OUR COMMUNITY
A ‘Dvar Challah’
Local baker connects her challah to the weekly Torah portion. BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER
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Davida (De-De) Robinson bakes challahs that illustrate the weekly Torah portion.
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APRIL 14 • 2022
ots of people bake challah for Shabbat. And lots of people study the Torah portion that is read in synagogues every Shabbat. But only a few bake challahs that illustrate the weekly parshah. Davida (De-De) Robinson is one of them. She got the idea from her son Ian, who was working in Chile a few years ago. He told her the rebbitzin at the synagogue he attended made challah every week shaped to relate to the Torah reading. Robinson had just retired from teaching second grade at Congregation Shaarey Zedek’s religious school and thought this would be a good way to continue teaching and learning Torah. Her project forces her to dig deep and view the words through a new lens. Sometimes her breads are a more literal portrayal of the portion; other times the statement is more artistic. “When I can make these ancient words in the Torah relevant to life today, it all comes together for me,” said Robinson, who lives in Franklin with her husband, Warren, and is a member of B’nai Israel Synagogue and the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue. Interpreting and translating each Torah portion into a creative challah design can be challenging, she said. She’s going into her fourth year of baking Torah-related challahs and doesn’t want to repeat a design, or even the part of the weekly portion she references. Robinson posts photos of her challahs on her Facebook page, along with a “d’var challah,” a brief summary of the relationship of the challah to the parshah. For Parshat Vayishlach last November, which tells of the meeting between brothers Esau and Jacob after 20 years apart, Robinson related the story to Detroit-area brothers Bryan and Danny Fenster, who were reunited after Danny had been imprisoned for months in Myanmar. The challahs portrayed two figures hugging. “What we read in the Torah between Esau and Jacob gives us hope on repairing relationships; what we witnessed this week with Danny and Bryan also gives us hope, hope that justice can win over corruption,” she wrote. During the pandemic, Robinson found many of the Torah portions related to the experiences she and a lot of her
