The Key to a Strange Post-Passover Custom

Is there anyone who doesn’t love the taste of warm challah on Shabbat? Many eagerly chomping down on their first bite of braided bread following the conclusion of Passover might be surprised, however, when their teeth clank against metal. 

In what is surely one of our tradition’s most curious practices, some bake what is called “schlissel challah,” from the German/Yiddish word for “key,” as a special segulah, or good luck charm, the first Sabbath after the Festival of Freedom, during which leaven was forbidden. Others don’t bake a key into their challah, but rather bake their challah in the shape of a key.

As the masterful scholar of the history of Jewish customs Rabbi Zvi Ron has documented, Rabbi Pinchas Shapiro of Koretz (1726-1791), a student of the founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, is the first to mention this practice – though not in the manner in which it is known today. In the “Imrei  Pinchas,” a collection of Rabbi Shapiro’s teachings put together by his students, he is recorded as having taught “On the Shabbat after Pesach we make [the challah] like matzah, hinting at the matzot eaten on Pesach Sheini,” the 14th of the month of Iyar, a month after the eve of Passover. On that day, those who were impure during Pesach itself could bring a replacement paschal sacrifice at the Temple. “And,” the teaching continued, “we make incisions into the challah with a key, hinting that the gates are opened until Pesach Sheini.” 

The holes, in other words, are made with a key in a challah which was made flat and round like a matzah for the occasion, to imitate the unlocking of a door. This was to show that the spiritual uplift and opportunities of the holiday’s central ritual continue for another month. With the Passover prefiguring the Messianic redemption, and the matzah serving as its central symbol, the turning of the key into a matzah-looking challah as a reassurance that, as Ron puts it, “although Pesach has passed and the awaited redemption did not materialize, there is still the possibility of a second chance at redemption, as demonstrated by Pesach Sheini.”

Pricking bread dough with a fork or some sharp tool, it turns out, is not a uniquely Jewish practice. Called “docking,” the technique is applied to flatbreads, often with spiked rollers, to help the steam to escape and prevent air bubbles from ruining a flat pastry base.

Subsequent to Rabbi Shapiro’s recording of the practice, Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heshel (1748-1825) added another spiritual layer. “We make dots on the holy bread on this Shabbat with keys,” he recorded in his book “Ohev Yisrael,” “to hint that we are opening a little through fulfilling the mitzvah of Shabbat.” Since the gate of potential redemption is agape at this time, it is incumbent upon us to add merits, such as observance of Shabbat, to hasten the Messiah’s arrival.

Additional meanings accrued in later years.  The first rebbe of Sighet, Hungary, Rabbi Rabbi Yekutiel Yehuda Teitelbaum (1808–1883), suggested that since the Torah portion for the Shabbat after Passover is usually Shemini, in which the Bible discusses kosher food, we mark our challahs to demonstrate that eating proper food is “the key to serving God in all things.” 

Others presumed that the symbolism commemorated the key to where one keeps the chametz sold to a non-Jew prior to Pesach, retrieved once Pesach has ended.

The most common explanation for the custom relates it to sustenance. That’s because at the end of “Ohev Yisrael,” the grandson of Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heshel added an appendix. He mentioned there that he heard “from people who can be relied upon, that they heard from the holy mouth of the author,” that “the challah a shape of a key is made.” It is explained that “at this time when the Israelites were eating from the manna, from the time that the omer offering was brought and on they no longer ate from the manna as it is written, ‘The day after the Passover, that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land: unleavened bread and roasted grain’ (Joshua 5:11).” The key thus represents divinely granted provisions. 

This explanation has become predominant — as given modern life’s constant financial pressures, many have presumed that it can’t hurt to hope that a small key might help grant you God’s generosity (that is, of course, unless you accidentally bite it).

Ron notes that the tacked-on note is not as unusual as one might think. Many regional Jewish customs in prior centuries added shapes to a regular challah to mark special occasions. Some baked the shapes of birds, ladders, hands — and, yes, keys —  that might facilitate the ascent of prayers to Heaven during the High Holiday Season. It was no surprise then, that the custom naturally evolved from baking bread in the shape of a key to baking an actual key into the bread, first recorded as the practice in the home of Rabbi Betzalel Yair of Aleksander, Poland (1865-1935), and now shared on Fridays by countless social media users throughout the TikTok-sphere.  

Whether or not one savors some schlissel challah this year, one can still take its central message to heart: Though the Festival of Freedom has passed, one can and should continue to be sustained by the faith in redemption the holiday inspires.

Whether or not one savors some schlissel challah this year — and if one does, what form that bread takes — one can still take its central message to heart. Though the Festival of Freedom has passed, one can and should continue to be sustained by the faith in redemption the holiday inspires.

Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” which examines the Exodus story’s impact on the United States, “Esther in America,” “Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.”