Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Seventh- and eighth-graders from South Peninsula Hebrew Day School, including Ittai Geiger, 13, left, made Sufganiot (jelly donuts) to celebrate Hanukkah.
Students make jelly donuts for Hanukkah celebration
By Amy Jenkins
To celebrate Hanukkah, students at South Peninsula Hebrew Day School got their hands dirty. On Dec. 10, the day after Hanukkah began, seventh- and eighth-graders got a lesson in donut making and a history lesson about the miracle of Hanukkah.
Students gathered in the school kitchen and were broken up into three groups to perform different tasks. Students were instructed how to make the dough, roll it and fill it with strawberry jam.
According to Rochie Spira, the Judaic studies teacher for grades six through eight, making Sufganiyot (jelly donuts) is an Israeli tradition that is carried on in America as a remembrance of the oil miracle.
"The holiday celebrates the victory over the Greeks," Spira says. "Also the return to religious practices."
She says the holiday commemorates a time when the Greek Empire controlled Israel, instituted laws and prohibited Jews from praying, observing the Sabbath or performing circumcisions. They also smashed everything in the temple, including a menorah and the oil that was stamped with the seal of the head priest. When the Jews cleaned up the temple and resumed practicing their customs and rituals, they found that there was only one flask of the highest quality oil that was stamped with the seal. The oil in the flask miraculously burned for eight days, she says.
Today, to celebrate the holiday, Jews light the menorah in their house and put it by the window to publicize the miracle, Spira says. She adds they also make foods with oil to remember the oil miracle, such as potato pancakes and donuts.
Spira asked her students, "Why do we celebrate for eight days if there was enough oil to last for one day naturally?"
Her answer was, "We celebrate the extra day to acknowledge that God is the creator and makes things happen. We shouldn't take things for granted, and we should really be thankful for everything around us."
The students mixed rice milk, margarine, yeast, sugar, salt, lemon rind, vanilla and flour in a mixing bowl, kneaded it with flour, and put it in a bowl with oil to let it rise. They then put jam inside the dough, cut out donut shapes, let them rise again and then fried them.
The students sold the donuts at lunchtime and after school, and all the profits will go toward the yearbook as well as an eighth-grade class trip at the end of the year. Spira says the class used to go to Israel each year, but has opted for Washington, D.C., in the past couple of years. She said they aren't sure where they will go this year.
Some of the students were familiar with making the donuts. Eighth-grader Ronit Mahpour says she has made the donuts in summer camp and that it is fun.
"We do this at home and used to make them at my old school every year," says Karen Eyal, whose mother, Tzippy, taught the students the recipe.
The history lesson was familiar to some students as well. Anna Baryudin, 13, says that she has heard the lesson about the oil miracle since she was small. At the age of 8 she moved with her parents from Russia to Israel, then to America.
"I didn't know about Israel until a month before I moved there," she says. "For Hanukkah I get together with family, eat and get presents."
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
