The Complete Guide to Hafrashat Challah: Recipe, Blessings, Laws, and Powerful Prayers

The mitzvah of Hafrashat Challah (separating challah) is an opportune time for prayer and spiritual connection. The details below will allow you to do the mitzvah with intention and focus.

Basic Instructions

Dough that contains flour in the amount of 1.667 kg (each one should follow her custom) and is kneaded also with water – one must separate challah with a blessing. If it is less than this amount, one should separate challah without a blessing.

The challah is separated the moment the flour and water are mixed. It is good to wait to separate challah until after the kneading of the dough is finished. If one forgot to separate while the dough was still raw, she should separate from the bread after baking.

Cover the dough, then recite the blessing, and afterwards take any small piece from the dough for challah.

After separating challah, the piece of dough that was taken as challah is forbidden to be eaten in our time, even by kohanim, and it must be destroyed in a respectful way, so that it will not be cooked and eaten.

The challah should be wrapped in two bags and thrown in the garbage, or burned over the gas flame wrapped in foil – but not in the oven.

Prayers While Making Bread

This mitzvah protects and guards the woman and all members of her household from harsh and evil decrees. The time of fulfilling this mitzvah is a time of favor before the Holy One, blessed be He; therefore one should ask, plead, and pray at that time, and it is good to light a candle for a tzaddik so that his merit should stand for us.

Sifting the Flour

Ask God for the clarity to differentiate between good and bad: "Please, Hashem, help me remove the bad, and help me make a clarification between good and bad, to remove all judgments and all things that do not advance me in Your service. Help me distinguish between what is forbidden and what is permitted.”

Sugar

Sugar represents the attribute of kindness, to feel the sweetness and to pray: “Please, Hashem, help me be a woman of kindness, to be a good mother and wife – loving, gentle, pleasant, and warm. Help me use only good words, that ‘Torah of kindness’ be on my tongue, to bless my husband and children and encourage them. Help me, my Creator, to refine my character traits with sweetness.”

Salt

Salt symbolizes boundaries: “Please, Hashem, help me have boundaries in Your service; to set proper boundaries for my children – but with love – so they will have emotional balance. Help me teach them to cope with ‘no’ and to accept it with love. Help me, my Creator, to be a woman of wisdom, prayer, and good character.”

Yeast

“Help me have enthusiasm in serving You, Hashem – with modesty; to be lively and energetic inside my home, a woman who is active for the sake of Heaven; to have joy of life and joy in my heart. Please, my Creator, help me convey to my children and to everyone who looks at me that a life of Torah is a life of joy.”

Water

“There is no ‘water’ except Torah.” “Help me build a Jewish home, a home of Torah; that we will learn Torah for the sake of Heaven, with consistency, desire, and joy, and that they will have love of Torah.”

Oil

Oil represents blessing: “Please, my Creator, that we should have good livelihood, happiness and blessing in our home, blessing in the upbringing of our children, and blessing in all the work of our hands. That I should have clarity of mind, to be in constant connection with You, and to be a pure channel through which abundance can pass.”

Kneading the Dough

“Please, Hashem, help me have softness and flexibility in Your service; that anyone who eats from the bread that comes from this dough will have health of body and soul to serve You. May I intend to bring back inside those who have gone off the path, and to pray over my own traits and qualities that I need for Your service.”

Covering the Dough

“Please, Hashem, help me that in this dough there will be blessing, just as You blessed the dough of our holy mothers Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, and Leah. Grant us good livelihood, happiness and joy, blessing in all the work of our hands, and that everyone who eats from this bread will come closer to You, and their heart will open to serve Hashem, and that we will desire only You.”

Prayer and Request Before the Separation

(“I hereby come to separate challah.”)

“May it be Your will, Hashem our God and God of our fathers, that in the merit of this mitzvah and in the merit of separating this offering, the sin of Chava, mother of all life, be rectified – for she caused the death of Adam HaRishon, who is the ‘dough’ of the world. And in the merit of this mitzvah, death will be removed from the world, and tears will be wiped away from every face, and You will send blessing into our home. Amen, so may it be Your will.

And so may it be Your will before You, that You bless our doughs just as You sent blessing into the doughs of our mothers Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, and Leah, and that the verse be fulfilled in us: ‘The first of your kneading bowl you shall give to the kohen, to bring blessing to your house.’ Amen, so may it be Your will.

I hereby come to fulfill the mitzvah of separating challah, to rectify its root in the upper realms, to bring satisfaction to our Maker and to do the will of our Creator.

‘May the pleasantness of Hashem our God be upon us; establish for us the work of our hands; establish the work of our hands.’”

Order of Hafrashat Challah

It is good to wash the hands three times alternately and to give tzedakah.

The act of separating challah itself is divided into three stages:

1. The blessing over separating challah

2. Separating a piece of dough

3. Saying “This is challah.”

1. Blessing Over Separating Challah

Sephardi custom:
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלֹקֵֽינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו, וְצִוָּנוּ לְהַפְרִישׁ חַלָּה תְּרוּמָה.

“Blessed are You, Hashem, our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to separate challah as a terumah (offering).”

Ashkenazi custom:
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלֹקֵֽינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו, וְצִוָּנוּ לְהַפְרִישׁ חַלָּה.

“Blessed are You, Hashem, our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to separate challah.”

And some have the custom to bless:
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלֹקֵֽינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו, וְצִוָּנוּ לְהַפְרִישׁ חַלָּה מִן הָעִיסָה.

“…and commanded us to separate challah from the dough.”

2. Separating the Piece

Take a small piece from the dough, lift it up, and say: “Harei zo challah” – “Behold, this is challah.”

Supplication to Say After Separating Challah

“May it be Your will, Hashem our God and God of our fathers, that the mitzvah of separating challah be considered as if I fulfilled it with all its details and exact requirements; and that this lifting of challah which we lift be considered like the sacrifice that was offered on the altar and was favorably accepted.

And just as in former times the challah was given to the kohen and it served as atonement for sins, so may it be for the atonement of my sins, and then I will be as if I were born anew, clean of sin and transgression, and I will be able to fulfill the mitzvot of Shabbat Kodesh and the festivals together with my husband, being nourished from the holiness of these days and from the influence of the mitzvah of challah, as if I had given a tithe.

And just as I fulfill the mitzvah of challah with all my heart, so may the mercies of the Holy One, blessed be He, be aroused to guard me from sorrow and pain all my days. Amen.”

It is good and fitting to add this prayer for the redemption: “May it be Your will, Master of the Universe, that You have mercy on every man and woman, small and great, individual or many, from among Your people Israel who are in distress. Please, Hashem, save them from their troubles, bless them with Your blessings, return them in complete repentance, and redeem us with a complete redemption for the sake of Your Name, as it is written: ‘And Hashem will be King over all the earth; on that day Hashem will be One and His Name One.’”