From the times of Chazal, Jews kept the cherished custom of serving a hot dish as part of the Shabbos day repast

Title: Cholent Is Its Name

Location: New York

Document: Advertisements in the Yiddish Press

Time: 1930s

Every Friday, my mother used to send me to the baker to have him cook the cholent that she always prepared for the Sabbath. I loved eating the special dish, traditionally prepared to eat on the Jewish Sabbath, the day of rest when no cooking was allowed. She would make the cholent with a great deal of care and attention, using beans and potatoes and brown eggs and vegetables. When we had the money, she would add meat.

You could always tell our financial situation that week by the quality of the meat she bought for the cholent. If times were comparatively prosperous, she would get a good piece of beef from the butcher, a large chunk. But most of the time, it was scraggly pieces, which were all she could afford. Sometimes, when the situation was very bad, there was no meat at all. I could tell by the look on her face how much meat there would be in the cholent when she handed me the dish to take to the baker.

There were many weeks when she looked miserable. She hated seeing us go hungry, and she was always ready to give us her share because, like every Jewish mother in the neighborhood, she gladly sacrificed herself for the children.

Even as a little boy, I remember swearing to myself that when I grew up, I’d be very rich, and I’d make sure that for the rest of her days, my mother had only the best. In my childish mind I saw us all having a cholent with lots of meat every Friday night for the rest of our lives, a Sabbath dish with the best beef in the world. That was what I dreamed for the future, and I have a feeling that my desire to be rich, to have the best of everything, stems from those Fridays when I saw my mother’s face as she handed me the cholent dish.

—Meyer Lansky

From the times of Chazal, Jews kept the cherished custom of serving a hot dish as part of the Shabbos day repast. The reasons for this were halachic in origin. Unlike the Sadducees or the later Karaites, Rabbinic Jews believing in Torah shebe’al peh understood that utilizing heat on Shabbos is permitted provided that the fire was kindled before Shabbos. As a demonstration of loyalty to Rabbinic Judaism, the custom arose in the early centuries following the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash to include a hot dish in the Shabbos daytime meal. But the ingredients of that dish would take on many permutations over the millennia, developing new variations across the diaspora.

What likely began as something very similar to the Middle Eastern dish harissa, basically ground wheat mixed with meat and local seasoning, eventually evolved as it migrated to other domains. During Spain’s golden age, Sephardic chefs added chickpeas and beans to their hamin. Centuries later, conversos preparing hamin did so at risk to their lives, and officers of the Inquisition knew to search for it in their homes. It became a symbol of underground Judaism on the Iberian Peninsula in the centuries following the expulsion edict of 1492.

Meanwhile, Sephardic culinary customs migrated north through Provence into France. The Ashkenazi Jewish community slowly adopted hamin in the 12th century and referred to it by the Old French word for warm, chalt. As the Shabbos delicacy migrated further east to the German lands of Bohemia and Moravia and later to Poland, the word evolved into “cholent.”

The discovery of the New World and the introduction of foods and grains from there would have a decisive impact on the recipe for cholent. Beans and, of course, potatoes, emerged as the staple ingredients of cholent from the 16th century. Beef was generally a constant component, although in some regions of central Europe, goose was preferred.

Throughout most of history, in the shtetls of Europe, in the mellahs of Morocco, in the Old Yishuv of Yerushalayim, Jews did not own individual ovens. This posed a challenge to keeping the cholent hot on Shabbos. This was famously solved by having the townspeople deposit all their cholent pots with the town bakery. For a small fee, the baker would keep his oven hot for all of Shabbos. Every cholent pot had to have a unique design or color to make it easily recognizable, which led to artistic creativity with cholent pots throughout history.

Keeping the cholent hot at the bakery solved one problem but created another. Many shtetls lacked an eiruv to enable families to carry their cholent home on Shabbos morning. According to some survivor testimonies, this challenge was solved in a rather creative fashion. Young children from each family were designated as the cholent delivery service. The young children would go to the bakery, identify their family pot, and carry it home for their family to enjoy.

Cholent Creativity in Shaarei Chesed

Following the construction of Jerusalem’s Shaarei Chesed neighborhood in 1909, a communal oven was built in the back of the central Gra shul. The chimney of this original oven can be viewed even today.

The oven was administered by a colorful character named Chaim der Beker (“the baker”). His name was actually Chaim Levi, and he was a Yemenite Jew who didn’t even live in Shaarei Chesed. But in his capacity as the neighborhood baker, he spoke fluent Yiddish. He arranged a unique payment method for his cholent services. If he thought that a particular balabusta’s cholent was tasty, he’d demand payment in the form of maaser from the cholent itself. But if he thought it was lousy, then he required payment in cash.

One Shabbos, the Shaarei Chesed eiruv broke. A cholent crisis was declared, and the solution was a communal meal. The entire neighborhood encamped in the alleyway behind the Gra shul next to the oven and enjoyed their cholent together.

Cholent Innovation in America

In 1936, a Chicago engineer named Irving Naxon (born Nachumsohn), inspired by his Vilna-born mother and her stories of preparing cholent in her hometown, invented the Naxon Beanery. This electric slow cooker was designed to mimic the steady, all-night cooking process used in communal ovens.

The Rival Company purchased Naxon’s business and patent in 1970, rebranding the device as the Crock-Pot, which would soon become a fixture in kitchens worldwide. Today, over 80% of American households own a slow cooker, which, ironically, is said to have contributed to healthier eating habits — a likely unintended impact of Naxon’s innovation.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1041)