My cousin Margy wrote "Making Hanukkah a Major Production," the piece here below, about our aunt almost 22 years ago. Even though I was five when she wrote it, it's pretty much exactly how I remember her. We decided to post it here so that our family and friends would have a chance to read it.
December 06, 1990|MARGY ROCHLIN | Rochlin is a frequent contributor to the Food Section.
One afternoon in 1941, my Aunt Miriam immigrated to the United States, escaping the Nazi invasion of her temporary home in Rotterdam, Holland, by a single day. She arrived at Ellis Island, at the age of 20, with her mother and brother--her father had already relocated from their home in Berlin to New York City. But it was only Aunt Miriam who was detained and then roughly interrogated for seven long days. (The problem had something to do with her not qualifying for political asylum because of her age.) When things were finally straightened out, though, and her mother came to fetch her, Aunt Miriam wasn't as happy to leave as she might have been.
During the week, she had taken up with a handsome Lithuanian man and the
night of her release coincided with the Passover dance. "What can I say?" she
explained when I recently asked her about the experience. "I was very busy while
I was there. I was a good dancer and not the quietest violet."
I retell this anecdote so that you don't underestimate how much my Aunt Miriam loves the Jewish holidays. I can't remember the first time our family attended one of her Hanukkah parties. But one of my earliest recollections is of my brothers and sisters and I huddled on the dark doorstep of Aunt Miriam's and Uncle Sidney's Los Feliz home and the look of extreme excitement on Aunt Miriam's face when she'd fling open the door.
She'd be wearing a bright Bedouin wedding dress of embroidered silk and her wrists would be rattling with silver slave bracelets. Inside, there would be 40 or so guests, people speaking so many foreign languages that it sounded like a cocktail party at a Trilateral Commission. At this point, a stranger to her home might have wondered if something theatrical was about to happen. And, of course, it was.
Her dramatic flair might have been inherited from her father, an Orthodox rabbi who also wrote secular plays on subjects such as the unfortunate romantic denouement of Anne Boleyn. From the time Aunt Miriam was very young, her creative expression helped reshape the traditional format of her family's religious celebrations. Consider her younger brother Bernie's Bar Mitzvah: Aunt Miriam co-wrote and performed a bloody-but-tragic operetta based on a fictional character she invented named Mondi the Convict.
It only makes sense that Hanukkah would represent to her some kind of free-floating proscenium upon which to stage her alternative theater projects. I could tell you about the Super-8 movies she has scripted and produced, short films with serpentine plot lines and titles like "The Case of the Missing Hanukkah Gelt." There was also the year that she thumb-tacked a white bedsheet on the archway between the living room and the dining room and had her husband, children and grandchildren act out, in back-lit silhouette, the saga of the Maccabees re-interpreted as a Western adventure complete with prop 10-gallon hats and blazing six-guns. Aunt Miriam narrated the action in rhyming verse while the theme song from "Bonanza" blared in the background. At some point, usually toward the end of the evening, she performed an improvised modern dance to Israeli folk music.
After the entertainment came the food. The interesting thing about what you'll find to eat at a Hanukkah party is that the menu is different from house to house. I've eaten Polish latkes, which are more like flapjacks and made without any potatoes at all. In "The Jewish Festival Cookbook," the authors talk about Portuguese cheese latkes , which are sprinkled with olive oil to symbolize the ancient miracle of lights. Once, while attending a Hanukkah function hosted by Israelis, out came a plate of freshly made jelly doughnuts, a sight which surprised me until someone explained that hot fruit fritters are what you serve at Hanukkah parties in the Land of Milk and Honey.
Unlike the dishes at other Jewish holidays whose ingredients are dictated by religious dietary laws, Hanukkah food is all about custom and taste-memory, about the way ethnicity takes over in the kitchen at holiday time. Because Aunt Miriam is from Germany she follows her grandmother's Rhineland latke recipe, which requires nothing more than eggs, grated potatoes, and a little salt and pepper. Alongside the platters and platters of potato pancakes--she makes about 200 of them--are bowls of sour cream and homemade applesauce. The cranberry sauce is her domesticated version of preiselbeeren sauce, a puree made from tiny berries that she's only seen in Germany.
Even as a child I understood that Hanukkah was one of those rare times when dessert can be consumed at any stage of the meal and where quantity goes unchecked. This knowledge held even more significance at Aunt Miriam's house: Sweets are where she truly excels. Her brownies are so dark with chocolate they make your heartbeat quicken, her lattice-topped mock Linzer torte are flaky isosceles triangles smeared with raspberry jam.
If Aunt Miriam's Hanukkah spreads are anything, they are reliable. It's reassuring to know that every year you'll find the exact same items on the dining room buffet table. This means that there will always be meringue kisses, sweet cookies made from egg whites and sugar that look like huge white cosmetic puffs, only marked with crackly brown striations where the vanilla extract bubbled out while cooking.
Through the years, I have often met non-Jewish guests there, people for whom my Aunt Miriam's party is their first encounter with Hanukkah. And I've often thought about how her individualized take on the festivities might leave the kind of indelible impression that other hosts might find hard to compete with.
Perhaps next year these new Hanukkah initiates will go to someone else's house and encounter a roomful of Jews quietly lighting the menorah and intoning the ancient blessing over the candles with a good deal more piety than my relatives could muster. Confusion will set in as they look around for the crunchy meringue kisses. They'll check and recheck their wristwatches, hoping that show time will begin soon. And they will leave wondering why the evening didn't close as it had the year before at Aunt Miriam's: with a loosely formed circle of people clapping their hands wildly, while the lady of the house danced alone in the middle, smiling her big, happy smile and shaking it like there was no tomorrow.
I retell this anecdote so that you don't underestimate how much my Aunt Miriam loves the Jewish holidays. I can't remember the first time our family attended one of her Hanukkah parties. But one of my earliest recollections is of my brothers and sisters and I huddled on the dark doorstep of Aunt Miriam's and Uncle Sidney's Los Feliz home and the look of extreme excitement on Aunt Miriam's face when she'd fling open the door.
She'd be wearing a bright Bedouin wedding dress of embroidered silk and her wrists would be rattling with silver slave bracelets. Inside, there would be 40 or so guests, people speaking so many foreign languages that it sounded like a cocktail party at a Trilateral Commission. At this point, a stranger to her home might have wondered if something theatrical was about to happen. And, of course, it was.
Her dramatic flair might have been inherited from her father, an Orthodox rabbi who also wrote secular plays on subjects such as the unfortunate romantic denouement of Anne Boleyn. From the time Aunt Miriam was very young, her creative expression helped reshape the traditional format of her family's religious celebrations. Consider her younger brother Bernie's Bar Mitzvah: Aunt Miriam co-wrote and performed a bloody-but-tragic operetta based on a fictional character she invented named Mondi the Convict.
It only makes sense that Hanukkah would represent to her some kind of free-floating proscenium upon which to stage her alternative theater projects. I could tell you about the Super-8 movies she has scripted and produced, short films with serpentine plot lines and titles like "The Case of the Missing Hanukkah Gelt." There was also the year that she thumb-tacked a white bedsheet on the archway between the living room and the dining room and had her husband, children and grandchildren act out, in back-lit silhouette, the saga of the Maccabees re-interpreted as a Western adventure complete with prop 10-gallon hats and blazing six-guns. Aunt Miriam narrated the action in rhyming verse while the theme song from "Bonanza" blared in the background. At some point, usually toward the end of the evening, she performed an improvised modern dance to Israeli folk music.
After the entertainment came the food. The interesting thing about what you'll find to eat at a Hanukkah party is that the menu is different from house to house. I've eaten Polish latkes, which are more like flapjacks and made without any potatoes at all. In "The Jewish Festival Cookbook," the authors talk about Portuguese cheese latkes , which are sprinkled with olive oil to symbolize the ancient miracle of lights. Once, while attending a Hanukkah function hosted by Israelis, out came a plate of freshly made jelly doughnuts, a sight which surprised me until someone explained that hot fruit fritters are what you serve at Hanukkah parties in the Land of Milk and Honey.
Unlike the dishes at other Jewish holidays whose ingredients are dictated by religious dietary laws, Hanukkah food is all about custom and taste-memory, about the way ethnicity takes over in the kitchen at holiday time. Because Aunt Miriam is from Germany she follows her grandmother's Rhineland latke recipe, which requires nothing more than eggs, grated potatoes, and a little salt and pepper. Alongside the platters and platters of potato pancakes--she makes about 200 of them--are bowls of sour cream and homemade applesauce. The cranberry sauce is her domesticated version of preiselbeeren sauce, a puree made from tiny berries that she's only seen in Germany.
Even as a child I understood that Hanukkah was one of those rare times when dessert can be consumed at any stage of the meal and where quantity goes unchecked. This knowledge held even more significance at Aunt Miriam's house: Sweets are where she truly excels. Her brownies are so dark with chocolate they make your heartbeat quicken, her lattice-topped mock Linzer torte are flaky isosceles triangles smeared with raspberry jam.
If Aunt Miriam's Hanukkah spreads are anything, they are reliable. It's reassuring to know that every year you'll find the exact same items on the dining room buffet table. This means that there will always be meringue kisses, sweet cookies made from egg whites and sugar that look like huge white cosmetic puffs, only marked with crackly brown striations where the vanilla extract bubbled out while cooking.
Through the years, I have often met non-Jewish guests there, people for whom my Aunt Miriam's party is their first encounter with Hanukkah. And I've often thought about how her individualized take on the festivities might leave the kind of indelible impression that other hosts might find hard to compete with.
Perhaps next year these new Hanukkah initiates will go to someone else's house and encounter a roomful of Jews quietly lighting the menorah and intoning the ancient blessing over the candles with a good deal more piety than my relatives could muster. Confusion will set in as they look around for the crunchy meringue kisses. They'll check and recheck their wristwatches, hoping that show time will begin soon. And they will leave wondering why the evening didn't close as it had the year before at Aunt Miriam's: with a loosely formed circle of people clapping their hands wildly, while the lady of the house danced alone in the middle, smiling her big, happy smile and shaking it like there was no tomorrow.
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