Challah is not originally a Jewish bread.  The sweet, braided loaf seen all over New York City on Friday evenings was original called barches (some recipes still refer to it as such).  Barches were Medieval Germanic breads, which were used by German Christians as their own sabbath bread.  According to Stanley Ginsberg and Norman Berg in “Inside the Jewish Bakery”, “Jews in places like Nuremberg, Regensburg, Rothenberg, and Speyer” adopted challah as their own in the early 1500s.  Thus, the custom of using challah as a Shabbat (Jewish Sabbath) bread became engrained in traditional Yiddishkeit (Jewish life).  Traditional barches were made, like all breads pre-1850, with a natural starter.  Barches, and later challah, were always made with a finer flour than everyday bread.  Most breads before industrialization were baked with whole grains, since refining flour was very expensive, time-consuming, and wasteful.  But the sabbath warranted a sweet, white, airy bread no matter the cost.  Two challot are served on Friday evenings, representing the double portion of manna that would fall to the Israelites in the desert (this also explains the use of honey in the loaves).  The two loaves are braided with six strands each; the twelve strands represent the tribes of Israel.  In addition, challah is baked without the addition of dairy, unlike the original Germanic breads, so that it can be served with meat and still be kosher.  Mass migrations of Jews to the New World from 1850 through 1930 forced the traditions, techniques, and even recipes of challah to change.  Challah could no longer be baked at home. The women who would bake challah in the shtetls now worked long hours for meagre pay.  They didn’t have hours to knead and braid loaves.  By necessity, challah was baked in bakeries.  In America, eggs were cheap, and bakeries used lots of them to bake challah.  In fact, many Jewish bakeries in New York City used only eggs yolks to produce a sweet, rich bread.  Other changes were made due to the excesses of America.  White cane sugar replaced honey.  Soft, fine, white wheat flour replaced the coarser wheat, rye, and barley of Europe.  Fast-acting and less-acidic tasting commercial yeast replaced the sourdough starter.  And since sweet, rich, Russian-style challah was most popular variety of the bread, many bakeries baked it exclusively.  Other immigrant groups which settled in America around the same time period experienced a similar watering down and homogenization of their culture, and in particular of their food.  The fine ragus of Italy, for example, became spaghetti and meatballs.  https://breadthroughhistory.com/2015/06/28/the-multiple-significances-of-challah-a-historical-and-religious-analysis/

           

The Two Minutes Hate, from George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, is a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting the Party's enemies (notably Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers) and express their hatred for them for exactly two minutes.  Orwell did not invent the idea behind the term "two minutes hate"; it was already in use in the First World War.  At that time, British writers satirised the German campaign of hatred against the English, and imagined a Prussian family sitting around the kitchen table having its "morning hate".  In addition, short daily artillery bombardments made by either side during the First World War, and aimed at disrupting enemy routines, were known as "hates".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate

“Hate doesn't serve any purpose"  The Dream of the Celt, a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa

A textile is a flexible material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn.  Yarn is produced by spinning raw wool fibres, linen, cotton, or other material on a spinning wheel to produce long strands known as yarn.  Textiles are formed by weaving, knitting, crocheting, knotting, or pressing fibres together (felt).  The words fabric and cloth are used in textile assembly trades (such as tailoring and dressmaking) as synonyms for textile.  However, there are subtle differences in these terms.  Textile refers to any material made of interlacing fibres.  Fabric refers to any material made through weaving, knitting, crocheting, or bonding.  Cloth refers to a finished piece of fabric that can be used for a purpose such as covering a bed.  Find a long list of kinds of fabrics, including batik—a dyed fabric; a removable wax is used where the dye is not wanted, lisle—a fabric woven with lisle thread, serge—a twilled woolen fabric, and terry, terrycloth—a pile fabric (usually cotton) with uncut loops on both sides at http://amtwiki.net/amtwiki/index.php/Fabric

What images are on U.S. currency?  Find paper presidents (five produced, four out of circulation),  paper non-presidents (three), coin presidents and non-presidents at https://periodicpresidents.com/2013/06/09/100000-bill-which-presidents-are-on-our-money/  U.S. currency as we know it today really began in 1913 when the Federal Reserve Act established the Federal Reserve as the nation's central bank.  In 1914, the reserve began issuing new bills called Federal Reserve notes—the same money we use today.  Four portraits have changed on bills since—although two of those changes occurred on denominations no longer printed.  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/06/18/changes-paper-currency-usa/28930739/

A graphic novel joins a long line of books set in—and inspired by—Iowa City.  Kristen Radtke launched the book tour for her debut novel in the place where her literary dreams first took flight.  The UI Nonfiction Writing Program graduate returned to Iowa City in the spring of 2017 to read from Imagine Wanting Only This, a critically acclaimed graphic novel that pays tribute to her experiences living in the creative community.  Like other books conceived in Iowa City, Radtke's memoir includes the town as a natural backdrop.  She illustrates historic neighborhoods that house college students near campus and intellectual debates held after class at Dave's Fox Head Tavern.  Past portrayals of Iowa City in literature capture its vibrant sports scene (The World According to Garp by John Irving, 67MFA), academic life (Letting Go by former Iowa Writers' Workshop instructor Philip Roth), and medical culture (Johnson's short story, "Emergency," from Jesus' Son).  Canadian novelist W.P. Kinsella, 78MFA, once shared with Sports Illustrated that through his time at the UI, he "quickly fell in love with the state [of Iowa]—with the rolling fields of corn, the dense humidity, the tall bamboo canes thick as hoe handles." His passion for Iowa's topographical beauty helped inspire Shoeless Joe, the book that served as the basis for the classic sports film Field of Dreams.  The United States' withdrawal from UNESCO at the end of 2017 doesn't affect Iowa City's designation as a UNESCO City of Literature, which will be celebrated on its 10th anniversary in 2018.  Shelbi Thomas  http://www.iowalum.com/magazine/nov17/literary.cfm

FAVORITE BOOKS read in 2017 by the Muser:  Zero K by Don DeLillo   (The Convergence, a sealed, self-sufficient, subterranean cryogenic facility, has chambers containing the bodies of hundreds of patrons frozen in pods.)   The Ten-Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer  (Four New York women left careers in favor of full-time motherhood.  Ten years later--without identities tied to professions--their stories merge.)  Seven Days by Deon Meyer  (Sniper threatens South African police force in a thriller with twists at every turn.)  Hour of the Red God by Richard Crompton (The Maasai, one of forty or so Kenya tribal groups,  believe the Hour of the Red God is a time when people turn against each other and when anger is the only human instinct.)  The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley (Summering with a fellow schoolboy on a great English estate, Leo, the novel’s protagonist and narrator encounters a world of luxury and intrigue.)   The Innovators by Walter Isaacson  (A sweeping history of the technological revolution starting with a six-page timeline of key figures)  The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain  (two friends from aged six through sixty experience indifference and imperfections in their lives in central Switzerland)  A Bundle of Beasts by Patricia Hooper with illustrations by Mark Steele  (poems derived from old collective nouns for animals, such as "a murder of crows" and "a leap of leopards")  The Night of the Comet by George Bishop (desire, disappointment, wonder, expectations and reality)  Different Class by Joanne Harris  (third of a series of novels set in the fictional town of Malbry revisiting St Oswald’s Grammar School after many distressing events)

Joanne Harris is an Anglo-French author, whose books include fourteen novels, two cookbooks and many short stories.  Her work is extremely diverse, covering aspects of magic realism, suspense, historical fiction, mythology and fantasy.  She has also written a DR WHO novella for the BBC, has scripted guest episodes for the game ZOMBIES, RUN!, and is currently engaged in a number of musical theatre projects as well as developing an original drama for television.  In 2000, her 1999 novel CHOCOLAT was adapted to the screen, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp.  She is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and in 2013 was awarded an MBE by the Queen.  Harris plays flute and bass guitar in a band first formed when she was 16; and works from a shed in her garden at her home in Yorkshire.  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25613366-different-class

Last week, a Muse reader sat in a stationary fashion, using an electronic form of stationery writing.  Thank you for reminding us how to use words that differ by one letter.  Tips:  Think of anchor for stationary and envelope for stationery.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1810  December 11, 2017  On this date in 1918, “American Fantasy” by the Dublin-born American composer Victor Herbert opened the first program of the newly-formed Cleveland Symphony Orchestra.  Cleveland had reason to celebrate.  World War I had ended exactly one month earlier, and, for some time, organizers in that city had been working to build a home-town orchestra.  Composers Datebook