Letter from Israel

Channukiot and Sufganiot

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By Meredith Price

 

Israelis line the streets for sufganiot during Chanukah. This ceramic channukiah represents an ideal family.

The table was an Atkins' diet nightmare. A beautiful ceramic plate with layer upon layer of sugar-dusted sufganiot (doughnuts) was carefully placed next to a dish full of golden, fried latkes. A bowl of sour cream and a fountain of melted chocolate added to the excessive caloric levels. The smell of hot oil drifted through the house, and a layer of thin smoke hung in the air like a blanket.

It was the eighth and final night of Chanukah, and for weeks I had been avoiding the temptation of sweet, oily sufganiot. I had even refused an invitation to join other Tel Aviv residents in a serious search for the best sufganiot in the city despite wanting to know whether Tal Bagels is really worth the wait (as soon as they start to sell sufganiot, constant lines form at their entrance leading all the way down the block). Properly sampling the sufganiot across the city could only be good for the weight-deprived since Tel Aviv literally turns into one giant sufganiot showroom before and during Chanukah. There are plain ones and chocolate ones. There are strawberry, caramel, butterscotch and cream. You can choose from topped or filled and a range of sizes. Every bakery, grocery store, patisserie and pizza place suddenly specializes in the succulent balls of deep-fried dough.

But nowhere in the city are the lines as ridiculously long as outside of Tal Bagels. It should be noted that seeing Israelis wait in an actual line is part of what piques my curiosity. In all other instances where lines would and should normally be formed — at the bank, the grocery store or the post office, for example — the very concept of a line seems equated with "friarhood" (a friar being one who gets cheated). Instead of lining up in a single file the way Americans are taught to do from kindergarten, Israelis tend to congregate en masse, pushing and shoving their way to the front and then answering protests with "I just have a quick question."

But not at Tal Bagels during Chanukah. There, happy Israelis wait for up to half an hour in a proper, civilized line.

Perhaps this unusual behavior is an indication that the Chanukah spirit outweighs the instinct to satisfy sufganiot cravings. Or maybe it's the giving of money to children during Chanukah that inspires such astonishing patience. It could be the happy, upbeat songs about dancing the hora, eating deliciously fattening food, lighting the channukiah and spinning dreidels that puts a tension-free smile on everyone's face. It might even have something to do with the abundance of artistic, hand-made channukiot that pop up in street fairs and boutiques.

"Chanukah is one of the happiest Jewish holidays. It commemorates the nes gadol [big miracle] of oil burning for eight days in the Temple and doesn't involve any sadness or guilt or remembrance of terrible events," explains my husband as we discuss the Tal Bagels' sufganiot phenomenon. "It's just a really happy time that everyone loves so they're probably more willing to wait in line."

I nod, reaching for a homemade sufgania sprinkled with sugar that probably has a caloric content in the low thousands.

"I had never even seen a sufgania until I came to Israel," says Trudy, my husband's beloved 92-year-old-going-on-25 grandmother. "When I was a child in South Africa, we got gelts."

"What are gelts?" asks Austin, my 3-year-old nephew who is so excited about lighting the channukiah and spinning the high-tech dreidel my mom sent him from the United States that he can hardly stand still.

"It was the money we got in South Africa, my darling," says Trudy in her lilting accent. Then she explains that for her, Hannukah was not about sufganiot. Rather, it symbolized the return of the light after the winter solstice. Although Chanukah was celebrated during summertime in South Africa, for some of the Jewish European immigrants, it was a time to celebrate both the miracle of the oil and their memories of the lengthening light each day. "We used to celebrate Chanukah with my adoptive grandparents, and they always gave us money, but I never had dreidels or sufganiot as a child."

Austin looks up at her suspiciously, tightening his grip on the brightly colored, flashing dreidel (actually a series of dreidels that pile atop one another as they spin for extra piggy-back dreideling fun). "Did you have a channukiah?" asks Austin.

"Yes, of course we did! How else could we properly celebrate the returning of the light?"

With that, my husband's mother, a talented artist, points to her hand-made channukiah on the table and explains that together the nine ceramic pieces represent an ideal family. "The saba [grandfather] is the Shamash [the central candle in the channukiah], and there's a mommy, a daddy, a daughter, a son, a baby boy, a savta [grandmother], and the other two represent guests of the family."

"Why are the guests white?" asks Austin, impatient to sing and spin and light.

"The guests are white because they are people we don't know yet, but we invite them because it's always good to leave a place at the table for people who don't have a family of their own."

As she explains, Austin's real saba comes over to help him light the channukiah. "Baruch atta adonai," he begins. We all join in the blessings. Outside, the light has gone from a pale, golden hue to an inky black. Inside, the flickering flame of the nine candles sheds a rosy glow on all four singing generations, the abundant plate of latkes, the wooden dreidels and the plastic dreidels, the hand-made channukiah and of course, the sufganiot.

Meredith Price grew up in Marietta and bought a ticket to Tel Aviv on Sept. 10, 2001. She writes a column on Israeli innovations and cultural features for The Jerusalem Post. You can reach her at meredithmprice@yahoo.com.

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