Chap­ter 6: Chal­lah opens dur­ing a peri­od of frag­ile recov­ery. Chona’s ill­ness, once alarm­ing and debil­i­tat­ing, begins to recede. Her fever sub­sides, and strength returns slow­ly, thanks to rest, care from Addie, and the pres­ence of Moshe, who watch­es over her like a guardian. Though a doc­tor sug­gests per­ma­nent mobil­i­ty issues, Moshe finds joy sim­ply in see­ing her ani­mat­ed again. To him, the specifics of her recov­ery mat­ter less than the mir­a­cle of it. In his eyes, her voice, her deter­mi­na­tion to run the store again, and her occa­sion­al com­plaints all sig­nal life reassert­ing itself. That spark of resilience reminds Moshe of why he loves her—she rep­re­sents not only strength but the soul of the home he’s try­ing to build in this uncer­tain new land.

While Chona’s strength returns, anoth­er pres­ence begins qui­et­ly shap­ing events—Malachi, the mys­ti­fy­ing new bak­er on Chick­en Hill. Each day, he deliv­ers a loaf of home­made chal­lah to Moshe, insist­ing it car­ries heal­ing prop­er­ties. Moshe accepts the bread out of polite­ness, not taste; its tex­ture is thick, its fla­vor off-putting, and its look ama­teur­ish. Yet despite its lack of culi­nary mer­it, the chal­lah seems to radi­ate inten­tion, and Moshe finds him­self unable to reject it out­right. When the town’s nui­sance dog, who once harassed Moshe on night­ly walks, peace­ful­ly con­sumes the loaf and dis­ap­pears, Moshe is tak­en aback. It becomes eas­i­er to believe that the bread holds a kind of strange power—not because of what it is, but because of who baked it. That possibility—that inten­tion and spir­it might infuse the mun­dane with the extraordinary—quietly stirs some­thing long buried inside Moshe.

Though Moshe is skep­ti­cal of Malachi’s abil­i­ty as a bak­er, he becomes increas­ing­ly drawn to the man’s sense of won­der. Malachi is no ordi­nary immi­grant try­ing to blend in—he lives out loud, with a frayed tal­lit, a crowd­ed apart­ment of odd col­lectibles, and a deep rev­er­ence for tra­di­tion. His lack of pol­ish is off­set by bound­less curios­i­ty. He’s unboth­ered by Amer­i­can norms, choos­ing instead to cher­ish objects like a worn prayer book or a flour-dust­ed rolling pin with the rev­er­ence oth­ers give to heir­looms. Moshe, try­ing hard to embrace mod­ern Amer­i­ca, is puz­zled but enchant­ed by this con­trast. Malachi’s refusal to sep­a­rate faith from dai­ly life seems old-fash­ioned, yet odd­ly time­less. There’s some­thing ele­men­tal and restora­tive in the way he con­nects prayer, bread, and life itself.

Their grow­ing friend­ship opens a door to deep­er, more uncom­fort­able truths. Malachi often speaks in rid­dles, but they cut to the bone. One such moment comes when he qui­et­ly chal­lenges Moshe’s com­pla­cen­cy about race, hint­ing that true iden­ti­ty means embrac­ing all of one­self, not just the con­ve­nient parts. Malachi admires the Black work­ers’ uni­ty, espe­cial­ly a boy help­ing clean the dance hall—someone whose pres­ence trig­gers Moshe’s own mem­o­ries of child­hood hunger in Roma­nia. It is that con­fronta­tion with the past—his fear, his flight, his own pain—that lies at the heart of Moshe’s dis­like for chal­lah. The bread, like Malachi, reminds him of things buried deep: star­va­tion, war, and sur­vival.

Malachi’s spir­i­tu­al per­spec­tive adds a lay­er of mean­ing to what seems ordi­nary. His belief that bread is part of “the full­ness of the earth,” echo­ing Psalm 24, reframes food as sacred. His­tor­i­cal­ly, chal­lah has held deep sym­bol­ic mean­ing for Jews—braided to sig­ni­fy love, uni­ty, and tra­di­tion, and eat­en on Sab­bath as a sym­bol of God’s pro­vi­sion. In East­ern Euro­pean shtetls, bak­ing chal­lah was not just about nour­ish­ment but about pre­serv­ing iden­ti­ty in the face of per­se­cu­tion. For immi­grants like Malachi, this sym­bol­ism isn’t lost. His insis­tence on baking—even poorly—is not about com­merce, but about reclaim­ing some­thing stolen by his­to­ry. Though his bak­ery fails, Malachi suc­ceeds in reawak­en­ing that con­nec­tion, even in some­one like Moshe who had tried to for­get.

Moshe, proud of his Amer­i­can suc­cess and wary of the past, feels increas­ing­ly unmoored by Malachi’s philo­soph­i­cal provo­ca­tions. When Malachi states that “we are inte­grat­ing into a burn­ing house,” it jolts Moshe’s belief in Amer­i­can progress. The state­ment is layered—Malachi sees a coun­try still strug­gling with its soul, its treat­ment of the poor and mar­gin­al­ized, and its obses­sion with sta­tus over sub­stance. Though Moshe has found some com­fort in this new land, Malachi sees a sys­tem that threat­ens to con­sume its new­com­ers unless they remem­ber who they are. These insights become hard­er to ignore when Malachi qui­et­ly exits Moshe’s life, ask­ing him to sell the bak­ery and for­ward any pro­ceeds. It’s a sym­bol­ic act, one that leaves Moshe both con­fused and haunt­ed.

What remains for Moshe isn’t just the failed bak­ery or the ter­ri­ble bread, but a ques­tion of iden­ti­ty. What does it mean to be a Jew in Amer­i­ca? To be a friend? A decent man? Malachi’s sud­den depar­ture forces him to wres­tle with more than business—he must now exam­ine the cracks in his own beliefs. For read­ers, the deep­er val­ue in this chap­ter lies in its por­tray­al of immi­gra­tion, faith, and the qui­et resis­tance of stay­ing true to tra­di­tion in a world that encour­ages for­get­ting. In a time when many Jew­ish immi­grants aban­doned their old ways for assim­i­la­tion, Malachi clung to them with rev­er­ence, show­ing that cul­tur­al sur­vival isn’t always about thriving—it’s often about remem­ber­ing.