Menachot 70

The mishnah on today’s daf addresses the question of which grains are subject to the laws of separating challah (Numbers 15:17–21), a portion of dough reserved as an offering to God before baking bread.

Wheat, barley, spelt, oats and rye are subject to the requirement of separating challah, and each one of these grains joins together with the others to constitute the minimum measure that obligates one to separate challah …

Let’s remember from the laws of Passover that these are also the five grains whose dough may not be eaten on Passover when it becomes hametz, leavened. The connection between these two laws will be made clearer below. First, the Gemara clarifies that other grains are not subject to the rules of challah:

… concerning rice and millet, no, the obligation of challah does not apply to them.

So why do these five grains in particular incur the obligation of challah? Precisely because they are the grains that are forbidden on Passover!

The Gemara brings a scriptural source to explain:

Reish Lakish said: This principle is derived by means of a verbal analogy between “bread” and “bread” from the case of matzah. It is written here, with regard to challah: “And it shall be that when you eat of the bread of the land, you shall set apart a portion for a gift to the Lord,” (Numbers 15:19), and it is written there, with regard to matzah: “For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction …” (Deuteronomy 16:3)

Reish Lakish employs the interpretive strategy of gezerah shavah, deriving a matter of halakhah by comparing the same word or phrase found in two different verses. The word bread is used in Numbers 15:19 when discussing separating the challah offering from dough that we bake. The same Hebrew word is used in Deuteronomy 16:3 to refer to matzah — the bread of affliction — that we eat on Pesach to recall our suffering in Egyptian slavery. Matzah can only be bread of affliction when it is unleavened. Just as these five bread grains are the exclusive sources of the bread of affliction when unleavened, they are the only grains whose dough requires challah separation when leavened.

Yet this derivation still begs the question: Why these five? The Gemara responds with a closer reading of Deuteronomy 16:3:

And there, regarding matzah itself, from where do we derive that it must be from one of those five grains? … The verse states: “You shall eat no leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat with it matzah, the bread of affliction.” (Deuteronomy 16:3) This verse indicates that only regarding substances that will come to a state of leavening does a person fulfill his obligation to eat matzah by eating them on Passover, if he prevents them from becoming leavened. This serves to exclude these foods (i.e., rice, millet, and similar grains) which, even if flour is prepared from them and water is added to their flour, do not come to a state of leavening but to a state of decay.

The Gemara’s identification of what grains can be leavened is based as much on the rules of baking as on its exegesis of the Torah. It was commonly accepted that, when kneaded with water and left to stand, the dough of the five grains rises through himutz, natural leavening. Similar rising of dough made from the other grains isn’t leavening but sirhon, a kind of spoilage. This is why some Jews will eat rice, millet and other grains known as kitniyot on Pesach — since we have no concern that they will self-leaven. And because of the verbal analogy, we also don’t separate challah from dough made of these grains.

Read all of Menachot 70 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on March 22, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.