Hanukkah foods in the Skylands

Latkes and doughnuts recall the Temple lamp that burned eight days on one day’s supply, and frying for Hanukkah is an old habit. In the 12th century the father of Maimonides was already defending fritters as a custom of the ancients, not to be made light of.

Eastern European Jews didn’t take to the potato until the 19th century. The first latkes were cheese, in honor of Judith, the widow of legend who fed an enemy general salty cheese and wine, then cut off his head with his own sword. Cheese lost out in the north, where frying meant chicken fat and kosher law keeps meat and dairy apart. Noodle kugel, cheesecake and rugelach carry on the dairy side, though as Gil Marks told NPR, the reason has been forgotten.

Surplus animals were slaughtered before winter, and brisket was the cut most Ashkenazi families could afford. The jelly doughnut came from the Polish ponchik, and it became Israel’s Hanukkah food partly through organized labor: in the 1920s the Histadrut union pushed it over the homemade latke because bakery doughnuts meant more work for its members.