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| From Wikimedia Commons. Photo by Yonina |
Then, after concluding the blessing over the wine, we uncover the bread, and voila, "start" the meal with the blessing over the bread. And everyone is happy!
Sweet. Logical in an odd way. But not fully satisfying.
Something deeper, I have always imagined, must motivate the continuing of such an odd tradition.
So I have dusted off my anthropological training and offer three additional ideas. (The richness of rituals is that they can simultaneously represent complimentary and competing messages!)
1) The blessing we say over all bread, hallah and otherwise, is: "Blessed are You, Adonai, Ruler of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth." This oddly phrased blessing begs explanation, which is often offered as evoking the necessary and blessed partnership between God and humankind that takes the ingredients of soil, water, seed, agricultural, harvesting, winnowing, grinding, kneading and baking and brings forth bread.
But hallah is more than bread. It is reminiscent of the manna that came forth from the desert floor in the wilderness on the Israelites' trek from Egypt to the land of Israel. Every morning, "when the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor."
Bread, in the blessing, and manna, in the wilderness, emerge whole from the earth. First covered by a dusting of dew or earth, then revealed when the dew evaporates or the earth brings it forth.
Perhaps then the hallah cover is a radical enhancement of the status of the hallah, not a symbol of itse demotion; a re-enactment and symbolic recapitulation of the miracle of mythic food. That is, the Shabbat hallah, like the miracle of the manna in the desert, has been brought to us directly by the hand of God from out of the richness of the earth. To remove the hallah cover is to have the earth reveal its edible bounty.
(And of course, we have two hallot, two loaves of hallah, on Shabbat to remember that we had to collect a double portion of manna on Friday evening in the wilderness so we would not harvest the manna on Shabbat itself, the day of rest.)
2) Just as a magician covers the object he hopes to reveal, so the cover is draped over the hallah. That is, there is something mysterious and magical about the creation, the alchemy, of food. How does a seed turn into a plant? How does yeast make bread rise? How does heat make dough edible? The physics of eating, the ability of all these components to come together hour after hour, day after day, season after season to bring forth bread for us to eat is a miracle. Even it if happened before, we continue to wonder, will it happen again? Something can go wrong. Will the magician's bird appear when bidden? Will the rains come? the soil remain fertile? the harvest deliver? the grains spoil? the dough rise?
To cover the hallah is to acknowledge the amazing, and uncertain, gift that we are fed by the bounty of the earth.
3) We wrap and cover gifts. Often elaborately. To give a gift naked, unwrapped, revealed is to steal a bit of the grandeur of the gift, to rob it of its provenance. It just is. But true gifts don't just appear raw. They are born - emerging from the desire of the giver. They begin and gestate hidden, and reveal their presence under wraps. They are enhanced by the attendant anticipation, by the moment of wonder that comes with their hiddenness. What is it? How big? How much? How many? How lovely? How appropriate? To unwrap a gift is to have it emerge from a magical place; not so much the box or wrapping itself but what the box and wrapping represent: the spirit and soul and desire of the giver.
Enjoy!!
