Nadene Goldfoot
A latke is a kind of potato pancake traditionally eaten during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Fried in oil, latkes commemorate the holiday miracle in which one day’s worth of oil illuminated the temple for eight days. They are a grated raw potato, grated onion, a little matzo meal, beaten eggs, fried in vegetable oil, and served with applesauce on top or sour cream and jam. Mmmm, forget calories! Moderns now are grating sweet potatoes, or zucchinis, but that loses the odor in the kitchen that is better than any hashish anytime! Nothing like potatoes! Hamantashen are triangular baked wheat-flour pastries with a sweet filling which are traditionally eaten on the holiday of Purim. They represent the ears or the 3-cornered hat of Haman, the villain of the Purim story in the Biblical book of Esther. This is not served in December during Hanukkah, but they are delicious. Jews love to argue. Maybe that's why so many have become lawyers. Each one has his opinion, Take a good look at the Knesset. Heh, heh, that's why King David was so successful and remembered for the past 3,031 years. He was king!
Since 1946, Jews have gathered at the University of Chicago for the annual Latke-Hamantash debate. Past debaters have included Alan Dershowitz , lawyer and Milton Friedman, economist and statistician. Hanukkah wasn't even officially marked on the official USA calendar by a sitting US president until Jimmy Carter in 1979. I am shocked! He was the worst president for Jews who wrote a pretty nasty book about us. Jews have had better relations in their own cities in order to celebrate, especially since Christmas comes at about the same time each year. In New York City they have the world's largest menorah that is 32 feet tall, and is lit every year.
Even Portland, Oregon has an outdoor menorah and crowds gather each year to see it lit by Chabad.
The Latke–Hamantash Debate is a deliberately humorous academic debate about the relative merits and meanings of these two items of Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine. The debate originated at the University of Chicago in 1946 and has since been held annually. Subsequent debates have taken place at several other universities. Participants in the debate, held within the format of a symposium, have included past University of Chicago president Hanna Holborn Gray, philosopher Martha Nussbaum, former Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Austan Goolsbee, Nobel Prize winners Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Leon M. Lederman, and essayist Allan Bloom. A compendium of the debate, which has never been won, was published in 2005.
The debate had been moderated by University of Chicago philosophy professor, Ted Cohen, for over 25 years until his death in March 2014.
Several long-standing customs are observed at the University of Chicago: the debaters must have gained a Ph.D. or an equivalent advanced degree, arguments are encouraged to be made using the specific technical language of their discipline, participants must present themselves in academic regalia, and the debaters must include at least one non-Jew. Discussing the event's original purpose at the University of Chicago, Ruth Fredman Cernea observed that scholarly life discouraged exploration of Jewish traditions and did not facilitate ethnic relationships between students and faculty: "the event provided a rare opportunity for faculty to reveal their hidden Jewish souls and poke fun at the high seriousness of everyday academic life."[ This is an interesting way for them to celebrate our holidays.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latke%E2%80%93Hamantash_Debate
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