Challah and onion rolls, with love

You could watch Tammy Silverman hard at work every week, in the back of her Sherman Park synagogue, and you might think you know what you see.

You’d see a woman in her 50s kneading dough, sprinkling flour, stirring a wooden spoon and washing at a sink. You’d see a woman making bread.

“I don’t know how I wound up doing this,” she laughs, stirring another bowl of dough in the kitchen of Congregation Beth Jehudah, 3100 N. 52nd St.  She has been doing it for about 18 months now, making weekly challah and onion rolls for use at her synagogue, to be eaten near the close of Shabbos. She loves it.

She must cut off a small piece of dough and burn it – it’s supposed to go to the Holy Temple priests, but there being no such Jerusalem Temple standing today, it gets burnt instead.

Off it goes, into a loaf pan that’s slid into a convection oven.  Poof! It’s a blackened crisp.

She follows tradition and reads Hebrew prayers and prays silently for others who may need it.

“I think this is the reason the bread tastes so good,” she says. “I think it’s the prayers.”

If you were to taste this bread, as a few random tasters did in advance of this story, you would likely agree the bread is uniquely delicious.

The prayers are just a part, really, of what makes this more than “just making bread.”

It’s more than just making bread because she cherishes her synagogue, her community, and she feels there’s something special about her bread being used there.

“Every job is important,” she says. “If I can be a cog in the wheel … I consider it a great privilege.”

She says her rabbinical leadership, the Twerski family, is non-judgmental and her synagogue offers dignity to those in need. You don’t need money to feel like you’ve got something to offer, she says.

Years before moving here from Atlanta to join the local observant community, her husband was visiting Milwaukee on business. He was getting sick of canned kosher food, she said. When he arrived at Kosher Meat Club, 4731 W. Burleigh St., as it was closing, a he was offered something nice and hot to eat and he was treated beautifully.

“It just made him feel so welcome,” she recalls. “They knew that he was tired and hungry.”

“It’s a very special place to be,” she says, referring to the community. “It doesn’t matter what kind of hat you wear or what kind of yarmulke you wear. What matters is that you’re a person.”