Sufganiot explained

My friend Sarah recently asked me about when people in Israel start eating sufganiot (jelly doughnuts) to celebrate Chanukah. Here is a slightly more detailed explanation of what we eat, why, and when.

Back in North America, it’s typical to eat latkes, or fried potato pancakes. The miracle of Chanukah was that the oil in the temple burned for eight days, and to commemorate the special oil, we deep fry everything. Latkes are usually eaten with a variety of condiments, each family having their own tradition. It ranges from your basic apple sauce to sour cream or ketchup. I am sure there are die hard Canadians who have their latkes with a liberal drenching of maple syrup.

Here in Israel, the national Chanukah food is sufganiot, or as I call them, sufis. Unlike in North America, we don’t just have Chanukah where one eats greasy fried food, we have Chanukah season. Bakers wanting to try out their machinery and deep fryers start cranking out fresh doughnuts months in advance. I think I had my first sufi of the season about three months ago, and its still two weeks to Chanukah. When you walk into the corned market and get a whiff of the deep fried powered sugar covered goodness, you get the feeling Chanukah is right around the corner.

For many years the only flavors available were raspberry or strawberry jam filling for the more expensive sufis, the cheaper ones had a generic red goop. I am sure the red goop comes from the same factory where they make petel or Israeli bug juice mix, but that’s a whole different story. Not wanting to be behind the times, I am sure some enterprising Israeli baker visited a Krispy Kreme in the States and saw the multitude of jelly stuffings. He then decided to bring some of the shmaltzy goodness back home. You can still get cheap (2 shekel) red goop doughnuts and a number of mid level jams and fillings. However, there days at many bakeries around the country, you can now get crème and caramel, butterscotch and chocolate dipped. They also have whip cream filled and topped and I have even seen a halva sufi, a simply deadly combination (with a calorie count in the low thousands).

So while we now have many choices, we don’t yet have a Chanukah tradition of dressing up like a Macabee while eating our Chanukah sufganiot, or while playing driedel. I think Sarah is on to something; we should have a recreation Chanukah, and give everyone lots of free food. I think it could be the best festival, ever.