Why Making Challah Is My Weekly Anchor

There are days when life feels like too much. The news is heavy, work is relentless, the world feels unsteady, and my mind starts to race ahead of me.

Almost every week I return to a practice that helps me reconnect with myself: making challah.

It didn’t begin as a spiritual practice; it began out of necessity. As a graduate student at the University of Michigan, I started to observe Shabbat and wanted fresh challah, but none was sold locally. So I learned to make it myself. Now I live in London with kosher bakeries everywhere, and I still bake challah because it’s my anchor.

Slowing Everything Down

There is a moment when the noise in my mind quiets. It happens when I place the fresh yeast in a bowl, pour in warm water, and sprinkle sugar across the surface. Then I watch it bloom.

In Jewish thought, water is a symbol of life itself, flowing, renewing, essential. As I watch the yeast awaken in the water, I feel something inside me awaken, too. Tiny bubbles rise, the faintest sweetness appears, and something in me softens.

Yeast doesn’t rush. It simply does what it was created to do, slowly, steadily, quietly. Watching it, I remember that I, too, am allowed to slow down and breathe.

In psychology, we talk about somatic anchors. These are physical actions that bring us back into our bodies when our minds are overwhelmed. For me, challah is a Jewish somatic anchor. It is grounding because it’s physical, rhythmic, and ritualistic.

Kneading as Meditation

Once the dough comes together, I knead. Then knead some more. This is the part that feels almost like mediation.

Something is humbling about pressing your hands into dough that will become the bread you bless on Shabbat. The repetitive motion (push, fold, turn, punch) becomes an embodied meditation. My breath slows, my shoulders drop and my thoughts settle.

Kneading reminds me that resilience is something we build with our hands, our choices, our small daily actions.

Flour, in Jewish thought, represents effort and sustenance; the work we put in and the nourishment that comes from it. Kneading reminds me that resilience is something we build with our hands, our choices, our small daily actions.

Our sages teach that separating challah is a moment of holiness in the everyday. When I pinch off that small piece of dough and say the blessing, I pause. I ask for healing, for clarity, for someone I love. It reminds me that I can create something warm, something nourishing, something whole.

The Braid that Holds Everything Together

Braiding challah is a metaphor for interconnection.

Some weeks, my life feels like a single strand, stretched thin, uneven, frayed at the edges. But when I braid the dough, I’m reminded that life is more than the one thing my mind is fixated on at that moment. It’s many strands woven together: family and friends, faith and hope, work and rest, joy and grief. On their own, each strand can feel vulnerable. When they are braided together, they become resilient.

Jewish teachings describe the challah braid as representing unity, the weaving together of the physical and the spiritual, the mundane and the holy. When I braid my challah, I feel that strength in my hands. I feel myself coming back together.

Judaism’s Weekly Rhythm

In a world that never pauses, Shabbat feels almost radical. Baking challah is the doorway into that pause. It’s the moment when we shift from doing to being, from striving to receiving, from rushing to resting.

Psychologically, rituals create safety. They give our nervous system a predictable rhythm. They tell the body; You can exhale now. Jewish life is full of these rhythms but challah is the one that speaks to my hands, my senses, my mind.

When the challah goes into the oven, the house fills with a smell that feels like home and hope. It is the scent of Shabbat approaching; the scent of letting go, the scent that connects me to the timeless while guiding me back to the present.

Baking challah doesn’t solve my problems but it brings me back to myself, to a sense of rootedness that is more grounding than whatever is happening in the moment.

It reminds me that I am part of a people who have made challah for generations, through joy and sorrow, through calm and chaos.

And maybe this is the real gift of challah: a weekly reminder that even in a chaotic world, there is something steady and meaningful that we can return to.