Cookies and coffee and borekas to go

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Don't you wonder who took the trouble to build a tower of cookies?

The Ne'eman Bakeries are always popular places, for instance this one in the bustling Beer Sheva Central Bus Station.
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Baking in the monastery

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Down through the centuries a lot of bread has been baked in this oven.

The bricks of the oven's interior make a nice big dome.

Imagine how many loaves had to be baked every day to feed the many monks who sat at this refectory table.

See here and here for more views of the Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem's Valley of the Cross.
The fortress-like monastery was built in Byzantine times, probably in the 7th century.
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The City Daily Photo group has "bakeries" for today's May 1 theme.
Click here to view thumbnails for all participants.
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This room can also be a mini-tour for Our World Tuesday.
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From manna to challah

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Tomorrow it will be time to stock up from the stacked up loaves of challah.

You can see signs of their braided shape on the fallen paper.

If you like challah with sesame seeds, enlarge the photo.

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At the Sabbath table two challot are held together and the Hamotsi bread blessing is said over both.

This is in remembrance of our 40 years in the desert when each morning the Israelites found manna on the ground, encased in two layers of dew to preserve its freshness.

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But on Saturday, the Holy Sabbath day, no manna fell from heaven.

Instead, the people would gather a double portion on Friday.

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Moses explains this in Exodus 16:22-26.

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Earning our daily bread

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"God gave burdens, also shoulders."

--Yiddish proverb

(To better enjoy the details of motion, click on this photo to enlarge.)

After finishing my weekly shopping evening at Shuk Mahaneh Yehuda outdoor market, I just had to stand and watch in admiration at the expert way the man in the truck lifted the heavy sack and let it down on the other man's shoulder. A little white cloud puffed out around the porter's head each time and he walked in and out of a bakery many times, so I assume it was flour. "Jerusalem" is printed on the sacks under a drawing of the city. .
Temperatures in the 90s F or low 30s C (all week). I wondered how many hours the men had already been working since morning.

Then I shouldered my backpack full of nuts, dried legumes, and vegetables and picked up my two tote bags full of fruit, fish, and chocolate and started walking to the first of my two buses to the moshav. And you know, suddenly my own burden was not as heavy as it seemed before taking this photo.

Goodbye to bread

Enjoy it while you can. From this Friday until the end of next week (most) Jews will not be tasting any bread at all.
Instead, during the whole week of Passover we will eat "the bread of affliction," matza.
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Here you see the huge Angel Bakeries--the silos, flour mill, production lines.
Angel distributes its loaves and rolls all over the country and also supplies the prisons and the Israel Defense Force.
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