Here we are in todays culinary and weight conscious, low fat, obsessively oil free life . . . and what comes along and bursts our lifestyle? Olive oil.
No, I dont mean Popeye the Sailors girl, I mean. . . Chanukah!
Its all about the olive. Olive oil has a starring role in the story, that famous little, single cruse of oil that was found still pure for burning the lamp in the Temple.
That tiny tin of possibility made it all possible and shockingly, miraculously, burned for not one, but eight straight days.
Not only do we Jews not stay away from oil, not only do we accept the oil, we celebrate it. Contrarians, if ever there were any! Yeah, that fluid of fluids that gets such a bad rap, that fluid that is practically excommunicated from our life and our foods why, we embrace it.
And for good reason! If you ask me, that fragrant, fruity olive oil is a magic elixir. For years I have called it, like the Italians do, olio doliva. Its such a wonderful, green and golden essence, sometimes I think I should bottle it in an old fashioned sprayer perfume bottle, or should touch a drop of this sheen on warm fingertips and dab it on my wrists and the nape of my neck. Who needs perfume, that invisible bouquet of flowers we women carry with us, when you can have olive oil?
It is the featured ingredient in Chanukahs holiday foods. Rabbinically mandated! Sizzling golden potato latkes, rows upon rows lining glass bake shop windows of little puffed pillows of sufganiot pastries, deep fried and rolled, cloaked and sprinkled in sugar and, depending on your tradition, so many other gloriously oil-permeated foods.
Olive oil is the oil of oils. The champagne, if you will. Indeed, it is almost like a fine wine. Like wine, it is an oil that is produced from a fruit. Like wine, it is pressed and refined, and takes on the flavor of the environment and climate of those green-pearlized grey, almost silvery olive tree groves.
It is aged and graded. Cold pressed, extra virgin, is the best.
It is a symbol, too. Those tiny, delicate green-platinum leaves on a branch in the mouth of a winged dove. That fluid rising above all other fluids, permeating any material it comes in contact with. Transcends, yet permeates. It is that pach shemen (cruse of oil) of hope that can carry you through a dark time, even when you think you have run out of hope or light.
So heres to eight nights of lights and delights! Whatever you break out or cook up for Chanukah celebration with family or friends, be they punchkas, munchkas, whatever the Europeans call those sufganiot, be it the latke, that hearty and heavenly crisp potato or any other kind, beet or apple, sweet potato or root vegetable, enjoy! And remember, its all in the oil . . .
Warmly wishing you all, dear readers, a very happy Chanukah!
Shabbat Shalom and Chanukah Sameach.
