HANNUKAH WITH BOTSTEIN
by J.P. Lawrence
Approximately 30 Bard College students braved the rain Dec. 1 to share in a traditional Hanukah meal at the house of Leon Botstein, Bard’s president.
I was one of them. I’m not Jewish, but I had a passing knowledge of Hanukah, not enough to know how to spell it, but just enough to know my way around a dreidel.
And so I went to the Hanukah meal at Botstein’s house. Botstein came to the door as I entered, found someone he knew, and began to talk classical music with them. Two rooms to the left, a crowd had gathered around a table filled with food. Conversations drifted around the room, often centering on Botstein and a flannel-wearing, salt-and-pepper bearded man: David Nelson, Bard College’s rabbi and Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion.
Nelson is a jocular man, effortlessly slipping in and out of lecture, a man who knows his history back and forth, and thus jokes about it when he can.
Hanukah, Nelson explained, came from a Jewish military victory during a conflict 2200 years ago that later received a back story wherein a jar of oil that was only supposed to last one day lasted eight days, and all this oil business is miraculous but patently made up, but nonetheless Hanukah remains one of American Judaism’s most popular holidays, mostly because of one thing: it’s a family holiday, with lots of traditions. And, like all good traditions, this involves food.
“What are those?” I asked, pointing to a plate of fried lumps.
“These are latkes,” said Jessica Wiseman, a nearby Jewish studies major. “Potato pancakes.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s applesauce.” Wiseman plopped a spoonful of applesauce on her plate and began to dip her latke into the dollop. “It’s traditional to dip your latkes in it or, in some families, sour cream. Or in my family, both.”
“My family too,” said Tadea Klein, the girl behind us in line. “Except in my family, the applesauce is homemade.”
“Sour cream and applesauce?” I said. “That sounds gross.”
“No. It’s really not,” said Klein, a senior and a creative writing major at Bard. “You have the savory flavor of the potatoes, the sweet flavor of the applesauce, and the sour flavor of the sour cream. It’s a mishmash of flavors.”
“Like chocolate bacon?”
“Yes. Except not disgusting.”
I decided my stomach was not yet so pious to combine fried potato, sour cream, and applesauce, so I picked up some rolls, or sufganiyot. Rolls, often including jelly donuts, are another of Hanukah’s traditional foods. “The link between the latkes and the jelly donuts is that they are both fried in oil,” said Nelson, “and that reminds us of the miracle of the little jar of oil.”
At the end of the table, additional calories are provided by little bags of chocolate coins, or gelt. Each participant put forward a bet of chocolate coins into the pot and spun the dreidel to find their fate. “Gimel means you mean everything, nun means you get nothing, hay means you get half, and shin means you have to put some in,” Wiseman said.
Gelt is used in conjunction with the dreidel, that little top with the symbols on it. “They’re little four-sided tops, and they were adopted and adapted by Jews in medieval Germany,” Nelson said. “It’s nominally a gambling game, usually played with pennies or peanuts.”
“Go ahead. Be sure to take the dreidels,” Botstein implored his guests. While Nelson said Botstein does not personally subscribe to religion, he can emphasize with the cause, and he opened up his home to the Jewish Student Organization, who had scheduled this dinner last summer.
After some time eating and conversing, Botstein brought the room to silence, Nelson gave a prayer, and Botstein lit a candle on the eight-wicked Menorah. Every day, the Menorah is lit, one on the first day, two on the second day, and so on.
Every day, as well, Hanukah celebrations moved to a different location: Botstein’s home, the village, the chapel, and the math department.
“This year is the first year of the three that I have been here that we’ve had all eight nights of Hanukah on campus,” said Nelson, ”and we will in fact be having Hanukah candle lightings and celebrations in a different place every single night of the holiday.
“I decided that if we did it in eight interested locations, more students would come,” said Nelson. “I just thought it would be nice to let people have a chance to host, get more students in.”
For Nelson, it’s a way to share in the identity and memories he had growing up. Nelson said he remembers eating latkes, lighting the Menorah, singing Hanukah songs as a child. “Getting Hanukah gifts was a big deal, obviously, when I was a little kid,” Nelson said. “It’s a family holiday.”
“My role in life as a rabbi is about making Jewish life and Jewish identity as attractive and fun and meaningful and enriching to life as possible,” Nelson said. “Because I believe it is to me.”
I left shortly before the singing of Hebrew songs.
“How’s the food?” A latecomer asked me as I left the house.
And as soon as I heard his feeble, whining groan, I knew that I had learned something valuable from my time at a traditional Hanukah meal: always go after the latkes first. They go fast.