven.
It is, in other words, a form of idolatry.
It is worth mentioning that our Sages say that God decrees a person’s sustenance on Rosh Hashanah, or perhaps on Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot as well, or potentially every day or even every moment.4 But there is no source that the Shabbat after Pesach is somehow a uniquely opportune time to ask God for sustenance. Thus, those who emphasize the importance of having schlissel challah on this particular Shabbat are, in fact, contradicting the open testimony of our Mishnaic and Talmudic teachers.
To conclude: people may do what they want, and those who eat schlissel challah on this Shabbat have precedents on which they may rely. But should they see it as a form of magic - a “segulah” - they are undermining the very relationship with God that they profess to be seeking.
Living a Torah lifestyle involves the drive to develop a relationship with the divine. Schlissel challah, improperly conceived, does the opposite. Let the baker beware.
The Book of Our Heritage, volume 2, p. 407
In fact, this custom may be of Christian origin.
Introduction to Abraham Chill, The Minhagim.
Masechet Rosh Hashanah 16a
This is why I'm opposed to segulot generally. Likewise, to any attempt to turn mitzvot into transactions, "Do mitzvah X for reward Y," or, more subtly (and probably more controversially), the idea that you can say, "May my zechut from this mitzvah go to person X" (which I don't think actually "works," but even if it did, I would be opposed). We don't get to make those decisions and should not be seeing our relationship with HaShem that way.
So the practice is like the apple-in-honey and other foods on Rosh haShanah night. The Apter Rebbe said similarly in the earliest documentation of the custom.
Thus the problem is not with shlissel challah but with the attitude that "avodas Hashem" isn't about our service for or worship of the Creator, but about getting Him to serve us.
Queue my usual speach about Will to Give vs Will to Take, which R Dessler described as the essential focal point of free will. There was a shift in the 20th century from wanting to be "egrlicher Yidn" to thinking of ourselves as "frum", which as R Wolbe writes, is the instinct for obtaining personal holiness. This reflects our generation's focus on the Will to Take and how it is poluting even our religiosity.
(Perhaps one could say it would have spread as far as it did without the segulah motive. I suspect the main motivator of the spread might simply be that women baking challah enjoy making a shape as entertainment. Or just the desire for variety in life gives us reason to want another special Shabbos.)