“We come back for this ‘sacred’ dinner every year,” says Lindsay Meck, whose mother first hosted the holiday gathering when the girls were in the third grade.
Festive home and synagogue dinners are typically parts of the eight day holiday and many Jewish families take pleasure in sharing their celebration with friends of different faiths.
This year, Hanukkah begins on Tuesday evening with the lighting of the first candle on the menorah.
“When I was growing up in the 1950s in a different small Ohio town, I don’t think my Mom could have hosted an event like this for my gentile girlfriends,” says Kathy Ellison, a Dayton attorney who lives in Oxford and enjoys duplicating the special evening for her daughter and her friends each year.
“We made very little of our Jewish traditions and I think my friends’ parents would have been uncomfortable with their daughters’ exposure to those ‘foreign’ customs.”
Ellison’s menu never varies and the girls like it that way: the traditional potato latkes (pancakes) with apple sauce and sour cream, a pea casserole, chocolate gelt (coins), sparkling cider, and Ellison’s edible jello menorah made of pears and bananas with cherries substituting as the flames.
“We are ovo-lacto-jello vegetarians,” she says. The highlight of the evening, in addition to the rousing games of dreidel played with spinning tops, are the gifts.
“Every gal goes home with a book hand-selected for her interests and sensibilities by my mom,” explains Lindsay.
Her mother says the gifts of books are appropriate and traditional for Hanukkah because Jews are “people of the book.”
Ellison says she always looks forward to selecting just the right books for her upcoming gathering.
And though the jello mold will never change, she’s wondering if the book format might: “Kindle downloads next year?”
Saul and Tay Caplan of Dayton say their annual “chili and latke fest” is all about friends and family.
The eclectic crowd includes lots of local theater folks, Jewish friends, work associates and neighbors.
It’s traditionally a family affair with the Caplans’ three children serving as co-hosts when they’re in town.
They decorate the house for the holiday, light the menorah, and flip latkes throughout the evening.
The party originated with a recipe from Saul’s father.
“He wasn’t much around the kitchen, but he could make a wonderful batch of chili — very mild and tasty, not blazing hot Texas-style at all,” Saul says.
“Over the years, I had modified it and began serving it up to friends.
“At Hanukkah time one year, we decided that chili and latkes were a good combination and invited a few folks over.”
The “few folks” have now grown to more than 100. Caplan starts making batches of chili around Labor Day.
“We peel and grate up to about 15 pounds of potatoes. My daughter, Sarah, controls the seasoning and the consistency and does all the frying the night of the party.”
It’s Tay Caplan’s job to clean the house.
“I don’t know why I bother,” she admits.
“There are so many people no one can see the floor, the windows are all steamed up, every surface is covered with bowls and dishes.”
But it’s worth it.
“We’re so lucky to have so many good friends,” she says.
“I don’t know how we got to the point where we know that many people, much less have them all like us (or the food) well enough to shlep out on a cold winter’s night to stand huddled up with a house full of other people!
“But as Saul says, it didn’t start out that way but like the Grinch’s heart, it grew three sizes!”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2440 or MMoss@Dayton DailyNews.com.
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