Of Hash Browns and Jelly Doughnuts

Hanukkah! That other December holiday is upon us.

The holiday where we celebrate the victory of a guerrilla uprising that freed Jerusalem from it's occupiers , and eat a lot of fried food. Seems like this is something some Palestinians would want to buy into. Discuss amongst yourselves.

In my life, I have seen some changes in the the dominant Hanukkah paradigm. Really it's just about the food. The food is important, because if it weren't for the American necessity of inflating Hanukkah so our kids don't get too confused in December, all we'd have would be candles and fried stuff. So, boichiks and madels, the food is important.

What has happened to latkes?

Latkes, which I had been taught was a nice Hebrew word for potato pancakes, have evolved into something more like caked hash browns than any kind of pancake I've ever seen. I can't extract any meaning from this, but I'm just saying.

Jelly doughnuts. All of a sudden, jelly doughnuts have become a traditional part of Hanukkah. I swear that when I was a kid, nobody except middle eastern immigrants had jelly doughnuts for Hanukkah. Perhaps this is another example of Sephardic versus Ashkenazi culture gaining more acceptance in America. That's OK with me.

I don't support jelly doughnuts for Hanukkah. In Milwaukee, Jelly donoughts are called Bismarks. No kidding, Bismarks. No way am I celebrating any Jewish holiday by eating a pastry named after a German nationalist. That's just creepy.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.