The Great Debate: Latkes vs. Hamentashen

Lincoln and Douglas have nothing on the great Latkes v. Hamentashen debate. Which is the ultimate holiday food? There is a book on the subject, which is debated annually at the University of Chicago. One website (above) proposed several topics for discussion which I have posted on my sister blog- Re Lie Able Source. If Obama and Hillary have one more debate, they may be asked their opinions on this (piping) hot and delicious subject.

I have proposed to resolve this gourmetic conflict by a mediation:

COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION: WORLD WIDE WEB
_____________________________________x

IN THE MATTER OF THE MEDIATION
BETWEEN


LATKES

-- AND ---

HAMANTASH

_________________________________x

S.N. Minekinder, Mediator.

The University of Chicago’s great debate between latkes and hamantashen has gone on so long that a mediator, the Yiddish Gourmand, S.N. Minekinder (famous for his Shetl Diplomacy) was called in to resolve the controversy.
While latkes and hamantashen have their differences (baked vs. fried , round versus delta shaped, meal vs. dessert, for example), in many ways they are more alike than different, he noted in his book about Jewish cooking Life is No Bed of Charoses. After all, neither one is bitter herbs (morar).

Latkes celebrate the miracle when oil (“Israeli Crude”) lasted for eight days and was at $40.00 per barrel (but who’s counting?) and was cheaper than ethanol. Hannukah or Chanukah is the holiday (or choliday?) that celebrates the victory over the Romans of the Jewish Scottish clan the Mc Abees. Latkes are round, symbolizing something or other, perhaps how round you get if you eat too many. Albert “Bad Hair Day” Einstein noted, with gravity, that if you eat too many latkes you can become fat enough to distort the chair you’re sitting in, as well as the space around you, and that time will then seem to slow down as you approach the Speed of Heavy (-186,000 feet per second).

Hamantash are eaten on Purim which has a female heroine, and the cookie celebrating it is shaped like a delta, which Freud would say is symbolic of....but, let’s not go there. Haman, the villain of the piece, said according to the oral tradition (and eating is part of any oral tradition), “I’ll kill all the Jews or I’ll eat my hat!” We eat his hat on Purim, which is ironic. The FDA has not yet established the minimum daily requirement for irony. So on Purim we shake groggers to celebrate the misery of Hamen, as was noted by Sigmund Freud's smarter younger brother Schaden Freude. (He changed the spelling to assimilate.)

The heroine, Esther, was the winner if the Miss Persian Empire Virgin of 525 B.C.E. contest, finishing first in the beauty and talent competitions , while also being named Miss Congeniality. Her talent was baking (Hamantash?), and she is said to have remarked that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. The Mc Abees, by way of contrast, believed that the way to a man’s heart is through his sternum. Esther replaced Vashti, who was queen of the idol worshiping Persians. The Medes and the Persians had voted her off of "The Next Persian Idol," something she blamed on discrimination against her Babylonian origin, because as the old saw on ethnicity goes, "One man's Mede is another man's Persian."

One other way in which these culinary delights differ is in their plurals. The plural of “Latke” is the anglicized “latkes,” but the plural of “hamantash” requires using the Yiddish ending, thus “hamantashen.” This is an important semantic distinction, despite the opinions of anti-semantics.

In his attempt to mediate the bad blood (i.e., high LDL cholesterol readings) between Latkes and Hamantash, S.N. Minekinder noted that they were alike in many ways. Both foods celebrate famous Jewish victories (Fasts are used to recall the defeats). Neither one can be eaten with meat if either one is made with butter. Hamantashen may be made with extra virgin oil to honor Queen Esther. Hamantashen can be filled with fruit, and latkes are often topped with apple sauce (which is symbolic of apple sauce.)

Hillel is a Jewish Philosopher famous for asking questions. He asked more questions than Socrates, but because he did not have as good a publicist, he is not as well known. (“Why do you Jews always answer a question with a question?” “Why not?”) Hillel’s cookbook title is in the form of three questions: Nu? Vell? Cuisine? He was a famous after dinner speaker, and many people preferred to hear Hillel speak than eat, because they’d heard him eat. In his cookbook he tried to resolve the conflict between latkes and hamantashen, by noting that both are formed from batter, and their shared experiences of being beaten when they were just in the formative stages should lead to bonding and not discord.

Hillel asked the famous question “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” indicating his displeasure with his agent, Yitzhak “Izzy” Arigold, who he asked “If not now, when?”
Both latkes and hamantashen are high in calories and low in nutrition. The latke contains oil, which has an effect on the digestive track similar to the prune filling of the hamantashen. Compare that with the opposite effect of matzoh, which often results in the plea at the end of Passover “Let my people go!”

There is poetry in all great debates, which is, perhaps, why “vs.” is pronounced “verses.” But there comes a time for the reconciliation of the yin and the yang and this may be it, after a panel of rabbis determine whether it is Kosher to actually mix yin and yang without waiting several hours.

The reconciliation of pancake and cookie may be at hand.

James M. Rose, B.A., J.D. , Moe Stappi Fellow , and occupant of the Foalding Chair of Virtual Literature at the Donald J. Trump School of Theatrical Forensics, Entropee, Mass.