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The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate

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Forget the bibles, zohar, and books of kabbalah; bypass Roth and Ozick; for this is the most important Jewish book in 2005, and I have waited over 25 years for its release. I first became an addict of the Great Latke-Hamantash debates in the 1970's. The debate is the sort of event that makes you want to become a Hillel Program Director. In 1946, a debate was started each November at the University of Chicago as a way to foster a sense of community among Jewish students and faculty members, as the December holidays approached. The debates were farces; they attracted the top Jewish professors and students, Nobel laureates, university presidents, and notable scholars together to debate whether the potato pancake or the triangular Purim pastry is the worthier food. They applied their fields of study to these symbolic Jewish foods.

Professor Marvin Mirsky observed that the roundness of the latke suggested Plato's circle of perfection and its flatness emphasized Plato's ultimate truth. Professor Lawrence Sherman reminded his audience that in Romeo and Juliet, "Juliet was a Capulatke, Romeo a Hamantashague" He also showed that the Merchant of Venice had hidden meanings, that Shakespeare was a kosher baker, and Juliet's moon was actually "mohn."

This book collects the best of the debates. It includes Martha Nussbaum's paean to both foods-in the style of Hecuba's Lament-to Nobel laureate Leon Lederman's proclamation on the union of the celebrated dyad. The latke and the hamantash are here revealed as playing a critical role in everything from Chinese history to the Renaissance, the works of Jane Austen to constitutional law. One law professor stunned the audience by breaking the rules, and defending the knish. One professor showed that Jewish foods influenced the roots of rock and roll, including "Good challeh, miss molly" and "Borsht Gudonov"; while another two teachers focused on Darwin and the evolution of bagels, latkes, and hamantaschen. During one satirical symposium in 1961, the Historian Bernard Weisberger discussed the latke in the context of original frontier (frying pan) American history, freedom, and manifest destiny (the latke expands in the oil). The late Allan Bloom explored the foundation of the foods in manna, and expounded on the Jewish Canon, Hegel, Marx, and the latke as Freudan round male thesis, hamantasch as female triad antithesis. Was `Love and Latkes' the sequel to `Pride and Prejudice'? Eminent philosopher and humorist Ted Cohen, supplies a wry foreword and debate, and anthropologist Ruth Fredman Cernea provides a larger context with her overview of the Jewish holidays, recipes, and a glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew terms, making the book accessible even to the uninitiated.

You'll find here mock-serious scholarly disquisitions, from world-renowned experts, on the question of whether a latke or a hamantash is the better. These are, delightfully, people making fun of themselves and their institutions as well. If you're Jewish, buy this book. If you aren't, but have any contact with university/intellectual disquisition, buy this book. But don't read it in a place where you'll cause a disturbance by laughing. The differentiation between the scientific approach and that of the humanities alone is worth the price of the book, as is the exploration of the career of Oliver Wendell Holmes as a Chasidic scholar. And, by all means, don't skip 'Latkes/Hamantashen: a Post-Structural Feminist Critique', quoting Emma Goldman on the subject...

This is one of the funniest and most entertaining books I've ever read. This started at the University of Chicago in 1946 as a unique fundraiser for the Hillel. They invited 2 (at first Jewish) professors to debate which is better/first/most important, using their discipline as the basis of the presentation. What started in a small room on campus is now presented in the largest autitroriam on campus, and non-Jewish professors have now also partitipcated in this. This book is a collection of the best of these presented debates. It is an easy read that can be picked up without loosing the "story". I laughed out loud with almost every entry. It is a favorite Chanukkah gift.

A bunch of academics at the University of Chicago debating the superiority of latkes vs. hamantashen, parodying whatever academic discipline they are in. Some of the debaters' points are quite funny.