Manischewitz Madness
Even though my school was eliminated from the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament in the second round, I’ve still got a slight case of bracket-fever. Taking a little inspiration from this book, I decided to try my hand at creating a Jewish food tournament. I created four Jewish food “regions” (beverages/desserts, shabbat/holidays, ashkenazi, and Israeli/sephardic) and ranked eight corresponding Jewish foods 1-8 in each region. Then I seeded them in the tournament, which I plan to play out in the next few weeks leading up to Pesach. Since I decided to go with a 32 “team” format instead of 64, there were necessarily some tough choices that had to be made (no apples & honey; only a generic “kugel” instead of a spot for both potato and noodle, etc.).
You can see the results here, and even make your own predictions. I’ll be “playing out” this battle of the Jewish food all-stars over the next few weeks, so it’s not to late to get that office pool started! Feel free to post any thoughts, suggestions, predictions (and of course, complaints) in the comments here. I’ll be sure to keep them in mind for the 2009 tourney.
5 Responses to “Manischewitz Madness”
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Leah Koenig Says:
March 31st, 2008 at 2:50 pmThis is funny Eric - but I don’t quite understand. How will you “play out” these battles? Whatever it is, I’m rooting for sufganiyot!
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Eric Schulmiller Says:
March 31st, 2008 at 7:24 pmIn my head, of course. ;-) I’ll pick a winner for each game, and we’ll see how the tournament plays out. My hope is that other people will submit their own “picks,” (by clicking on the “predict it” link at the tournament site), and then argue vociferously as to why their choices make more sense than mine. :-)
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Ruby K Says:
April 1st, 2008 at 2:44 pmOy, Eric, Eric, Eric!!!
I can’t be the only sports fan/jew food fan in the country that’s got to take umbrage at your pics/seedings
Kugels seeded as one pic? Manischevitz seeded 1? Dr Brown’s seed 8?! borsct seeded higher than knishes? OY! who are you, the bcs?
that said, love the idea.
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Eric Schulmiller Says:
April 1st, 2008 at 5:29 pmManischewitz won their conference championship (a lopsided victory against Kedem Cream Malaga), and Borscht had a higher RPI than Knishes this year. :-)
Hurry up and fill out your brackets - the tournament starts this Thursday! -
Hannah Lee Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 5:40 amDo you know, Eric, that the University of Chicago runs an annual contest between latke aficionados and hamantaschen lovers? (The latke usually wins.) They invite reputable professors– sometimes non-Jews– to pontificate on either of these two food items, which are not in their own academic specialty, and a grand time is had by all.
