December Media Stories
There’s definitely been interest in stories about Hanukkah traditions of doughnuts and gelt this past month. Thank you to the following for disseminating ideas based on On the Chocolate Trail and the chocolatebabkaproject:
For The Forward story, “A Different Doughnut Recipe for Each Hanukkah Night,” I tested recipes and researched background about Sephardi and Mizrachi Hanukkah doughnut traditions. Happily, The Forward devoted an e-blast totally focused on that story. Cantor Evan Kent’s annual obsession with tasting soufganiyot, Israeli jelly doughnuts, and spins thereof, opened the piece.
How did Hanukkah gelt come to be chocolate, you might ask? My Jewish Learning sent out “9 Things You Didn’t Know about Hanukkah.” Item 1 about gelt refers to the chapter in On the Chocolate Trail about my theory of how Hanukkah gelt comes to be chocolate. To learn more, take a look at the book or the story.
Reform Judaism’s “Ten Minutes of Torah” eblast included my exploration of “How Fair Trade Gelt Embodies Hanukkah’s Message.” It cautions consumers to choose chocolate, specifically gelt, that reflects our Jewish values. When celebrating religious freedom at Hanukkah we might also protect the freedoms of workers at chocolate’s origins and harvest, particularly in West Africa.
Next year, hopefully, we’ll be in person to taste yummy, homemade doughnuts from worldwide Jewish traditions and also to relish guilt free chocolate gelt.
Recent Posts
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Sweet Treat: Chocolate and the Making of American Jews
You may wonder: how did chocolate help define American Jews? Through chocolate, we see that Jews were part of America since its earliest days. Well, since 1701 at least, Jews in the Colonies made part of their living through chocolate. Several Sephardim, leaders of their New York and Newport Jewish and secular communities, participated in
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How About Some Uterus Challah?
When Logan Zinman Gerber felt enraged about the loss of reproductive rights in the U.S., she baked challah. Not any challah. She shaped it into a uterus. It wasn’t long after the birth of her daughter that Gerber, a longtime challah baker and staff member of the Religious Action Center of the Reform movement, considered
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A Manhattan synagogue explores the rich, surprising history of Jews and chocolate
I’m grateful for this story written by Rachel Ringer, published at JTA/NY Jewish Week on December 20, 2023: (New York Jewish Week) — In 2006, Rabbi Deborah Prinz was on a trip to Europe with her husband, Rabbi Mark Hurvitz, when they wandered into a chocolate shop in Paris. While meandering about the store, Prinz picked
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Exhibit Opens! Sweet Treat! Chocolate & the Making of American Jews
Sweet Treat is a delicious gastronomic adventure into the history and resilience of American Jewish chocolate making. This exhibition invites you to follow the chocolate trail to America, a scrumptious journey through time and place. Chocolate gives us a lens to understand Jewish migration, as the chocolate trade parallels the migrations of the Jewish
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Some Previous Posts
(in alphabetical order)
- "Boston Chocolate Party" Q&As with Deborah Kalb
- 2022 Media for The "Boston Chocolate Party"
- About Rabbi Deborah Prinz
- Baking Prayers into High Holiday Breads
- Boston Chocolate Party
- Chocolate Chip Politics
- Digging into Biblical Breads
- For the Easiest Hanukah Doughnuts Ever
- Forthcoming! On the Bread Trail
- Funny Faced Purim Pastries
- Good Riddance Chameitz or, The Polemics of Passover's Leaven
- Injera*
- Israeli Chocolate Spread
- Jewish Heritage Month: Baseball & Chocolate!
- Matzah - But, the Dough Did Rise!
- Plan a Choco-Hanukkah Party: 250th Anniversary Tea Party
- Prayers Into Breads
- To Shape Dough: A Trio of Techniques
- Why Is Challah On My Matzah Box?