The Spiritual Power of Separating Hallah

In this entry, Chava Weissler translates and discusses an early eighteenth-century text by Sarah bas Tovim, called Shloyshe Sheorim (Three Gates). Weissler offers her own contemporary personal spiritual reflection on the mitzvah of “separating hallah” from the dough (hafrashat hallah). Just as a portion of sacred bread was offered as a sacrificial gift to God by the high priest in the Temple cult of old, thereby vicariously causing the the sins of the people to be forgiven, so too Sarah bas Tovim states in this passage, “So also may my sins be forgiven with this act, and may I be like a newborn child.” The prayer shows how the author understood her ritual act of hafrashat hallah as both emulative of the paradigmatic act of the high priest of old for the sake of the forgiveness of the people’s sins, and as a new moment of personal transformation and rebirth. She wishes for the divine forgiveness of her own transgressions and for the attainment of a fresh state, in which she becomes “like a newborn child.” Various requests are made, but it is particularly striking that Sarah understands her hallah ritual to be a reenactment and a kind of substitute in the present for the revered powerful act of the high priest of old or the ancient giving of the “biblical tithe,” a tithing imperative that remains. It is the prayer, “May this mitzvah of hallah be accounted as if I had given . . . .” that is particularly powerful. What is more, Sarah prays that her effort in performing the mitzvah of hallah with intention will serve an apotropaic function—that she will be protected by God “from anguish and pain.”