For the Love of Bread and Barches – The Very German-Jewish Challah Knife

That Germans love bread seems to be one stereotype that is largely accurate. Given Germany’s rich baking culture, it is perhaps not surprising that it also has a long tradition of producing challot, braided loaves eaten during Shabbat. There were many expressions for challah, including Datscher, Challe, and Striezel.¹ The most common terms, Barches and Berches, are derived from the word brachah, i.e., blessing. Additionally, Barches in some regions contained potato flour in place of eggs, which were used only for Jontefberches – challot for religious holidays.² As potatoes are very common in German cuisine, this made Barches even more German.³

This blog entry is not about bread, though. Rather, it is about a special tool for cutting challot, the challah knife. Its existence is by no means self-explanatory, not least because it is not really necessary. After all, challot can easily be torn by hand, and rabbinical discussions suggest that one need not cut them. Yet, since I came across a variety of these knives, I wish to explore why such a – prima facie superfluous and sometimes prohibited – item has been produced and sold. This brings us back to Germans’ love of bread: challot come almost exclusively from areas that are or used to be parts of Austria or Germany. So, perhaps, this Germanic tendency found its way into Jewish ritual objects. It appears that challah knives emerged when Jewish history in Germany was intertwined with local knowledge and trade traditions, shifting social hierarchies, and cultural inclinations. I will recount this story based on the mass-produced (not custom) knives I encountered in my research. At least in Germany and German-speaking regions, manufacturers clearly perceived a need for them.

Historical Challah Knives: Varieties and Commonalities

The knives I found come from various companies, including some of the most well-known German cutlery producers. Most have a visible mark from the blade manufacturer, very often Zwilling or other specialized companies from Solingen, Germany’s “city of blades.” Yet, as the handle producer usually purchased the blades from these companies, the name on the blades is not conclusive. Rather, the hallmarks on the handle lead us to the names of the cutlery manufacturers, among them Koch & Bergfeld of Bremen, Wilhelm Binder of Schwäbisch Gmünd, and Franz Bahner of Düsseldorf. Most challah knives are bread knives that have been “elevated” to Jewish ritual items through the addition of a blessing. Some have an engraving that might have been added later, but others were obviously made as challah knives: They bear embossed Hebrew letters or have exquisite designs referring to the Shabbat dinner or the challot themselves.

One challah knife produced by Koch & Bergfeld, an important silver manufacturer in Germany even today, provides a good example of an engraved knife handle (Fig. 1a, 1b). Although its design is quite simple and the blessings, “Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy” (Kohelet 9:7) and “It is the blessing of the Lord that enriches” (Proverbs 10:22), are only engraved, these were likely done in the factory. The decorative engravings and the Hebrew letters seem to come from the same hand and match the knife’s design perfectly. Whereas the handle’s form belongs to the Spaten pattern, the first cutlery design from the early years of Koch & Bergfeld’s existence around 1830, the piece itself bears hallmarks used between 1875 to 1932.

Nevertheless, most challah knives were clearly produced as such, as Figure 2 makes clear: This drawing from the book of forging dies by the company Wilhelm Binder (ca. 1920) shows that the company created a special die for challah knife handles. The Viennese company Jarosinski & Vaugoin created similar pieces after 1922 that bear two popular quotations: “It is the blessing of the Lord that enriches” (Proverbs 10:22) on one side, and “Go thy way; eat thy bread with joy” (Kohelet 9:7) on the other. A challah knife currently on display in the Frankfurt Jewish Museum has identical quotations and a similar handle design. It lies in a box of the jeweler and silver manufacturer Lazarus Posen Wwe of Frankfurt am Main.⁴

While the Lazarus Posen Wwe company is still known for its production (or at least trading) of Judaica, the company H. Meyen has largely been forgotten. This company was run by the Schlesinger brothers, who were related to Gershom Sholem. Although they were very well known in their day and supplied the Royal Prussian court, knowledge about their production – especially their Jewish ritual items – has mostly been lost. Nevertheless, they produced an extensive range of Jewish ritual objects, including one challah knife I came across with an extraordinary engraving in Hebrew, “Remember the Shabbat day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8), with niqqudot (vowels). This rare addition suggests that the buyer was not expected to know Hebrew well.

The cutlery company Franz Bahner of Düsseldorf (Fig. 3a) offered a more elaborate design. It bears the usual inscription, “It is the blessing of the Lord that enriches” (Proverbs 10:22), and adds wheat stalks on one side and two challot, a kiddush cup, and a menorah, on the other. The company changed its hallmarks in 1918 when its name changed to Mansfeld & Bahner.⁵ Accordingly, we can identify its challah knives from both before and after 1918.⁶ The later hallmark also has the additional inscription “ges. gesch.” (gesetzlich geschützt: patented) incorporated into the forging die (Fig. 3b).

Fig. 3b: Detail of challah knife with the patent marking on the handle by Franz Bahner, Düsseldorf, Appel Auction, photo by the author.

Figure 4 presents a similar knife. Designed by Leo Horovitz and produced by his brother’s company Felix Horovitz, it also depicts two challot and a kiddush cup on one side together with the Bible verse Proverbs 10:22. The backside depicts wheat stalks appropriately accompanied by the phrase “who bringest forth bread from the earth” (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 35a). As this is the last part of the HaMotzi blessing for challah bread, it functions like a cheat sheet.

Fig. 4b: Detail of challah knife by Felix Horovitz showing wheat stalks and the Hebrew phrase “who bringest forth bread from the earth” (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 35a).

Handles with different shapes further elaborate challah knife designs. A knife from Austria (from after 1922 according to the hallmarks) has a handle adapted to the form of a challah (Fig. 5a). One side depicts a full Shabbat dinner table with a kiddush cup and two challot framed by two columns and a Moorish arch with a Shabbat lamp hanging from it and surrounded by stars (Fig. 5b).. The dedication “Remember the Shabbat day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8) appears between the lamp and the table, and a quotation from the Amidah prayer, “A day of rest and sanctity you have given to your people” (Siddur Ashkenaz, Amidah, Sanctity of the Day), appears underneath the table. The company Wilhelm Geist & Sohn from Hanau in Hesse used a similar design but retained the common handle form (Fig.6). A third quotation reads “on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread” (Exodus 16:22).

All these examples show that the Jewish community in German-speaking regions generated a demand for challah knives. The engraving on some knives seemed to have been added later, attesting that simple breadknives were “elevated” to help satisfy this demand. Likewise, examples clearly produced in the factory as challah knives show that silver manufacturers perceived and then catered specifically to this demand. Since most of the knives I found share the blessings and bible quotations with very little variation, it is apparent that the companies copied one another.

Dating the Emergence of the Challah Knife

Something else all these examples have in common is that none of them dates to before 1900. Many come from the 1910s or 1920s. This aligns well with other sources. Books and paintings from before 1900 do not reference the challah knife. Rebekka Wolf in her Kochbuch für Israelitische Frauen from 1865, for example, does not mention a special challah knife in her advice for setting a Shabbat table.⁷ The paintings and prints of Moritz Daniel Oppenheimer, likewise, have no such knife. While his paintings Schabbat Nachmittag (1860/66), Freitag Abend (1867),⁸ and Die Heimkehr des Freiwilligen (1867–69) all portray a Shabbat table setting with challot, none of them depicts a distinctive knife for cutting them.

Advertisements further confirm the post-1900 emergence of the challah knife and even help us to date it more precisely. In 1904, a Solingen knife manufacturer and Jewish family business, Joseph Feist/Omega-Werke, advertised its breadknives without reference to challot in Israelitisches Familienblatt. ⁹ A 1911 advertisement by the publisher Jakob B. Brandeis, Breslau and Prague was the earliest reference to a Barches knife I could find.¹⁰ At the time, Breslau and Prague still belonged to the German(-speaking) world. Another early example of a Berchesmesser, together with a Berchesplatte – a serving plate for challot – was reportedly shown in an exhibition of Jewish ritual objects by the company Felix Horovitz under the artisanal direction of Leo Horovitz in June 1914.¹¹

Dating the emergence of the challah knife to after 1900 is also consistent with the general history of the production of breadknives and cutlery innovations. Despite their ritualistic function, challah knives are only breadknives with special dedications. Ordinary breadknives themselves only emerged in the middle to second half of the nineteenth century. Initially, breadknives had a sawtooth or a plain blade with a rounded tip before the serrated knife became common. Three companies claimed to have invented the breadknife: Güde in Solingen, Hack in Steyr (produced a serrated knife around 1930), and Dick in Esslingen (produced a breadknife around 1900). Thus, challah knives necessarily emerged after breadknives in general, around the first decade of the twentieth century.

The Challah Knife and the Halacha

Why did challah knives not exist before 1900? Likely due to religious traditions and Halacha laws. In the Sephardic tradition, one breaks the bread rather than slicing it, even today, so no knife is needed. The Mishne Torah (Brakhot 7:4) and Schulchan Aruch, Or Chaim (Siman 274) expressly state that one should break the bread. While many Sephardim tear their challot, slicing it is a more recent Ashkenazi tradition. Indeed, the Halacha provides sound arguments against using such a knife. First, the challah should be treated differently than usual bread, which would, however, leave some room for a special knife that is overall also parve (neither touched by meat, milk, or other derivatives). Second, and more importantly, the Shabbat table is thought to represent the showbread table in the temple. Accordingly, using a sharp, weapon-like knife for challot would desecrate the temple. Thus, within Halacha law, using a challah knife is at least questionable.

Explaining the Emergence of the Challah Knife

The challah knife’s rise is rooted in sociocultural developments in early twentieth-century Jewish-German history. During this time, consumerism took flight, and the bourgeois emphasis on etiquette and table manners peaked. Several famous cooking, housekeeping, and etiquette books refer to these habits (those by Henriette Davidis, Louise Holle, Lina Morgenstern; and for the German-Jewish cuisine those by Rebekka Wolf, Marie Elsasser, Henny van Cleef, and Marie Kauders). In this context, rudely tearing off a piece of bread among company may have been unthinkable. Additionally, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 may have spurred this development. In the Covid pandemic, Jewish communities began slicing challot for hygienic reasons, so it seems plausible that the practice spread in 1918 for similar reasons. After the Spanish flu, during the 1920s and 1930s, the number of advertisements for these implements rapidly increased. That the challah knife quickly became an established part of Jewish rites is evident in a 1931 raffle of Israelitisches Familienblatt, the prize for which included challah knives.¹²

The challah knife’s emergence also coincided with the rise of technical gadgets in turn-of-the-century Germany, where local tradesmen proudly linked their knowledge with engineering advances. A tool just for cutting one sort of bread sounds like something pleasing to this German mindset. Remember that the (serrated) breadknife was, itself, innovative. Moreover, other new gadgets also appeared in German cutlery, such as the small fork with one wider spike for cutting pieces off a slice of cake.

So, it seems that it was more than just Germans’ love of bread that brought the challah knife into being – it also involved bourgeois table culture, the rise of consumerism, hygienic concerns, and possibly German technical ingenuity. Yet, the German love of bread helps us to understand why this item developed where it did. Thus, the challah knife is a very German Judaica that found its place within the Ashkenazi tradition. Today, the knife is taken for granted, but reconstructing its emergence opens a window onto a specific constellation of Jewish history in early twentieth-century Germany. An interplay of craft traditions, trade interests, and broader socioeconomic developments paved the way for its creation. If you happen to have inherited a simple breadknife from your German-Jewish (grand-) parents, I hope you now see that it harbors a greater story than you may have anticipated.

Hannah-Lea Wasserfuhr is a PhD candidate at the Center for Jewish Studies, Heidelberg. This blog entry and her latest article “Hidden in Plain Sight: Advertisements for Jewish Ritual Objects in Germany, 1871–1933” in the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies present preliminary conclusions from her research project about the production and marketing of Jewish ritual items in Germany before the Shoah.

1. Max Grünwald, “Aus dem Jüdischen Kochbuch,” Menorah 6, no. 9 (1928): 519; and Jüdischer Frauenbund, “Die jüdischen Gerichte, ihre Entstehung und Symbolik,” Kochbuch für die jüdische Küche (Düsseldorf: Israelitischer Frauenverein, 1926), 267. ↩︎
2. Marie Elsasser, Ausführliches Kochbuch für die einfache und feine jüdische Küche, unter Berücksichtigung aller rituellen Vorschriften in 3759 Rezepten (Frankfurt a. M.: J. Kauffmann, 1901), 479 and 480. ↩︎
3. Barches come in different varieties. There are Wasser-, and Butterbarches – the former a typical challah and the latter a “milky” one. Some bakeries in the German countryside still sell Barches on Fridays, even though there is no longer a Jewish community. In some cases, as in the southern village of Heinsheim, the recipe was handed down from when the bakery produced the Barches for the Jewish community, having received the recipe from that community (Heinsheim Kulturweg). ↩︎
4. Georg Heuberger, ed., Pracht der Gebote: Die Judaica Sammlung des Jüdischen Museums Frankfurt am Main (Cologne: Wienand Verlag), 487, nos. 167 and 168. In the only surviving catalogue of this company, held today in the Israel Museum, one can spot two challah knives with forged letters. One of them has the form of Koch and Bergfeld’s Spaten design. While I have not found an example of this item so far, it was probably produced by Koch & Bergfeld for Lazarus Posen Wwe as Koch & Bergfeld provided items for the Posen company; Bernhard Heitmann, Handwerk und Maschinenkraft: Die Silbermanufaktur Koch & Bergfeld in Bremen (Hamburg: Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, 1999), 14; and State Archives of Bremen, 7,2141 Koch & Bergfeld 191. ↩︎
5. Falk Möller, Silberwaren-Fabrik Franz Bahner 1895–1962: “Echt silberne Bestecke nach künstlerischen Entwürfen” (Books on Demand, 2021), 12. ↩︎
6. In the Frankfurt Jewish Museum’s collection, one knife has a hallmark predating the rebranding of 1918; Heuberger, Pracht der Gebote, 487, no. 166 (formerly not attributed). ↩︎
7. Rebekka Wolf, Kochbuch für israelitische Frauen enthaltend die verschiedensten Koch- und Backarten mit einer vollständigen Speisekarte und einer Hausapotheke sowie einer genauen Anweisung zur Einrichtung und Führung einer religiös-jüdischen Haushaltung (Berlin: W. Adolf & Comp., 1865), 1. ↩︎
8. This painting merely depicts a regular place setting of a knife and fork with no additional challah knife. ↩︎
9. Israelitisches Familienblatt, Vol. 7 (1904), October 20, 1904 (no. 42), 15. ↩︎
10. Israelitisches Familienblatt, Vol. 13 (1911), March 23, 1911 (no. 12), 8. ↩︎
11. Neue jüdische Presse, Frankfurter Israelitisches Familienblatt, Vol. 12 (1914), June 5, 1914 (no. 22), 3. While we do not have pictures of the objects, it might well be the abovementioned knife. Other items are described as having a décor of grapes, which is probably similar to the objects held today in the collection of the Jewish Museum Frankfurt; Heuberger, Pracht der Gebote, 152, 444. ↩︎
12. If you were puzzled by the rebus, see the solution here. ↩︎