The Prayer of a Small
Folding Challah Knife
September 22, 2017
One of my treasured ritual items is a small folding challah knife that came to me a few
years ago when my wife and I were in Israel. It feels that indeed it did come
to me. I had searched for one through many decades since first seeing such a
knife for cutting the Sabbath bread when I was a young student in Jerusalem
just starting out on my journey. At some point I found a contemporary one, made
with a plastic handle and a blade of stainless steel. It did not have a story
and never moved me, eventually disappearing during one move or another. During
that more recent visit to Israel I made it a point to go into every little
store where I might find antique Judaica. I asked many store keepers if they
had one, if they had ever seen one. Here and there, one would nod, “no,” they
did not have one but had seen one once. Sometimes a friendly storekeeper would
direct me to another store, and perhaps from there I would be directed to
another. Whether offered a friendly and sympathetic smile or a brusque and
dismissive wave of the hand, as though such a thing did not exist, the end
result was the same, no folding challah
knife.
On our last Friday in Jerusalem during that visit, as we
made our way home late in the day to get ready for Shabbos, we went into one
more store. It was the week of the Torah portion called Pinchas (Numbers 25:10-30:1). The store was next to the car rental
office from which we would leave for the north on Sunday. As I asked my
question, the storekeeper pointed to a display case in which there were two
folding challah knives. One had a
pearl handle and the word “Marienbad” engraved on a section of metal between
two sections of pearl. This begins to explain one of the reasons for a folding challah knife. Jewish tourists would
take one with them when traveling, easier to carry than a larger challah knife. Marienbad was a tourist
destination that was popular with Jews. The other knife is the one that
eventually became mine. We held our breath as we asked the cost, releasing our
breath with sorrow, knowing it was too expensive. When we came to pick up the
rental car on Sunday morning, my wife said she was going to go back into the
antique store. Time passed as I waited in the car. When I saw her in the rear
view mirror, I realized that she had a small paper bag in her hand. It was the
knife, an agreement having been made. I wanted to believe that the meaning I
attached to the knife had touched the storekeeper, as I hoped it would now
touch others through my sharing.

There is a custom that I follow with care, to remove knives
from the table before singing Birkat
Ha’Mazon, the series of blessings that are said following a meal in which
bread has been eaten. A folding knife does not need to be removed, the blade
remaining hidden throughout the meal, opened only as needed for cutting bread.
The removal of knives is based on the commandment in the Torah portion called Yitro, Exodus 20:22, concerning the
building of an altar. There we are told that an altar must be built only of
un-hewn stones, so that no steel tool shall come upon them. Later in the Torah
(Deut. 27:6), such uncut stones are called avanim
sh’laymot/whole stones or, quite literally, peaceful stones. The word for steel tool is charb’cha/your sword; ki charb’cha haynafta aleyha va’t’cha’l’leha/for
if you have wielded your sword over one (of the stones), you will have
desecrated it. In a beautiful midrash,
the rabbis teach that the altar is made
to prolong the years of a person and iron is made to shorten the years of a
person. It is not right for that which shortens life to be lifted up against
that which prolongs life…. How much the more then should one who establishes
peace between one person and another, between spouse and spouse, between city
and city, between nation and nation, between family and family, between
government and government, be protected so that no harm should come upon them.”
The human being is the ultimate altar, every person a potential peacemaker
against whom the sword should not be raised.
Crying for peace in the midst of war, far more than swords
unsheathed now, I found the small folding challah
knife in the week of Torah portion
Pinchas, the week in which the Gaza war of 2014 had begun. As we drove
north, we passed many columns of armored vehicles making their way south. My
small knife, carefully carried now in my pack, became a prayerful symbol for
me. As it came to me in a context of violence, so its connection to Pinchas, a portion whose name tells of a
violent zealot who took the law into his own hands in the face of Israel’s
seduction into Midianite idolatry. From out of that context, as is often the
case, the rabbis weave a teaching of nonviolence, drawing from within the text
itself a challenge to the violence on the surface. At the end of the previous
Torah reading, called Balak, we are
told that Pinchas rose up/va’yakam
and took/va’yikach a spear, the spear
with which he then killed two people, Zimri, an Israelite prince, and Cozbi, a
Midianite princess.
Beyond the context of the killing and the moral challenges
with which the rabbis wrestle and which torment us, the rabbis offer a
remarkable teaching that becomes codified into Jewish law. It is assumed that
as part of a meeting of elders Pinchas was in the Beit Midrash/House of Study. Because he had to get up and go to get
his spear it is deduced that he did not have it with him. From that, a
commandment evolves that one is forbidden to bring a weapon into a synagogue or
house of study. In a beautifully sensitive commentary that draws on the ancient
teaching concerning steel upon the altar, the Mishna B’rurah, an early twentieth century legal work by the Chofetz Chaim, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan,
teaches, the synagogue, which is uniquely
intended for prayer, increases the days of a person, while a knife shortens the
days of a person/l’fi she’beyt ha’k’nesset she’hu m’yuchad la’t’fillah
ma’arechet yamav shel adam v’ha’sakin m’katzer y’mei adam. In an earthy
legal discussion of practical import, the question is asked about students who
spend all of their time in the Beit Midrash,
what should they do if they need a knife to cut their food? The answer is that
they may use a knife so that they do not have to leave their studies for too
long, but they should cover the blade when it is not in use and when they say
the blessings after the meal.

Victor Reinstein
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