(x-posted from The Wet Sprocket)

At a Chanukkah party with my family in Israel, my relative—a food connosieur who travels the world and eats in the finest restaurants—cleared up a major confusion of mine regarding the jelly doughnut treats.

Just last week my American friend was asking me if I grew up with Sufganiot. I wasn’t sure how to answer him. I sang about Sufganiot in my Hebrew Chanukkah songs, and I definitely had some growing up, but my family was all about latkes and we never had fried, jelly or chocolate flavored doughnuts during the holiday.

My relative, the gourmand, asked me today if I grew up with the holiday treat. I hesitated in answering him. He then told me why it wouldn’t have made sense for me to have grown up with them. “Sufganiot are an Israeli invention,” he told me as if it were a secret. Latkes are the food of the Ashkenazim that were eaten traditionally in Europe for many years. The Sephardim eat other fried doughnut-like treats, but they aren’t called Sufganiot and they’re not jelly filled. In fact, he told me, “Sephardim wouldn’t touch the modern Sufganiah.”

Turns out that the historical link between Sufganiot and Jewish history is similar to the link between Pad Thai and Thai culinary history, which is to say not really there. Pad Thai, the iconic Thai dish, was introduced during World War II by the then Prime Minister to create a national dish and bring together the peoples of his country. Similarly, Zionists who reclaimed the holiday of Chanukkah didn’t want to have any reminders of the exile. Thus, latkes were off-limits. They needed to eat something oily to properly celebrate the holiday, so they borrowed a jelly-filled doughnut pastry common in Turkey. These Zionist leaders thus popularized this national dessert to great success. Just walking through Jerusalem I was overwhelmed and tempted by every other store presenting these delicious-looking, incredibly unhealthy pastries.

The irony is that the Turks received this type of doughnut from the Greeks. In fact, these early Zionists termed the doughnut a Sufgania which comes from the Greek word, sufgan, meaning flaccid and oily. Thus, the dessert that we eat to remember our victory over Greek enemies who forced their cultural ways upon us and forced us to abandon our own rituals is Greek in origin and name.