The first Bread House in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, was called St. Christopher Bread House (Хлeбна Къща “Свети Христофор”, www.bread-art-house.org) since it is St. Christopher and St. Nicholas,  two of the most widely venerated Christian saints across the globe, who are celebrated on the BH birthday (May 9th, 2009). Bread House in itself is a translation of the name “Bethlehem” (bet as home, and lehem as bread in Hebrew), embodying the vision of the Bread Houses to be spaces of hope, help,  humility, and happiness, for all people of any ethnic or religious group while being rooted in the Orthodox Christian faith.

Nadezhda was invited by world-renowned Orthodox Christian baker Peter Reinhart  to the Charlotte St. Nectarius Orthodox church and to his baking class at the Charlotte Community Kitchen cooking program for low-income and at risk youth in October 2011. Here are some reflections of Peter Reinhart, whose journey from  Judaism into Christian Orthodoxy in a way reflects the discovery of the deep theological meaning of the rising of the bread as a metaphor of life: http://www.liturgicalcredo.com/PeterReinhartExcerpts.html.

The PRO-SPHORA Program is also working towards developing a network of Orthodox Christian-inspired bakeries that already exist and add to their work the Bread House method of collective bread-making and the revival of the homefamily prosphora bread stamp tradition. An exemplary case of such bakeries is St John’s Bakery in Toronto, Canada, (http://www.stjohnsbakery.com/) which specializes in organic sourdough breads and sweets, handmade from scratch in the traditional French method, owned and operated by St. John the Compassionate Mission, a Russian Orthodox mission which offers daily meals, a thrift store, a tutoring academy and St. Silouan Orthodox Church. (read more about it here: http://www.christianweek.org/stories.php?id=511).

You can see the videos done by the Bulgarian National TV on the first Bread House that Nadezhda developed in her great-grandmother’s old house in Bulgaria and how the PROS-PHORA Breads dynamics and method evolved:

http://www.hristiyanstvoto.eu/pred.php?n=301;

http://bnt.bg/bg/productions/120/edition/11243/malki_istorii_ae_20_dekemvri_2010_istorijata_na_nadejda_saveva_ot_gabrovo

http://www.bread-art-house.org/taxonomy/term/8

Grounded in the foundational Christian values of love and sharing of one table – and the symbolic partaking of one bread and one cup of wine in Communion – the Bread Houses strive to be spaces for communication and collective creations of artistic forms among religions – the arts being the most neutral but also engaged medium for dialogue – where each group preserves its beliefs and traditions while engaging together with other in the most basic and in a way innocent of all creative actions and universal symbol of love: the baking and breaking of bread!

The PROS-PHORA Program is inspired by the rich Orthodox Christian traditions of liturgical prosphora breads and their respective prosphora wood-carved stamps. The name prosphora comes from the Greek “pro” meaning “forward” and “phora” meaning “to bring,” thus “brought forward” is the offering of bread to God. The prosphora bread is specifically used for the Eucharist/Communion as it gets transformed into the Body of Christ together with the wine becoming the Blood after being blessed on the altar. For its sacred use and meaning, the prosphora bread involves also a special process of making prosphora, suffused with particularly joyful, thanks-giving, and prayerful dispositions of the mind and heart, and this is why it is a wonderful collective celebration for the members of a parish to come together Saturday evening and make the prosphora for the Sunday Liturgy in preparation for the partaking of the same cup.

The Orthodox-inspired PROS-PHORA activities have taken place and keep occuring at the St. Christopher Bread House in Bulgaria and in some of the programs or events undertaken at other Orthodox churches and monasteries in Bulgaria and around the world, connected through Nadezhda’s travels for academic and development work as well as personal pilgrimages.

The name of the Orthodox breads program of the Bread Houses, PROS-PHORA, is specifically spelled with space in between, so as to mark that the series of activities are not only about making prosphora for the Liturgy but also for making other kinds of Orthodox breads,  unified by the inspiration of the gift – the most basic but suffused with love and care gifts of bread that people collectively make and exchange with each other as well as offer to God. For our PROS-PHORA Program what matters is not the final bread product but the process and inspiration and spiritual value of “bringing forward:” of giving, sharing, and loving.

These events engage people of all generations to revive traditional Orthodox festive breads, for example Chrsitmas or Easter breads, which in Bulgaria, for example, do bear the same stamps as the breads in the Liturgy but also other kinds of decoration with dough. The Program  strives to preserve and re-create Orthodox bread traditions across the East from Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria to the Coptic in Egypt, and from the Ethiopians (the oldest Christian African country tracing its Christian rituals back to Apostle Mathew)  to the Syriac Christians of Kerala in India tracing their heritage back to Apostle Thomas. These varied Christian festive bread traditions provide for a great variety that also generates artwork and discussions around the century-old artistic traditions.

Nadezhda Savova has organized collective prosphora and festive bread-making events at various churches around  Bulgaria and at Orthodox churches and monasteries from San Francisco to Seoul ( Korea) . The events are often coupled with lectures and discussions on Biblical parables, symbolism, and other theological and moral issues, as well as Byzantine chant and iconographic exhibits or documentary movie projections.

As bread-breaking is a universal symbolic act of peace-building,  “Make/break bread, not war!” is a much needed philosophy particularly in a world torn by religious fanaticism and hatred, where religions could rather continue co-existing in peace the way they did for centuries, and rather than arguing over religious truths, as theological issues are clear on the impossibility of different Christian denominations taking Communion together and clearly not having prayer-based communion among religions, what could be more neutral and innocent, yet more passionate and powerful, than making and breaking simple daily bread together as humans ultimately made of the same dough!

Churches, monasteries, and charitable organizations, where Nadezhda Savova has organized Bread House Orthodox Christian events (in chronological order since 2009) include:

- Japan, Tokyo, St. Nicholas of Japan Orthodox Church (interested in Bread House Program) (august 2009)

- South Korea, Seoul, Greek Orthodox Monastery of St. Nicholas (sept 2009)

- South Africa, Cape Town, St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral (sept 2009)

- Bulgaria: Gabrovo (with local orphanage); Russe (St. Nicholas Orthodox Church and Monastery of St. Marina with local orphanage), Varna (St. Nicholas Orthodox Church and St. Michael Parish Center); Sofia, St. St. Cyril and Methodius and their Students Parish Center; Pleven, St. Dimiter Church in the village of Koilovtzi with local orphanage; Aytos (St. Dimiter Church on August 15, 2011, with local schools); Plovdiv (St. Konstantin and Helen Church and Sunday School);

- Russia: St. Petersburg, New Russian Martyrs Church Parish Center  and Russian Children’s Hospital (july 2010); Moscow, St. Daniil Monastery Youth Volunteer Group at Parish Center (july 2010); St. Segii of Radonezh Monastery, bread-making at the nearby Orthodox Youth Camp (july 201o)

- USA:

New York:

St.St. Cyril and Methodius Bulgarian Orthodox Church (May 2011);

Mother of God Parish Brighton Beach(Father Vadim Arefiev) , St. John of Kronshtadt Shelter for the Homeless (http://www.svdom.org/english/save_our_souls.html) and the Mother of God Parish with the Orthodox Business Association, www.orthodoxunited.org, where we built a wood-fired oven to implement our Bread Houses Network Program also in Brighton Beach (Program launched on January 19th,the Baptism of Christ; oven blessed on March 11, 2012)

Emmaus House Orthodox Center caring for the homeless in Harlem (www.emmaushouse-harlem.org)

San Francisco:

Church of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco “Mother of God, Joy of all who Sorrow”, together with the St.St. Cyril and Methodius School (October 31st, 2011)

Boston

Holy Resurrection Bulgarian Orthodox Church (Christmas Celebration with music, food, and ritual breads, January 6th, 2012)

Dayton, Ohio

Loafers to Bakers group (http://www.flickr.com/photos/frted/sets/72157625257407815/)

Please, feel free to contact Nadezhda directly if you need more information or would like to organize an event or develop a Bread House Prosphora Breads program in your parish or community center or any other setting. The formats can vary widely, and indeed not focus on prosphora bread but on any other kind of festive bread, as long as the key is to develop the space most propitious to local social interactions – for community-building and in some cases peace-building across religious and ethnic groups -  through the inspiring ritual of bread-making and most importantly bread-breaking as perhaps the most universal symbol of peace!

PROS-PHORA EVENTS

HOLY FIRE:

First Firing of the newly-built oven

at the “St.John of Kronshtadt” Homeless Shelter,  Brighton Beach

and

 Launching of the Bread Houses Network Program in Brighton Beach

Sunday, March 11th, 1-2:30pm, Church of the Mother of God The Holy Chalice, http://www.svxram.org/english_church%202/index.html

Listed as a national Orthodox Christian Fellowship (OCF) event:

http://www.ocf.net/blogs/news/archive/2012/03/08/holy-fire-making-and-baking-bread-in-a-new-oven-for-the-homeless.aspx

Building the oven at “St. John of Kronshtadt” Shelter

January 24th, 2012

Built as volunteer donation by master-builder Feodor (Ukraine) who has built ovens for the world-famous pilgrimage site the Pochaev Monastery.

Volunteers were inspired to build the fire oven (similar to the way it happened in Bulgaria with the first Bread House St. Christopher) after the launching of the Bread Houses Network Program in Brighton Beach was announced on January 19th,the Baptism of Christ. On that day,  the whole community came together for the blessing of the ocean waters, and after people ritually washed themselves in the cold waters, all came together in the warmth of the church and the oven where parishioners and homeless people made, baked, and broke bread sharing their experiences of daily life through the rhythm of the Eucharistic vision of the world. The ease with which the method united and made feel comfortable the homeless people with the parishioners, for example the case of the homeless man from Muslim origin, Mohammad, who felt so attracted by the promise to make and bake his own bread that any mistrust faded away,  proved how useful the method would be in the future to do outreach to bring the homeless to the safe space of the shelter.

This type of activities are planned to happen regularly run by local volunteers trained in the BHN Methods.