Ube Challah

Friday night dinners when I was growing up in Plainview, Long Island, were sacrosanct in our household. The youngest of five children, I would wait for my father, Bob, to return home an hour before sundown—the only night he did—carrying two braided challah bread loaves from his bakery, made by hand from his mother’s recipe.

As was traditional in Jewish homes around the world, my mother Clara would light the candles in the silver candlesticks and make the blessing, and then my father