The recipe below is for Italian Hanukah fritters.  My cookbook, The Sephardic Kitchen, describes these fritters as “hundreds of years old”.

Bummuelos

1 tablespoons active dry yeast

2 cups lukewarm water

1 cup plus 1 teaspoon sugar

3 cups of unbleached all-purpose white flour

Pinch salt

1.5 tablespoons anise or fennel

1 large egg, beaten

1/2 cup honey

1 cup cold water

Peanut, sunflower, or safflower oil for deep frying

Sesame seeds for sprinkling

 

1) Dissolve yeast in water mixed with 1 teaspoon sugar.  Set aside for 10 minutes.  The yeast is ready when bubbling.

2) Mix flour, ½ cup of sugar, and anise or fennel seeds.  Add eggs and yeast, mix into dough.

3) Knead dough for 10 minutes.  Roll into a ball, and place in oiled mixing bowl and cover with damp cloth.  Set in draft-free place until doubles in size (about 1½ hours).

4) While dough is rising, prepare syrup.  Dissolve honey and remaining sugar in 1 cup of cold water in a saucepan.  Bring to a boil and cook until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.  Keep warm over a very low heat.

5) Punch dough down and knead it again.

6) Pour oil into a wok (2 inches) or deep fryer (3 inches) and heat until just before smoking.

7) Take heaping teaspoon of dough and roll into a ball.  Place in sizzling oil.  Repeat, frying a few at a time; do not crowd.  Fritters are done when they gave puffed to double original size.  Turn once during frying.  They are done when golden brown.  Drain on paper towels.

8) To serve, put 2-3 on plate, ladle a little of the syrup over them and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

 

Riddles and arithmetic puzzles were prepared for Hanukah.  Some of this may have come from the relaxing of the requirements on study during the long nights of Hanukah.  Many of these puzzles depended on word play requiring knowledge of the meaning of Hebrew letters: 

 

"There was a she-mule in my house.  I opened the door, and she became a heifer."

 

In Hebrew, the Hebrew word spelled Peh-Resh-Dalet-Heh means “she-mule”.  Remove the dalet (dalet means “door”), and you have Peh-Resh-Heh, which means “heifer”.

 

“Take thirty from thirty and the remainder is sixty."

 

In Hebrew, Shin-Lamed-Shin-Yod-Memsophit is the Hebrew word for “30”.  Remove lamed, which has a numerical value of 30 in Hebrew numerology and you have Shin-Shin-Yod-Memsophit, which means “60” in Hebrew.

 

After the Hanukah, the best known symbol of Hanukah is the dreidel, a four-sided top used in a gambling game.  The dreidel developed in northern Europe during Period.  Dreidels would be played after lighting the candles or following the evening meal.  Each player put in a coin or, more likely sweets or nuts, into the “kitty” and one spun the dreidel.  Depending on the side that came up, the spinner won, all, some, or none, or he or she had to put something in.  The Yiddish words: “Nisht” (nothing), “Gants” (all), “Halb” (half) and “Shtel Ayn” (put in) were abbreviated on the dreidel by the Hebrew letters nun, gimel, hey, and shin. A mystical explanation for the letters was found in the Hebrew “Nes gadol haya sham”, which meant “A great miracle happened there” (referring to the miracle of the oil.

 

Children were often the ones playing with the dreidels.  The custom arose of giving them small change or candy coins, which were known as “Hanukah gelt”, to gamble with.  (Gelt is the Yiddish word for money.)  Sweets were also given as gifts for the same purpose.   Prominent rabbis sometimes gave Hanukah gelt to those who visited them during that season.  In America, gelt was often chocolate disks covered with metal foil to look like money.