"chanukah history" news and stories

It took Hanukkah celebrants more than 2,000 years to hit upon the dish that's now considered the quintessential holiday food.

Potato latkes, as inextricably linked to the wintertime festival as dreidels, menorahs and chocolate gelt, are such a relatively recent addition to the Hanukkah canon that food writer Mimi Sheraton -- who grew up in a Jewish family in Flatbush -- was 30 years old before she realized the oily pancakes were connected to the holiday.

"Though my family observed that holiday with the weeklong lighting of the silver candelabra ... I never knew those marvelously crisp, hot, onion-scented latkes had anything whatsoever to do with the celebration," Sheraton wrote in 1981.

For many years, they didn't. While food plays a ritual role in many Jewish holidays, the only edible tradition associated with Hanukkah was the rather loosey-goosey custom of eating something with oil in it.