The history of levivot (latkes)

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Hanukkah is just around the corner and it’s hard to imagine a Jewish celebration without a large platter piled with potato latkes, levivot in Hebrew, as a centerpiece. 

But when did the custom of eating latkes for Hanukkah begin? 

To answer that we first need to establish what levivot or latkes really are.

Levivot got their first biblical mention in the book of Shmuel II, chapter 13, in the horrible story of Amnon, son of Kind David, who raped Tamar, his half sister. Amnon asked Tamar to come over and cook him two levivot (dumplings, in the English translation). “And she took the dough, and kneaded it, and she prepared the dumplings before his eyes, and she cooked the dumplings…..And she took the pan and poured [them out] before him.”

Rashi’s 11th century commentary explains that Tamar “made a paste of flour [or farina,] mixed it first in boiling water, and afterwords in oil.” 

Indeed, the first levivot were made of wheat, specifically buckwheat or rye. Buckwheat latkes, known as gretchenes, are still common in France, as Joan Nathan notes in her book Quiches, Kugels and Couscous, My Search for Jewish Cooking in France (Knopf, 2010). In the early years of the state of Israel, immigrants from France, Poland and Russia would serve these buckwheat latkes during Hanukkah, according to Molly Bar David’s Folkloric Cookbook (in Hebrew, Bar Daviv, 1964), although her version is closer to today’s blini or pancake, cooked on an oiled pan rather than fried in oil.

The biblical term levivot makes its next appearance in the context of Hanukkah in Medieval Provence, France. 

Kalonymos ben Kalonymos, a rabbi from Arles, writes in his 1332 satirical poem Evan Bohan  about the variety of dishes served at a Hanukkah celebration, including levivot.

“In the ninth month, in Kislev…

in order to honor Mattityah ben Yoḥanan the renowned

and the Ḥasmoneans,

the important women should gather

knowledgeable about making food [biryah] and cooking levivot,

large and round, the whole size of the frying pan,

and their appearance good [tovyani] and ruddy [argamani],

like the appearance of the Rainbow.”

Kalonymos’s levivot are large, the size of the frying pan, and reddish in color, meaning they were probably still made of flour.

The 1402 Megilat Yehudit from Provence added more details. It tells the story, often recited in Hanukkah, of Judith, the beautiful widow who had saved her people from the Assyrian general Holofernes. In her book, Medieval Hanukkah Traditions: Jewish Festive Foods in their European Contexts, Susan Weingarten writes that in this 1402 version, Judith serves the enemy general  levivot (Hebrew for latkes) made with cheese. “She said to her maid: ‘Cook me two pancakes so I can eat at your hands.’” She salted the pancakes heavily and then mixed them into a pot with cheese. Judith then brought the salty fritters to Holofernes’s room.

Cheese latkes (or pancakes) made from ricotta  and called cassola or casciola (from the word cascio, cheese in Italian, according to Professor Ariel Toaff’s Mangiare Alla Guidia) were introduced to the Romans by Jews expelled from Sicily in 1492. Sicilian Jews, writes Claudia Roden’s in her article The Dishes of the Jews of Italy: A Historical Survey, were known as ricotta producers. 

Cassolais still considered a Roman-Jewish specialty served during Shavuot, by Jews, and for Christmas, by Catholics. From Rome, according to Gil Marks’s Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, the cheese pancakes spread to Central Europe. 

In 1618, Rabbi Menahem Lonzano, an Italian scholar who worked in Jerusalem and Constantinople, mentions cheese levivot as a Hanukkah dish, making clear they were served during the holiday in Sephardi communities as well.

Further east, sweet cheese latkes called syrniki were, and still are, popular in Russia, Ukraine and Poland. Syrniki are prepared with quark, a soft fresh cheese (known in Israel as gvina levanah, or “white cheese”), eggs, sugar and sometimes with raisins.

Are we getting closer to the beloved potato latkes yet? 

Only in the 16th century were Europeans introduced to potato from the New World, and it took another two centuries before all suspicions and prejudice were cleared and the root vegetable became the popular staple it is now. Germans were the first to make mashed or grated potato fritters called reibekuchen, which by the 19th became popular in Poland and Ukraine as well.

Those potato fritters were were known as latkes. According to Marks, the Yiddish word latke comes from the Ukranian term oladka, which itself is a twist on the Greek eladia (little “oilies”) or elaion (olive oil).

But the first latkes were not fried in oil, not to mention olive oil, which was hard to get. Instead, they were fried in goose fat, schmaltz, according to food historian Shmil Holland’s book Schmaltz (in Hebrew, Modan, 2011). Since geese were traditionally slaughtered in the winter during Hanukkah (and goose fat for Passover was prepared and saved during Hanukkah as well), goose schmaltz was abundant this time of year. Latkes were not only fried in it, but were also served with a side of goose gribenes (crispy skin cracklings), for extra flavor. For dairy meals, latkes were fried in butter and served with sour cream. But when fried in goose fat, the dairy sour cream had to be replaced by applesauce.

And there you have it – the modern day Jewish potato latkes with a side of sour cream or applesauce. 

Find a recipe for classic potato latkes here.