Hanukkah celebrates the recovery of Jerusalem and rededication (chanukkah) of the Temple in 164 BC. The Maccabees, priests who also served as secular rulers, discovered that the holy oil had been profaned, with only enough pure oil left for one day. It would take a week to make more, but the lamp stayed lit until they had more. The story of the lamp is told in the Talmud, not in the Book of Maccabees, but it seems that the festival dates back to Jesus’ time (John 10:22)—usually translated “Feast of Dedication” in English Bibles—and certainly took place in winter. The holiday was known as “Lights” to Josephus (roughly 90 AD), so the lamps were already part of it. It was certainly celebrated during the Middle Ages and was roughly much as it is today, with one important change from the past.
In the Talmud, directions are to celebrate the holiday by lighting at least one candle for each of eight nights, outdoors. More lamps or candles could be lit, but it was specifically to be a public display. At least by the 11th century, Jews in Europe were allowed to move the lights indoors for privacy and safety, just as they were also permitted not to keep a mezuzah on a front door if the Gentiles might steal it or harass them. The light had to be near the door in any case, with different traditions as to which side of the door and in what order the candles should be lit.
What did the lights look like? Menorahs seem to be the norm, although the very poor might have made do with one candle. Some manuscripts give us paintings of splendid menorahs; the most famous is one in the Rothschild Pentateuch.
As Hanukkah observance evolved, medieval Jews included the story of Judith with the story of the Maccabees. Judith was a beautiful widow who seduced and beheaded the Assyrian general who had invaded Israel. In the seduction story, she gave him milk or cheese to make him thirsty, and then sleepy, so commemorating her role suggested dairy products. But the story of the miraculous lights suggested oil, which became the dominant theme for Hanukkah food.
We have rabbinical records to thank for what we know about Hanukkah food, since there was a persistent question: which blessing should be used for a food? The rituals for bread and general grain products were specific, so what constituted bread? The medieval Hanukkah food options were all discussed in one or another book, giving us the names and often the descriptions of many foods. (I am indebted for this section to a 2010 paper by Susan Weingarten of Tel Aviv University.)
The three main Hanukkah breads were levivot, sufganin, and isqaritin. They did not involve potatoes as modern latkes do, and probably all were more or less made with wheat flour. They all were sweetened with honey, and most of them were probably fried. Rashi, a famous rabbi in Troyes, France explained levivot as flour mixed with boiling water, then fried. A medieval poem that describes Hanukkah food suggests they are most like pancakes or flatbread.
“Isqaritin” seems to be borrowed from Greek escharites, cakes baked on the hearth, then dipped or soaked in honey. Egyptian and Yemenite Jews make zalabiya, fried dough balls soaked in honey. A similar recipe is in the 10th century al-Warraq cookbook from Baghdad.
Sufganin now refers in modern Hebrew only to jelly doughnuts, but its original range was wider. A 14th century rabbi in Perpignan (now in France, then in the Kingdom of Aragon) described two kinds of dough, one dry enough to be rolled, perhaps like pasta, the other runny like pancake batter. The drier dough product may have been like beignets, the runnier one like crepes. A rabbi in northern France, around the same time, compared some sufganin to “fritols” and “rissols.” Fritelle means deep-fried dough, and a rissole is pasta wrapped around something. The medieval rissole recipe given in the famous 14-century housekeeping book Le Ménagier de Paris specifies stuffing rissoles with dried fruit, nuts, and spices. Another 14th century German rabbi speaks of khromazil, perhaps something like fritters (now made with matzah meal).
In 14-century Seville, the rabbi specified that sufganin meant al isfenj, which meant “sponge” in Arabic. In Moroccan Jewish cooking, sfenj is the traditional Hanukkah dessert. It’s also an ordinary doughnut, often eaten for breakfast, and it can be made with an egg in the center. In the Wikipedia article on sfenj, I learned that the Israeli labor union lobbied to make jelly-filled European doughnuts the official “Sufganiyot” of Hanukkah: because it’s really, really hard to make them at home. Sfenj is much simpler.
Boiled “breads,” that is, what we’d call noodles or pasta, also showed up in the medieval Hanukkah files. As far back as the 11th century, rabbis were arguing about whether “vermicelli” (in various outlandish medieval spellings, but all coming from Latin vermiculi “little worms”) were to be considered bread or not. Rashi (of Troyes) argued that vermiseles are boiled, not baked, so they are not bread. Similarly, a form of ravioli qualified as sufganin in 12th-century Vienna. The Sefer ha’Agur (15th century Germany) speaks of both aravoli and calzoli (calzones) as sufganin. And from what we can tell of contemporary recipes, they could be stuffed with either meat or cheese, either savory or sweet. The 13th-century book Or Zaru’a even speaks of halazzani: lasagna. A 14th-century cookbook describes layering lasagna not with tomato sauce or even meat, but with spices (if you’re making it for Hanukkah, don’t forget honey and maybe some cheese for Judith).
There are even medieval rabbinical sources discussing waffles. Is it bread if it’s cooked between two irons heated on the fire? So we can add waffles and pizzelles to the medieval Hanukkah list. But not dreidels or gifts, both of which seem to have developed later under the influence of Christmas.
Thanks again to Susan Weingarten for the very detailed food information.