Dutch and Italian Jews Share a Haman’s Ear Custom

My friend Ida hails from Holland. When I told her about my research and blog dealing with Jewish holiday customs she eagerly added her own Dutch treat for Purim. “You know,” she said, “I never quite understood why Hamentashen stand for Haman’s ears. You have to go to Holland to see what a Haman’s ear really looks like.” Ida then proceeded to describe a family baking session consisting of dough dripped into a deep pan of hot, bubbling oil, carefully shaped to look like an ear. Once golden brown, it was removed, drained from oil and then sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar. Placed on a cake tray, the final display showed numerous ear shapes to choose from. “After all,” smiled Ida, “we all have different shaped ears.”

Being a pretty thorough researcher herself, Ida decided to Google the recipe. Here’s what she came up with. As you can see, the Italians share this custom as well. It’s more than a tradition. It’s an earful.
Hearty appetite and Happy Purim.

The Jews of Alsace France have a Unique Way of Remembering Haman

Skip the Hamantashen. The Jews of Alsace France prefer to eat Hanukkah style doughnuts on Purim, and they have created their own gallows humor to remember Haman. They don’t tell Haman to hang on to his hat, but in their own way they hang him out to dry – literally. You’ve got it. They eat smoked beef that they have hung out to dry and put it in their pea soup or steamed cabbage, making it an important course in their Purim feast. It’s a fun idea and translates well if you want to turn your classroom into a Purim Deli. I can envision hanging salamis “dressed up” as Haman and his sons. It’s a delicious idea for a holiday that’s full of fun.
Enjoy!

Portuguese Jews Reach Out to the Poor on Purim

With a month to go, we’re all in the throes of getting ready for Purim – the happiest holiday on the Jewish calendar. But there’s a serious side to Purim that kids should be aware of as well, and that’s Matanot Le’Evyonim – Gifts for the Poor. Portuguese Jews make sure to bring this message home. Once the Megillah is read on Purim morning the synagogue youth leader takes youngsters on a door-to-door campaign, collecting money in velvet bags that are distributed to the less fortunate in the community. What’s more, on Purim day poor people are not ashamed to knock on the doors of their fellow Jews, asking for help. Every household has its own pile of coins ready for distribution.

Helping the underprivileged is an important Purim lesson. In between learning about the story of Esther, how about organizing a Purim Costume Drive? Ask your students to bring in last year’s costume as a donation to less fortunate kids who don’t have the means for creating a fancy getup.

What about volunteering at a local soup kitchen the day before or after your Purim festivities?
I am sure you can come up with even better ways to get the message across that it is important to reach out to the needy.

Food for thought as you start your Purim lessons.
Speaking of food for thought – I’ll be back over the next few weeks with some fun Purim food customs.
Tami

Jews in Turkey Welcome Guests with a Teaspoon of Apple Jam

We all know that Hachnasat Orchim – welcoming of guests into one’s home – is an important Jewish value dating back to Abraham. The question is how does one go about doing it? Certainly we are not going to wash our guests’ feet as Abraham did. Most of us feel that a gracious verbal welcome suffices. Not so for Turkish Jews. They go out of their way to make guests feel at home by turning their Rosh Hashana custom of eating home-made apple jam into a year-round Hachnasat Orchim practice. When a guest enters their house s/he is first treated to a teaspoon of apple jam and a glass of water. It’s their way of wishing sweetness and happiness to every visitor.

Why do I bring this up? To begin with, it is wonderful to see how one Jewish community reveres our values as much as our holidays. In addition, I believe that Hachnasat Orchim is a value so important that it should be engraved in the psyche of every Jew. When we made Aliyah in 1977 I was overwhelmed by the number of invitations we received. It didn’t take long for us to understand how essential it was to adapt this practice into our own lifestyle. Seven years later, we went to the States on our first Sabbatical. This time I was underwhelmed by the lack of invitations. Over the decades many of our friends and colleagues experienced the same treatment during their sabbatical years. When we were able to muster up enough courage to ask “why”, we couldn’t believe the answer: “It’s not worth our energy to invest in people who won’t be here after a year.” It was not until our last Sabbatical in Providence that we finally came upon a Jewish community that truly understood the meaning of Hachnasat Orchim. By then my expectations were less than low. Thirty-two years after making aliyah, I was once again happily overwhelmed.

Obviously, every community is different, as is every era. Nonetheless, Hachnasat Orchim is a timeless value that should be handed down by parents, as well as taught in the classroom. Turkish Jews have it right. It is so important, it is worthy of a custom.

The Aleksander Hasidim May Be Nearly Extinct But Their Havdalah Custom Lives On

My husband and I spent this Shabbat in Neve Aliza (located in Israel’s Shomron region) to celebrate a family Bar Mitzvah. The proud parents grew up in Israel but their joint roots are American and British. I was expecting a warm family setting with all the usual trappings, including familiar customs. And so it was, until Havdalah. I didn’t pay much attention to the fact that the father held up two long Shabbat candles crossed in an “X” position instead of the typical braided Havdalah candle. Sniffing small clusters of cloves and/or lemon scented fragrance followed the usual bill of fare, as did the singing of Hamavdil Bein Kodesh Le Khol and Eliyahu Hanavi.

I was about to give my husband the "let’s go" signal when I finally picked up on the fact that this was not a routine Havdalah ceremony. The Bar Mitzvah boy’s father, who hails from London, never extinguished the Havdalah candles. Instead, he placed them in the silver candlestick holders that his wife had used to welcome the Sabbath Queen and carried them back to stand on their silver tray, flames aglow. I quickly rushed over to him, asking “what are you doing?” “I’m extending the Shabbat another two hours,” he answered with a smile, realizing the irony of having just formally ended the day of rest. “Where did you get this custom from?” I asked. He shrugged his shoulders, explaining that it was always done in his house and that he thinks it started with the Aleksander Hassidim. At least, that’s what his mother, a descendent from this sect, once told him.

Who were the Aleksander Hassidim and where did they come from? He wasn’t sure, maybe the Polish city of Lodz. All it took was a quick Google search to find out that the now nearly extinct Aleksander Hassidim were the second largest Hassidic group in pre-Holocaust Poland. Clearly the flames of extinction did not succeed in obliterating their spirit. However, this prompted me to think about the numerous customs many of us practice without really knowing their origins. So there you have it, the perfect family roots activity: Take a specific ceremony (and we have lots of them), ask your students what customs they have for it, then give them an assignment of sitting down with their parents/grandparents to trace the custom’s origins. In the process, have a Shavua Tov.

Fried Cheese Blintzes for Hanukkah? Sephardim Shed Light on Why it is Customary to Eat Dairy Foods.

Guess what? There are two dairy holidays in the Jewish tradition. That is, if you come from a Sephardi background. We all connect dairy with Shavuot. But Hanukkah? Yes, Hanukkah. If your ethnic roots are Kurdish or Persian, then you're eating dairy delights on Hanukkah.

Sephardi women love to cook, so it’s no coincidence that this custom directly relates to one of the Hanukkah heroines. Maccabim aside, who else knew how to live by the sword and make the enemy die by the sword? Judith, of course. An attractive, seductive, wealthy widow, she knew how to milk a situation for all its worth. That’s why when the Assyrian general Holofernes blockaded the city she lived in and cut off its water supply, Judith understood what had to be done. She went to the general’s camp and pretended to surrender. Holofernes was so struck by Judith’s good looks that he invited her into his tent. Judith came armed with just the right weapons – wine and cheese. The combination was even more delectable than Judith’s beauty. The general ate, drank and didn’t have a chance to make merry because he fell into a drunken sleep. A slumber so deep that Judith easily beheaded him and saved her people from the siege. To honor Judith’s daring deed, Sephardim eat dairy and fried foods on Hanukkah.

What does this mean for your classroom? A lot. To begin with, it opens the window on Hanukkah’s heroines. Who were these women who showed their mettle? The girls in your class will be happy to know and the boys will learn a lesson or two about female bravery. Next, what about your Hanukkah celebration? Ask some of the parents to help you out with a Hanukkah cottage cheese noodle kugel or fry up some classic cheese blintzes that fit the double bill of dairy foods fried in oil. Want the kids to “cook” on their own? Mixing granola with yogurt and topping it with fresh or dried berries is easy to do. How about a “7-layer cream cheese cake” made from whole wheat bread and low-fat cream cheese? I just thought of these two options off the top of my head, so I can imagine the creative “cooking” ideas you’ll come up with. Whatever dairy dish you decide to bake or make, enjoy and have a Hanukkah Sa'meach.

Don’t forget, you can buy my book Hanukkah Around the World through Karben’s on-line book store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, or your local Judaica store.

On Hanukkah, Galician Jews Knew How to Play Their Cards

Playing cards during the day? Oy Vey!

As far back as the 15th century, the Ashkenazim of Worms, Germany forbade this indulgence – except during Hanukkah, and even then the Rabbis debated its function. Clearly, the “ayes” won, as card playing continued to be a Hanukkah custom that eventually spread to the Galician city of Rzeszow, in south-eastern Poland, where they played a card game similar to Black Jack. On Hanukkah, Heder (lower Yeshiva) students stopped learning for several hours a day to play cards or watch others play. What was interesting were the cards themselves. Hanukkah playing cards had four nicknames: “Kvitlech” meaning little notes – a name that we connect today to the “kvitel” bearing wishes that we fold up and tuck into the crevices of the Wailing Wall; “Klein Shass”, which means a small Talmud; “Tilliml”, representing a small book of Psalms; and “Lamed Alefniks” – the “thirty-oners” representing the 31 kings of Canaan mentioned in the Book of Joshua. Even more important was who made the cards. In Poland, no one ever heard of the company Bicycle Cards. It was up to the teachers or children to hand paint each card.

I’m sure you see where I’m heading. In this day and age of virtual everything, it’s nice to go back to some home-grown, hands-on activities, especially when we’re looking for new ways to connect students to the messages of Hanukkah. Adapting an age-old Hanukkah custom to the contemporary classroom might just do the trick. Hanukkah is all about celebrating heroism, courage and religious freedom. There are enough heroes, heroines, religious symbols and even food to draw on for creating a hand-made Hanukkah card game where you decide the type of game and how many cards make the deck.

Now there's an ace up your sleeve!

You can read about eight other fascinating Hanukkah customs and try some yummy Hanukkah recipes when you buy my book Hanukkah Around the World. You can purchase it through Kar-Ben’s online store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or ask your local Jewish book store.