Happy Hannukah!

[globetrotter]

oh, and the other thing is that the real story behind hanuka is that it celebrates victory in a horrible civil war between secular jews and religious jews in hellinistic israel, in which the religious jews actually requested military assistance from rome. if you read the books of the macabees, the stories are horrible, the war was horrible, so nobody really talks about that too much.

 

[Nouveau Pauvre]

Originally Posted by Eason

You have a seder for the first night of chankuah and it just goes for ******* ages (depending on how much stuff you want to read and act out) but on the bright side you get to eat matzah with charosset and horseradish, eat some hard-boiled eggs, whatever you're really hungry from waiting so goddamn long so it all tastes good. Around half-way through, you light the middle candle and then use it to light one of the candles (+1 each additional night) and eventually you get to eat a lot of bland food but it has its charms (matza ball soup, matza with charosset, macaroons, latkes). You get given a pencil or a piece of paper each night for your gift because your parents are cheap Jews and they're saving up for you to go to Harvard law and for your sister's sweet 16 nose-job, and 7 days later you have a second seder to finish off the holiday and the matza and grape juice and horrible wine go back in the cupboard until next year. There, you've just experienced my childhood I mean chanakuah.

Chanakuah isn't really even a big Jewish holiday. Pesach is the big one, also the one with the little hat cookies filled with jam. Whoever came up with that one was a ******* genius.

Ok I LOLed in real life.

 

[eddievddr10]

it was actually greeks they were fighting

 

[Piobaire]

I once read an account of Hannukah's rise in popularity. This won't sound PC but like that's ever stopped me.

Basically, in the New World during the early/mid 20th century, some leading Jews noticed how popular this whole Santa Claus/Xmas/gift giving thing was getting and thought this might be a tempting reason for Jews to convert to being Xtian. Ad to that increasing number of Jews were also turning secular, so they needed something like Xmas, that tied secular gentiles somewhat into religion. They figured they better juice up the fun of following Judiasm, so they picked a relatively minor holiday that falls around Xmas and beefed it up to be what is now the current practices of Hannukah in the New World.

 

[mordecai]

hey guys, critique my fit pic:

 

[mordecai]

Originally Posted by Piobaire

I once read an account of Hannukah's rise in popularity. This won't sound PC but like that's ever stopped me. Basically, in the New World during the early/mid 20th century, some leading Jews noticed how popular this whole Santa Claus/Xmas/gift giving thing was getting and thought this might be a tempting reason for Jews to convert to being Xtian. Ad to that increasing number of Jews were also turning secular, so they needed something like Xmas, that tied secular gentiles somewhat into religion. They figured they better juice up the fun of following Judiasm, so they picked a relatively minor holiday that falls around Xmas and beefed it up to be what is now the current practices of Hannukah in the New World.
half right. had more to do with secular Jews wanting to participate in something American than with fears that an irreligious culture would suddenly turn to Jesus, Piob.

 

[Piobaire]

Originally Posted by mharwitt

had more to do with secular Jews wanting to participate in something American than with fears that an irreligious culture would suddenly turn to Jesus, Piob.

I said something similar to that. Drawing in the secular Jews just like Xmas drew in the secular gentiles.

Basically, it was re-branding and broadening the market, to put it in business speak.

Either way, I endorse greasy potato pancakes, even though I don't eat much potato any more

 

[mordecai]

Originally Posted by Piobaire

I said something similar to that. Drawing in the secular Jews just like Xmas drew in the secular gentiles.

Basically, it was re-branding and broadening the market, to put it in business speak.

Either way, I endorse greasy potato pancakes, even though I don't eat much potato any more

why not? try doing half potato, half apple for the mixture. you can even christmas it up a bit with some nutmeg.

 

[Piobaire]

Originally Posted by mharwitt

why not? try doing half potato, half apple for the mixture. you can even christmas it up a bit with some nutmeg.

I cut my simple carbs by about 95% last year. Doing that, and replacing with mucho veggies, is how I dropped 50#.

If I'm going to do potato, it's going to be like last Saturday when I had fingerlings in duck fat.

 

[Nil]

I have fond memories of Hannukah despite not being Jewish at all. I used to spend one night of it at my Jewish friend's house most years and it was the only religious ceremony (nominal at best though) I had ever been to until I went to a girlfriend's crazy Evangelical church when I was around 20. I'll take potato pancakes and dreidel spinning over speaking in tongues and Christian youth rock any day of the week.

 

[Piobaire]

Death before god rock.

 

[Master-Classter]

basically most jewish holidays are various historical points where someone tried to kill the jew, drive them away, assimilate them, etc and they somehow survived.

 

[globetrotter]

Originally Posted by Piobaire

I cut my simple carbs by about 95% last year. Doing that, and replacing with mucho veggies, is how I dropped 50#.

If I'm going to do potato, it's going to be like last Saturday when I had fingerlings in duck fat.

I had some potato pancakes cooked in lard a few weeks ago in germany- i can get behind that

 

[globetrotter]

Originally Posted by eddievddr10

it was actually greeks they were fighting

to be accurate, they were greek syrians - that is, the branch of the macedonian empire that was based out of syria. but even that isn't really spot on - the worst of the fighting was between hellinizised jews and non-hellinizes jews. what happened was basically an argument over whether the king of israel was going to pay tribute to the hellinized egyptians or the hellizined syrians, and that opened up a whole can of worms between the secular and the religious jews. on top of that, the romans were in the middle of kicking the greek syrians asses, so if the macabees hadn't asked for military assistance from the romans, and the greek syrians weren't occupied with fighting the romans, then things might have come out differently.

 

[EL72]

Originally Posted by Master-Classter

basically most jewish holidays are various historical points where someone tried to kill the jew, drive them away, assimilate them, etc and they somehow survived.
Short summary of all Jewish holidays: They tried to kill us; we won; let's eat! [I think I stole that from Jackie Mason].