Chanukah happiness
Filed under: Business, coexistence, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life
It wasn’t the easiest Chanukah, and it’s hard not to feel guilty about having fun when 41 families are suffering through an unspeakable tragedy. But the holiday arrived, and celebrations abounded (ours is, in fact, over, but for Americans, it’s still going, which is why I’m writing this).
In fact, whether or not Chanukah week is seven days of vacation for some (since Israeli school kids are on vacation, and it helps to have something to do), there’s always an element of fun, given the candle lighting, gifts, sufganiot, and so on.
Candle lighting happens everywhere; in hotel lobbies, malls, stores, at gan parties (where they let two-year-olds hold lit candles?!), even the butcher counter at my local grocery store. You could even call it a moment of coexistence, given the mix of butchers and they’re all chiming in on the Chanukah sivivon (dreidel) song.
Foto Friday – Hanukkah light
Filed under: Environment, Foto Friday, General, News, Religion
Hanukkah, like its other winter holiday counterparts, is all about light. This fact was pointed out to me once by a religion news reporter (yes, there are such beings), who also noted a peculiar human trait: that of making the best of things: as the days grow short, rather than curse the darkness, we celebrate the days with candles and light.
We light candles at Hanukkah (or wicks floated on olive oil) to honor the memory of the Temple rebuilt and its seven-branched menorah, with a nine-branched variant: one flame for each day of the holiday, plus the central, utilitarian shamash.
How sad, how sad and terribly ironic that the holiday which we celebrate with tiny points of light should be marred by the largest conflagration in modern Israel’s history. The winter drought – also history-making as Israel’s longest – made it a snap for the fire to take hold and spread in all its fury.
Tonight, as the flames begin to die down, we will light the third candle of Hanukkah and Friday night candlesticks. Sabbath will be followed by the work week where, together with our national mourning for lives lost and the destruction of our environment, there will be the inevitable finger-pointing, holding-of-accounts and passing-of-the-buck. Before the noise begins, take a quiet moment to consider light, the kind that illuminates the darkness and brings us joy.
© RomKri
Chanukah gelt guilt
Filed under: Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture
Chanukah season is upon us, and it’s interesting to note what we do about it and for it. Yesterday I found myself spending three hours buying Chanukah gifts. Nothing extravagant, but many, and only for my nearest and dearest, which includes sons, stepdaughters, nieces and nephews, mother and mother-in-law, a little something for the husband, and some more somethings for siblings, dear friends and their kids, and one of the friends’ parents who just made aliyah.
That doesn’t include the purchasing of Chanukah candles, and ingredients for various Chanukah meals being eaten at Chanukah parties. Nor does it include the five-day vacation for the family next week, over the Chanukah break.
So is it conspicuous consumption? Christmas envy? The need for a holiday? I mean, we just had Thanksgiving last week, and I got to lavish a lot of love on an eight-kilo turkey, gravy and pumpkin-pecan pie.
I don’t think so. I know that I am a sucker for celebrations, and Chanukah — with eight days to fill — offers ample opportunity to mark the moments (It also explains the vacation, given that kids are off from school for a full week). It’s also a very kids-oriented chag, and with two-year-olds excited to experience candlelighting, that amps up the holiday. The presents? Well, I love buying gifts, and that particular tradition of giving to certain friends and family was set long before I showed up on the scene, so I’m just going along with the plan, albeit as frugally as possible.
In fact, at my family’s Chanukah celebration, we do a grab bag, on which we’ve had several variations, but the general theme is that each family puts in a gift worth about NIS 50, and then you grab another gift. Don’t like whatcha got? Trade with someone else. It always works and I’m still eating out of the purple cereal bowls that I grabbed five years ago. As for gifts, creativity can often be cheaper. Download some $0.99 apps for the teens, put together raw ingredients and recipes for the twentysomething with her own apartment, offer fluffy fleece blankets to the tweens and fun, comic book figure t-shirts for the 11-year-old boys.
Another blogger and old friend, Mara of Kosher on a Budget, put together a list of Chanukah crafts that are great for this week and next, and significantly easier on the wallet.
In any case, I’m not suffering from too much guilt, just thinking about what it all means. Bottom line, the best part about a holiday is spending it surrounded by people you enjoy. Chag orim sameach (Happy festival of lights).
Fancy shmancy donuts from Roladin
Chanuka. Time for presents, lighting candles and of course the ubiquitous sufganiya – Israel’s answer to the jelly donut. For years the only sufganiyot available were disgustingly delicious with their oil soaked dough and semi-vile jelly filling. Granted there is a novelty to eating this traditional classic donut and starting about a month a half before Chanuka they are available everywhere. So if the urge hits, satiation is immediate.
Roladin, Israel’s chain of “upscale” bakeries take the donut to a totally new level. They pride themselves on offering lower calorie (though not low calorie, and they are still fried but are about 1/3 smaller than the average donut) sufganiyot with unique and high quality fillings.
This year is no different. Their offerings include a sufganya filled with a halva white chocolate ganache with white chocolate frosting and candied pecans. Ate it. Was amazing. And the other really unique one is clearly marketed at adults. It’s filled with white chocolate ganache that is mixed with arak with white Belgium chocolate frosting. They of course offer the standard jelly-filled as well but with a high quality fruit filling that has no additional sugar.
Photo of classic sufganya courtesy of SavtaDotty from Flickr under a Creative Commons license. Photo of fancy donut courtesy of Roladin
Latkes vs. Sufganiyot – The Real Story
Filed under: Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture
Holiday food is very seasonal in Israel. It’s hard to find a slice of honey cake in February, and for the eleven months before Passover season, you have to search the supermarket high and low if you’ve a yen for matzah (there’s plenty of matzah meal, though – what would Friday night soup be without matzah balls?)
The holiday treat with the longest “season” is the sufganiyah – the Israeli equivalent of what’s known as a donut in the U.S. I saw my first sufganiyah of the season three days after Sukkot ended, and by now, a couple of weeks before Chanukah, sales are at a fever pitch. As every American knows, there are donuts (Entenmann’s style, chocolate with the hold in the middle), and donuts (Dunkin style, fried up and stuffed with fillings). Israeli donuts are more like the latter. The traditional version leans to a jelly filling, but each year there are more varied options – the other day, for example, I got one with a creamy peanut butter filling, and one covered with enough green frosting to make it look like something they’d give out at a St. Patrick’s Day parade. 
Sufganiyot are seen as the “Israeli” Chanukah treat, while potato pancakes – “latkes” – may be more familiar to folks in the U.S. and Europe, meaning that, to Israelis, they’re the preferred holiday food in the Diaspora. Hence, among some locals, it is considered déclassé to prefer latkes; real Israelis go for the donut. But the story is a bit more complicated. Sufganiyot vs. Latkes is not an Israel – Diaspora thing, it’s a Sephardic – Ashkenazic thing. That’s right – like with the general acceptance of rice and legumes on Passover, the Sephardic majority has given its imprimatur to Israel’s Chanukah food culture.
Potatoes were more common in Russia and Poland, while the Levant and northern Africa had more access to wheat; hence, both cultures took what was available, fried it up, and served it. Since plain fried potatoes – or fried flour – aren’t the most appetizing foods, both cultures came up with ways to enhance the appearance and taste of their dishes; sour cream and jam for latkes, and honey or sugar syrup for the fried flour creation. Thus, the modern sufganiyah, with its jelly filling, actually takes a bit from both cultures – and, with the expansion of western donut culture, the traditional sufganiyah now has competition from American-style donuts and fillings.
The common denominator between sufganiyot and latkes, of course, is that they’re deep-fried in oil, commemorating the miracle of the oil of the Chanukah menorah. Lots of oil guarantees lots of calories – flying in the face of another Western import that many of us subscribe to, healthy eating. But there’s another, less fattening aspect to Chanukah cuisine, not as well known but quite traditional; the consumption of cheese and milk products, based on the story of Yehudit, who drugged the Greek general Holofernes with cheese, putting him to sleep and killing him, thus enabling the Jews to achieve a major victory. For Israelis who want to avoid the fried stuff but still eat Chanukah-style, then, the answer is easy; just indulge in some of the many low-calorie yogurts, puddings, ice-cream, and other dairy treats Israel is rightly famous for!
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