Unfinished Business

Five days after Yom Kippur, David Jacob Tomaschewitz prayed for better challah sales to ensure his foundering bakery made a profit for the year.

Although business had been brisk for Rosh Hashanah, sales of Shabbat bread had consistently diminished, week by week, as other Jewish bakeries offered more than his meager shop—cookies! pastries! cakes!

David’s father had founded the bakery decades prior, specializing in traditional Jewish loaves of bread, including mountains of bagels his loyal customers bought by the brown-paper bagful. But this year? The challah sales would make or break him, whether his customers dipped it in honey for Rosh Hashanah or served it with salt for Shabbat.

Although the bakery had been on shaky financial grounds throughout the year, October’s sales had netted David around $1,900. A small fortune. His father would have been proud.

As his father had immigrated from Poland after the war, David made bialy in his honor—a traditional recipe from the Tomaschewitz family’s hometown of Bialystok. Since bialys were served with hot butter instead of cream cheese, commuters didn’t like them as well as bagels, so David usually ate the stale poppy seed rolls on his solitary lunch breaks. 

During the High Holy Days, David painstakingly made matzo and shewbread, carefully making rounds of holiday challah bread, sprinkled with fat juicy raisins. The circular shape symbolizes the cycle of years, his father would say, artfully braiding the dough. The raisins represent the sweetness of a new year. 

His father had passed away long ago. David wondered for the umpteenth time why he continued to wake up at 3:00 a.m., lug 50-pound sacks of flour from truck to kitchen, shell and fold cartons of eggs into batter, and watch sesame seeds toast just so in the hot ovens.

Exhausted at night, he looked at his finances and marginal return for his backbreaking labor and wondered. Years went by with no wife or son to pass on the Tomaschewitz name. Now at 57 years old, hair peppered with gray that he quit pretending was flour, he felt his life had been without purpose. It was like dead yeast, not rising to leaven anything of importance. 

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Another bakery had opened on his block in September, but David had not found the time to visit his competition. However, the morning commuters had all come and gone, and it would be hours before the lunchtime crowd would pick up loaves for their supper tables.

Mid-morning was a slow time, a good time, to see who was filching his business. He locked the front door to the bakery and walked down the block.

At first, it didn’t seem like there would be much overlap in their clientele, as the new place seemed inordinately frilly, its sign scrawled in Comic Sans with dayglo colors announcing: Birnbaum Bakery.

The menu on the door listed all the delectable things David had loved as a child: chocolate babka, raspberry rugelach, coconut macaroons, apricot hamantaschen. Reading the list, David found his mouth involuntarily watered.

Suddenly the door opened, bells jingling. David quickly stepped aside as a tall, thin auburn-haired woman walked out, holding a broom like a weapon. Deftly, her broad shoulders made short work the detritus on the stoop in front of the store. She wore a spotless white apron with Birnbaum Bakery emblazoned in dayglo colors. 

“Are you open?” David asked. He felt foolish as it was abundantly clear the store was, indeed, open.

“Every day, from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.,” she said without looking up, shaking out the welcome mat in a cloud of dust. 

“Do you sell bread?” he asked pointedly. She stopped curtly and looked at him, full in the face. Her large hazel eyes peered through him, attempting to divine whatever subtext was intended or unintended. 

“The only bread I make is stollen and occasionally hot cross buns, but only during the holidays,” she replied, managing a tired smile. 

“Those are Christmas breads,” he replied, puzzled. 

“Those are holiday breads,” she said, a little defensively. 

“Are you Missus Birnbaum?” 

“There is no Missus Birnbaum,” she said and smiled again, this time broadly and mischievously. “There's just me, Miss Colleen MacBrennen. And this is New York, not Boston. My customers prefer pastries from their own heritage,” she said flatly. He didn’t know whether to laugh or be offended. 

With a wink, she gathered up her broom and left him staring after her. 

Standing there, it was a minute or two before David slowly began his walk back. 

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Although David had not seen the inside of a synagogue since his own bar mitzvah, Temple Beth El had asked local businesses to donate goods for their annual Sukkot festival fundraiser. His father had always brought the biggest and most perfectly formed loaves to the temple’s auction, held in the social hall on the temple’s grounds. 

Tzedakah is Hebrew for charity, his father said, while his son calculated how much profit they would lose from his father’s generosity. At year’s end though, the amount was hardly missed. Bread is life, David. That’s why when we break bread, we say, “Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”

Normally, David would have dropped off his challah loaves and left, but for an inexplicable reason, he stayed to watch the start of the auction. The funds were needed to repair the temple's roof. Perhaps there would be enough to refinish the pews as well? The Rabbi even hoped for a new bimah to read scriptural passages from to his thinning congregation. 

Small children ran in and out of their parents' legs, as the excitement started to build. Which local delicacy would bring the highest bid? Tables were heaped with the largesse from the community: prune and poppy seed pastries, artisan honey, perfectly ripened pears, sufganiyot, black-and-white cookies. Congregants readied their wallets and pocketbooks. 

Just as the crowd settled into their seats, David watched as someone awkwardly attempted to carry a large platter through the social hall’s doorway, making a commotion and apologizing profusely for being late. 

He heard her voice before he saw her.

Colleen.

He half arose from his seat to watch Colleen struggle to carry her offering, quickly realizing she had fashioned a gingerbread synagogue, complete with a nine-branched candelabrum, a menorah the centerpiece of her elaborate icing landscape. 

As she walked past temple members who clapped their approval, she smiled, tucking a lock of her red hair behind one ear. David was charmed to see her blush from the crowd’s approbation.

“I see we have our first auction item from the Birnbaum Bakery, a replica of our own Temple Beth El,” called the Rabbi cheerfully. “I’ll start the bidding at, let’s say, twenty-five dollars? Anyone?”

“Twenty-five dollars,” called out a voice to David’s right.

“Thirty! Thirty dollars!” responded another voice on David’s left. 

“Thirty-five,” came a voice from somewhere behind him. 

David looked at Colleen. She smiled and shrugged, a wordless conversation that was more satisfying to David than any actual conversation he’d had before in his life.

“Do I hear forty dollars?” asked the Rabbi, scanning the crowd. 

Without thinking, David called out “$1,900.00!” 

The crowd cheered as the Irish pastry chef walked over to the Jewish baker, rewarding him with the prize he’d waited to buy his entire life.