“And He said unto me: ‘Son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and fill thy bowels with this roll that I give thee.’ Then did I eat it; and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness.” (Ezekiel, 3, 3)
Ever since the Middle Ages, Jews have sweetened children’s first day of learning the torah and going to school (sometimes at the early age of three) with honey.
A custom in both Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions was to spread honey over a board or a paper with the Hebrew alphabet (alef-bet) written on it, and let the young scholar lick the letters, demonstrating the sweetness of learning.
“Back in the village of Todra, they take you in the synagogue
and write on a wooden board with honey from alef to tav
all the letters in honey and say: darling, lick!
And the torah in the mouth was sweet like honey,
In the village of Todra in the heart of the Atlas Mountains.”
(A song by Yehoshua Sobol and Shlomo Bar)
This custom is still practiced today in some Orthodox communities in Israel.
This connection between sweetness and the Torah is also marked in the holidays of Simhat Torah and Shavuot.
I remembered fondly the bags of candy our synagogue at the corner of the street used to hand out every Simhat Torah (it was definitely the most popular day in shul for us kids, and frankly, the only day most of us went to synagogue at all.) The recipe below, of alef-bet honey cookies, plays on the same concept of Torah-sweetness connection. It’s a concept that worked well for hundreds of years, and it still works today.
Alef bet Simchat Torah cookies
Course: Cakes and cookiesCuisine: Israeli, JewishDifficulty: Medium25
large sandwich cookies30
minutes15
minutes45
minutesThese alphabet cookies demonstrate the concept used by Jewish teachers and Rabbis for centuries, making the alef-bet, or reading the Torah, a sweet thing. That’s why it is nice to serve these on Simchat Torah, the celebration of the Torah, a holiday celebrated at the end of Sukkot.
You have three options for making these cookies: plain in letter shapes, sandwiched with jam or decorated with hard candy like “glass windows”. You can practice all the options in one recipe.
Alef-Bet cookie cutters are available in most synagogue’s gift stores and kosher supermarkets and online. But these cookies work well in any shape.
INGREDIENTS
1 lb. (3⅓ cups) all purpose flour
½ cup cornstarch
1 cup powdered sugar, plus more for dusting
¾ teaspoon baking powder
2 sticks butter, cold, cut to small cubes
2 tablespoons honey
2 large egg
1 cup Strawberry jam (optional)
30-40 Red color (or honey flavored) hard candy (optional)
DIRECTIONS
- Put flour, cornstarch, powdered sugar and baking powder in a bowl of a food processor and mix for 1 minute. Add butter and mix to get small crumbles. Add honey and eggs and mix until a dough is formed. You can add a little cold water, one tablespoon at a time, if the mixture seems too dry and does not form a dough. Alternatively, you can mix all the ingredients in a large bowl using your hands or a handheld mixer. Gather dough and form a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for 20 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 325 F degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- Put dough between 2 large pieces of parchment paper and use a rolling pin to roll it out to ⅛ inch thick. Cut out cookies using the alef-bet cookie cutters and transfer to cookie sheets. Bake for 12-15 minutes, cool on a cooling rack and dust with powdered sugar.
- To make the sandwiched jam cookies draw a shape of a Torah tablets or an open book (making sure that it is larger than the Alef-Bet cutters) on a piece of paper. For every cookie, cut out two Torah tablets using the drawing, then use the letter cutters to cut out the letter shape out of one of the Torah tablet shaped cookies.
- Use a spatula to transfer cookies to cookie sheets. Bake for 12-15 minutes and cool on a cooling rack. When cookies are cool to the touch, dust only the letter-Torah cookies with powdered sugar. Spread a little jam on the bottom Torah cookies and top each with the letter-Torah cookies to make a sandwich.
- To make the “glass windows” Torah cookies draw a shape of torah tablet larger than the Alef-Bet cutters on a piece of paper and cut it out. Using the Torah drawing, cut Torah shaped cookies, then use the letter cutters to cut out the letter shape out of each cookie. Transfer to cookie sheets.
- In a food processor crash hard candies (about 1-2 candies per cookie) and using a spoon sprinkle the crashed candy into the cut-out letter in each Torah cookie.
- Bake for 12-15minutes and cool on a cooling rack.