Synopses & Reviews
Creation versus evolution. Nature versus nurture. Free will versus determinism. Every
November at the University of Chicago, the best minds in the world come together to consider the question that ranks with these as one of the most enduring of human history: latke or hamantash? This great latke-hamantash debate, occurring every year for the past six decades, brings Nobel laureates, university presidents, and notable scholars together to debate whether the potato pancake or the triangular Purim pastry is in fact the worthier food.
What began as an informal gathering is now an institution that has been replicated on campuses nationwide. Highly absurd yet deeply serious, the annual debate is an
opportunity for both ethnic celebration and academic farce. In poetry, essays, jokes, and
revisionist histories, members of elite American academies attack the latke-versus-hamantash question with intellectual panache and an unerring sense of humor, if not chutzpah. The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate is the first collection of the best of these performances, from Martha Nussbaums paean to both foods—in the style of Hecubas Lament—to Nobel laureate Leon Ledermans proclamation on the union of the celebrated dyad. The latke and the hamantash are here revealed as playing a critical role in everything from Chinese history to the Renaissance, the works of Jane Austen to constitutional law.
Eminent philosopher and humorist Ted Cohen supplies a wry foreword, while anthropologist Ruth Fredman Cernea provides a historical and social context as well as an overview of the Jewish holidays, recipes, and a glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew terms, making the book accessible even to the uninitiated. The University of Chicago may have split the atom in 1942, but its still working on the equally significant issue of the latke versus the hamantash.
Review
“Every November, the University of Chicago celebrates the coming holiday season with a take-no-prisoners, academic smackdown. For an entire evening, disciplines are attached and defended, the political becomes personal and a particular issue is argued with a fervor not seen since Nikita Khrushchev banged his shoe at the United Nations. . . . The issue: the relative merits of the latke and the hamantash. . . . This is a book that will make your mouth water and your sides shake. Letting down their proverbial hair, professors, Nobel Laureates and university presidents all take a turn at the podium, and the results are hilarious."
Jewish Chronicle (London)
Review
“This work captures the wistful magic of a vehicle that classically symbolizes the blossoming of Jewish wit and wisdom in the intellectual cauldron of the university. The latke-hamantash debate represents how timeless Jewish ideas and ideals can find expression on campus, marrying Western thought with Jewish humor, history, and philosophy in a distinct concoction that reaches us all.”--Richard M. Joel, President, Yeshiva University
Richard M. Joel
Review
“Lincoln-Douglas, Kennedy-Nixon, Latke-Hamantash: the great tradition of American public oratory reaches a comic peak with the annual exchanges at the University of Chicago debating the merits of greasy potato pancakes versus heavy, prune-filled triangular pastries. No funnier intellectual tradition exists than these debates; argued by scholars from Allan Bloom to Martha Nussbaum, the debates here chronicled will cause almost as much of a belly ache (from laughter) as eating latkes or hamantashen.”
Sander L. Gilman, author of Jewish Frontiers
Review
"As if we didn't have enough on our plates, here's something new to argue about. . . . To have to pick between sweet and savory, round and triangular, latke and hamantash. How to choose? . . . Thank goodness one of our great universities—Chicago, no less—is on the case. For more than 60 years, it has staged an annual latke-hamantash debate. . . . So, is this book funny? Of course it's funny, even laugh-out-loud funny. It's Mickey Katz in academic drag, Borscht Belt with a PhD." Davd Kaufmann
Review
"Esoteric yes, but a real hoot." Forward
Review
“Oy! What can I tell you? You want to revel in a festival of intellectual Jewish humor, even if youre a goy like me? Especially if youre a goy? So why dont you buy this book and curl up in front of a fireplace and laugh yourself sick!”--Father Andrew M. Greeley
Father Andrew M. Greeley
Review
“For six decades, some of the finest Jewish minds in America have broken their wits on the ultimate question. Which is superior: the oily potato pancake we consume on Chanucah, or the triangular prune- or poppy-filled Purim pastry?”
Chicago Tribune
Synopsis
Creation versus evolution. Nature versus nurture. Free will versus determinism. Every November at the University of Chicago, the best minds in the world consider the question that ranks with these as one of the most enduring of human history: latke or hamantash? This great latke-hamantash debate, occurring every year for the past six decades, brings Nobel laureates, university presidents, and notable scholars together to debate whether the potato pancake or the triangular Purim pastry is in fact the worthier food. What began as an informal gathering is now an institution that has been replicated on campuses nationwide. Highly absurd yet deeply serious, the annual debate is anopportunity for both ethnic celebration and academic farce. In poetry, essays, jokes, and revisionist histories, members of elite American academies attack the latke-versus-hamantash question with intellectual panache and an unerring sense of humor, if not chutzpah. The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate is the first collection of the best of these performances, from Martha Nussbaum's paean to both foods—in the style of Hecuba's Lament—to Nobel laureate Leon Lederman's proclamation on the union of the celebrated dyad. The latke and the hamantash are here revealed as playing a critical role in everything from Chinese history to the Renaissance, the works of Jane Austen to constitutional law. Eminent philosopher and humorist Ted Cohen supplies a wry foreword, and anthropologist Ruth Fredman Cernea provides a larger context with her overview of the Jewish holidays, recipes, and a glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew terms, making the book accessible even to the uninitiated. The University of Chicago may have split the atom in 1942, but it's still working on the equally significant issue of the latke versus the hamantash.
About the Author
Ted Cohen (1939-2014) was a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago from 1967 until his death. He was the auhor of Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters and Thinking of Others: On the Talent for Metaphor and co-editor of Essays in Kant's Aesthetics and Pursuits of Reason: Essays in Honor of Stanley Cavell.
Table of Contents
Foreword, by Ted Cohen
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Food for Academic and Gastric Digestion
Round One - Metahamantashen; or, Shooting Off the Can(n)on
Freedom, Latkes, and American Letters: An Original Contribution to Knowledge
Bernard A. Weisberger
Restoring the Jewish Canon
Allan Bloom
Consolations of the Latke
Ted Cohen
The Hamantash in Shakespeare
Lawrence Sherman
Jane Austens Love and Latkes
Stuart Tave
The Latkes Role in the Renaissance
Hanna Holborn Gray
The Approach through Bibliography
Leon Carnovsky
Léternel retour: The Dichotomy of Latke-Hamantash in Old and New French
Peter F. Dembowski
The Apotheosis of the Latke: A Philosophical Analysis
Alan Gewirth
Noshes
"David Malament, Marvin Mirsky, Steven Watter, Harold Wechsler
Round Two - POTatoes, Rockin Latkes, and Another Essence-ial Soul Food
The Latke vs. the Hamantash in an Age of (M)oral Crisis
Herbert C. Kelman
Influences of Latkes, Hamantashen, and Jewish Cooking in General on the Roots of Rock 'n
Roll
William Meadow
The Fundamental Jewish Cuisine
Paul Root Wolpe
Noshes
Steven Watter, Godfrey S. Getz, Israel N. Herstein, Murray H. Loew
Round Three - Accentuate the Positivists
The Voyage on the Bagel: In Honor of the Darwin Centennial
Elihu Katz and Jacob J. Feldman
The Latke and the Hamantash at the Fifty-Yard Line
Milton Friedman
Hamantash, Bagel, or Latke: Who Has the Power?
Shalom Schwartz
The Latke, the Hamantash, the Common Market, and Creativity
Jacob Getzels
Noshes
Stephen Z. Cohen, Elihu Katz, Nancy L. Stein, Jacob Getzels, John Laster
Round Four - Luminous, Luscious Latkes; Bewitching, Beguiling Hamantashen Ode to the Latke
Edward Stankiewicz
The Ineffable Allure of Hamantashen
Barbara Maria Stafford
Bull's Homage to a Latke: An Acrostic
Simon Hellerstein
Noshes
Ralph Marcus, Roger Weiss
Round Five - Combine and Deconstruct All Ingredients
Madeleine, Oh, Madeleine; or, Meditation on Short, Plump Pastries
Françoise Meltzer
The Hermeneutics of the Hamantash
Emilie S. Passow
Noshes
Marianne H. Whatley, Hasia Diner
Round Six - Semiotics and Anti-Semiotics
Heartburn as a Cultural System
Michael Silverstein
Latke vs. Hamantash: A Feminist Critique
Judith Shapiro
Latke vs. Hamantash: A Materialist-Feminist Analysis; A Reply to Judith Shapiro
Robin Leidner
Latkes and Hamantashen as Dominant Symbols in Jewish Critical Thought
Marvin Mirsky
The Hamantash vs. the Latke: An Archetypal Study
Eugene Goodheart
Noshes
Zalman Usiskin, Harry Harootunian, Howard Aronson, Bernard S. Cohn, Ralph W. Nicholas
Round Seven - Shrouded in Mystery: Spinning Latkes and Neutrinos
From Cain to Quincy: Jewish Foods as Weapons of Violence
Robert Kirschner
A New Page in the History of Atomic Physics
Jerrold M. Sadock
The Scientific Method and the Latke-Hamantash Issue
Edward W. Kolb
Paired Matter, Edible and Inedible
Leon M. Lederman
Noshes
Josef Stern, Morrel H. Cohen, Isaac Abella
Round Eight - Appealing to a Higher Authority
The Rights and Wrongs of Latkes
Geoffrey R. Stone
The Bioethical Implications of the Latke-Hamantash Debate; or, Small Fry, Deep Fry, in Your Eye, Northrop Frye
John D. Lantos
Noshes
Harry Kalven, Jr., Philip Gossett
Round Nine - Mythdefying Origins
Euripides' The Cooks of Troy: Hecuba's Lament
Martha C. Nussbaum
The Secret History of the Hamantash in China
Judith Zeitlin
The Hamantash and the Foundation of Civilization; or, The Edible Triangle, the Oedipal Triangle, and the Interpretation of History
Harold T. Shapiro
The Archetypal Hamantash: A Feminist Mythology; An Exercise in the History of Religious Methodology
Wendy Doniger
Noshes
Tom Mitchell, Bernard S. Silberman, Richard Lashof, Sol Tax
Try 'em, You'll Like 'em: Lovely, Luscious Latkes and Hamantashen Fit for an Ex-Queen
Glossary
List of Contributors