Raise your (virtual) hand if you remember Uri’s pizzeria in Geula. In the mid 1980s, besides terrible pizza, it was one of the few places in Jerusalem where you could get an exotic treat – sufganiyot (fried donuts) filled with caramel instead of just plain jelly.
Sufganiyot have come a long way since then, baby. Today the simplest bakery would be ashamed not to sell at least three or four varieties besides the plain jelly classic. And we won’t even discuss the excesses of Roladin (syringes? really?) or the rumors of liver filled doughnuts in America. How did this madness start?
The word sufganiyah is a neologism coined by educator and Hebrew language revivalist David Yellin at the end of the nineteenth century, but it has deep roots. The Mishnah (codified collection of Jewish traditions and laws redacted in 200 CE) speaks about cakes called “sufganin;” Rabbi Ovadia of Bartenura explains that these are soft cakes that are like a sponge, from the word sofeg, to absorb.
Connection to Chanukah?
Fast forward almost one thousand years and the cakes seem to have taken on an oily, fried aspect and have become connected to Chanukah. Maimonides’ father wrote about how one should encourage the custom of eating sweet fried dough called sufganin, or in Arabic, sfinj, exactly what many Sephardim eat today on Chanukah.
The connection with Chanukah comes of course from the oil, meant to recollect the miracle of the oil in the Temple. But while the sufganin and the sfinj seem to have been popular with Jews, what we call a sufganiyah today, i.e., a filled doughnut, actually originated in 16th century Europe with non-Jews. Naturally they fried the pastries in lard. Jews adopted the form and changed the content, using
kosher fat of course, and giving it the name (at least in Poland) of ponchik.
Who brought these ponchiks to Israel and who Hebraicized them to sufganiyot?
The second answer is simple, David Yellin came up with the new word, based on the Mishnaic word. Chaim Nahman Bialik objected and preferred the term esfog, similar to etrog (he lost). Someone even came up with a fanciful interpretation for the name: סוף גן י-ה, (sof gan Yah), the end of God’s garden. Meaning, when God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden He gave them sufganiyot to console them. As to who brought them to Israel, both Polish and German Jews are good candidates.
What About Latkes?
Even after the sufganiyot made aliyah and got a Hebrew name, many people still continued to make latkes as their Chanukah treat (they also got a Hebrew name, levivot). What made the sufganiyah the clear winner in the Chanukah sweepstakes? Like so much in Israel, socialism. In the 1920s, the Histadrut labor union reasoned that while latkes could be made at home, sufganiyot needed the
more complicated machinery of a bakery. The more sufganiyot, the more bakery employees had work. So they campaigned to have the sufganiyah declared the national treat of Chanukah. And things just got crazier from there.
Today the statistics say that almost all Israeli Jews have at least one sufganiyah over Chanukah (I’m guessing quite a few Israeli Arabs enjoy them too).
The Argentinian olim brought the delicious concept of dulce de leche doughnuts and today sufganiyot come in almost every flavor you can imagine and some that you can’t imagine. Angel’s bakery produces twenty-five thousand a day during Chanukah and the IDF distributes almost a half a million over the holiday to soldiers.
Sufganiyot have traveled to America and American doughnuts have come here. So indulge at least once over Chanukah and thank the Histadrut. Just don’t think about the calories.
Shulie Mishkin is a tour guide and educator in Israel. She can be reached for tours, lectures or to share sufganiyot at [email protected]
