Yet, as Scott Cutler Shershow points out in his eye-opening short book Bread (which treats bread as an object, in a series that also includes Refrigerator, Hotel and Cigarette Lighter), the Jewish Sabbath blessing over bread doesn't mention human toil, but praises God 'who brings forth (ha motzi) bread (lechem) from the earth'. In the Hebrew scriptures lechem is the sole word used to denote bread, although it is also used to signify food in general, or a particular unit of food, so when God, in Genesis 3:19, tells Adam 'in the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread', He is employing synecdoche to express Adam's vast punishment. Twelfth Night bread that contains a token effigy of the infant Jesus, dozens of Easter breads, numerous iftar breads baked for ending the fast in various Muslim cultures, and the Parsee dron offering. There is the enriched challah, which is blessed and thus sanctified on the Jewish Sabbath, the sweet It is the staff of life, transubstantiated in the eucharist into the body of a divinity we break it with our companions (com- + panis, with + bread) we pray for it daily to our Lord (from the Old English word hlaford, which originated from hlafweard, meaning loaf-ward or bread-keeper) at the Passover Seder, observant Jews eat the bread of affliction, the unleavened matzo (the Catholic communion wafer is made to the same recipe). One cannot put it more simply, and yet the reasons could scarcely be more complicated. Įxtraordinary meals with ordinary ingredientsīread is important.

Bread by Scott Cutler Shershow