A Bi-Cultural Fress

Last night I fulfilled some of my Booba duties by making latkes. A lot of latkes.

Potato, of course, but I was also talked into making some sweet potato ones too. Ok, I can deal with that. Of course there is no comparison to a golden-brown, fragrant, crunchy potato latke, is there? None of this 'bake in the oven' rubbish, it's Chanukah, embrace the oil!

Then the question of accompaniments. Strangely, even though I was raised with savory latkes accompanied by ketchup in the context of a BBQ, I have taken to the sour cream dollop (no BBQ, obviously) but I don't get the applesauce so beloved of the Americans. I don't think it does either the latke or the applesauce any favors. Feel free to disagree. I guess it's what one is used to. 

(I wonder what we did for latkes in Europe before the 16th century, before the potato arrived from the New World? Kasha? I guess we still do eat buckwheat pancakes, why not?  But I digress.)

So tonight I went to a Thanksgiving dinner - turkey, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, beans, the whole works- but no latkes. So much for Thanksgivukkah! Not that I could have fit any latkes in, and forget about the sufganiyot, I'm over those already. 

And I'm trying to write this while feeling as stuffed as the turkey. My brain is in a food-induced stupor. 

I'm not the first person to notice that Chanukah and Thanksgiving have a bit in common, main point being that they are both about religious freedom. The Pilgrim Fathers were escaping religious persecution by fleeing the Old World for the New. And the Maccabees beat the crap out of the Hellenist Seleucids (Syrian by geography, Greek by culture) because they were denied freedom to practice their religion and because the a Temple was defiled. Then was the miracle of the oil which we remember while eating fried food (OY, do we remember. The heartburn doesn't let us forget). The difference is in the attitude to the food: with Thanksgiving it is a Seudot Hoda'ah, literally a meal of thanks, but with Chanukah it's the classic Jewish theme; 'they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat.'

Anyway, I reckon sweet potato latkes are the once in a lifetime Thanksgivukkah treat and I won't be making them again until 2021, I believe. And as for the 'healthy' 'latkes' my daughter was reading about -and suggesting I make!- containing cabbage and kale and carrots and onions, I say, that ain't no latke. That's fritters. 

Potatoes = latkes, The End. 

Happy Chanukah!

Bad news, good news

Once more I am in Jerusalem, city of bells and yells, on a sunny Sunday, hearing the tolling and tinkling of the competing churchbell carillons and preparing to go out to meet friends for lunch. 

The news items which are still fresh, in this place of ever-generating news, include the murder of Eden Atias, 19 year old new IDF recruit, on a bus in Afula. Eden was on his way home for Shabbat and had dozed off in the bus, when he was attacked and stabbed repeatedly by a 16 year old youth from Jenin, Hussein Rawarda. The only motive for this crime was political. Hussein killed Eden, a sleeping stranger, because he was wearing an IDF uniform, and was therefore probably a Jew, and certainly an Israeli. And where does a 16 year old learn to foster such hatred? In school. At home. In the mosque. Wherever there is unfettered incitement. Where the schoolbooks deny the existence of Israel, where the legitimacy of Israel's existence is continually questioned and denied and where the Jew is despised as a descendant of 'apes and pigs'. Just as with the murder of the Fogel family, stabbed to death by two Palestinian teenagers while sleeping, the words of hatred led to actions of hatred, perpetrated in the most heinous way imaginable. How do you stab to death a sleeping youth, sleeping children, a sleeping baby? How can a person hate so much? Well, he can. And it's been taught to him. 

Meanwhile John Kerry continues to thrash around, desperately trying to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians, against all logic parroting the bullshit about how this conflict is the major cause of unrest in the Middle East, against all facts in front of his face, resorting to bribing the Fatah leadership with millions of US taxpayers' dollars - talk about throwing good money after bad, considering that the money will probably buy more weapons and hate education, via UNRWA- while having his Neville Chamberlain moment in his handling of Iran. I'd feel sorry for him if I didn't think he was such a malevolent buffoon. And that the future of the world might rest on his skinny shoulders. 

And in the midst of all this shit and horror, the feel-good story of the IDF in the Phillippines, post Typhoon Haiyan. 148 IDF personnel have put up a field hospital in Bogo City, capable of treating 500 patients at a time, with facilities including X-ray, pediatric and maternity services. A baby boy born there yesterday has been named 'Israel' by his grateful mother. 

So besieged little Israel, surrounded by hostile countries, eaten from within by hostile forces, whether from the Palestinian Territories or leftist Israeli journalists - I don't equate them, g-d forbid, but I did read an article in HaAretz yesterday where the terms 'Jewish terrorists' and 'Hamas military activists' were used, so you really gotta wonder- can still provide real humanitarian aid for no reasons except humanitarian ones. Any humanitarian relief from Saudi Arabia or Qatar or any oil-rich nations? I haven't heard, have you? But I do believe there is some financing of school book printing going on. 

Rock on, Mr Kerry, just try to make sure it's not yourself that you're throwing under the bus along with Israel.