Q&A: A Rebbetzin for Separating Challah
A Rebbetzin for Separating Challah
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I want to organize an evening for separating challah on behalf of several of my friends who are looking for a match.
Does the rebbetzin leading the evening need any special certification?
I’m asking because I have a righteous neighbor who wants to lead the evening for free, but I see online that there are organizations that specialize in this and have special rebbetzins for challah-separation events nationwide; for example:
Answer
At first I thought this was a troll, but I have a vague feeling that maybe it isn’t.
Anyone who reads this site knows that I oppose challah-separation ceremonies as segulot for various matters. Separating challah is a commandment like any other commandment, and it should be done when one bakes a sufficient quantity of dough in order to remove it from the status of untithed produce. It should not be done as a segulah for finding a match and the like, for two reasons: A. It doesn’t help. B. It involves more than a trace of prohibition, and even the trappings of idolatry. Obviously, that is not what is supposed to help someone find their match. If you want to help with that, it is better to help the person look for a spouse and make the right decision. Tried and tested.
And as for certified rebbetzins for challah separation nationwide, and organizations that specialize in it—that really already sounds like a troll. I know organizations that specialize in idolatry in a more established and proven way—for example, the missionaries. If you want to stumble in the trappings of idolatry, it is recommended to turn to them (although in their case one could discuss whether this is really idolatry. Maybe it would be better to turn to Baal Peor).
I have a tradition from my late father that when members of our family were looking for segulot for making a living, he told them there is one proven segulah: go to work.
Discussion on Answer
I think he also connected it to the fragmentation of the Jewish people (I think following the exile), but I don’t fully remember now how.
With regard to providence, my view is that nowadays there probably is no such thing. God’s involvement in the world has disappeared (or at least almost disappeared). This is explained here in many places, and in my trilogy, in the second book.
But even if there were involvement, one should not use commandments and Torah as a segulah for bringing benefit. In simple terms, there is a Torah-level prohibition involved, although one can analyze it a bit. I intend to devote a column to this soon.
And even if all that were true, how could anyone know that separating challah is a segulah for finding matches or for anything else? Why not standing on one foot, studying Psalm 92, honoring parents, eating Sabbatical-year produce, or redeeming a firstborn donkey? These baseless inventions—even if they are not prohibited—are nonsense without foundation. By the way, according to Maimonides, baseless nonsense is itself the basis of the prohibition of “you shall not practice divination” and the other trappings of idolatry.
Most simply, it’s not a troll, but rather “covert” advertising.
Rabbi, actually it also seems to me that this isn’t a troll, and if it is, then it’s not okay that it looks that way.
In any case,
1. Why can’t it be that if a person is more righteous, then the decrees concerning him will be more under divine providence and he will be less subject to nature? And in any event, separating challah adds another commandment to one’s basket of commandments.
2. Why can’t there be commandments with segulah-like properties? For example, it says about honoring parents (and perhaps about the entire first part of the Ten Commandments?) “so that your days may be lengthened.” Or it says regarding sending away the mother bird: “You shall surely send away the mother, and the young you may take for yourself, so that it will be good for you and you will lengthen your days.”
Couldn’t it be that here too there is some kind of segulah-quality to the commandment?
3. Regarding tithes—and perhaps challah is included in that? Though maybe nowadays it isn’t actually given to a priest—but it says in Malachi:
“Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house; and test Me now thereby, says the Lord of Hosts, whether I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you blessing until there is more than enough.”
By the way, on that same subject, if I’m not mistaken I once heard Rabbi Medan say something along the lines that the prophecy there is about the dispute between the prophet and the Jewish people over whether providence exists and why the righteous suffer, and after that failed, prophecy was closed down anyway (the Book of Malachi), and they moved on to the World to Come (“and a book of remembrance was written before Him”).