Manilan Houle, a new member of the Indigenous Commission of the City of Duluth, is introducing his mother and nephew to challah and cholent.
When Manilan Houle, who is undergoing an Orthodox Jewish conversion, thinks about the rabbinic commandment to separate and burn challah, a small portion of the dough that one is making into bread, he thinks of a traditional Native American story of his ancestors falling ill from eating raw ingredients, like flour and lard, before learning how to cook them into frybread.
“Our obligation is to restore the challah,” he said. “You put a little aside and say, ‘Thank You for this knowledge that will sustain my people.’ That which once was making us sick is changed to strengthen us.”
Houle, 31, an enrolled member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, had a difficult upbringing. “When I was 11 or 12, I was in foster care,” he told JNS. “My family was struggling with drugs and alcohol, and we were broken.”