Where The Scottish Get Their Food For Hanukah The Eight-day Festival Starts This Evening. In Glasgow, Thousands Of Jews Turn To A Single Kosher "Deli" For Supplies For The Celebration.

GLASGOW, Scotland — This evening, Jews all over the world will light the first of eight candles, celebrating the holiday of Hanukah. This eight-day festival commemorates the Maccabean victory over Antiochus of Syria in 165 B.C. and the rededication of the Temple.

Special foods will help Jews observe the holiday. It might be latkes (potato pancakes) for Jews of Eastern European origin, or the deep-fried, snail-shaped sweets called zelebi that are tradition to some Middle Eastern Jews.

In Glasgow, the 6,000-strong Jewish community has its own Hanukah tradition. And tradition here is not only what one eats, but where it is purchased.

Many of the provisions for the Hanukah table in this part of the world most likely will have been bought at Michael Morrison's, the oldest kosher "deli" in Scotland - and currently the only one.

This three-generation-old shop - in Glasgow it's never a store - has been a household word for more than 70 years.

"It's not really a deli," explained Ian Morrison, 53, the affable owner. ''It's more like the old-fashioned corner shop that sells everything from toothpaste to the makings of your whole dinner. All kosher, and the toothpaste has fluoride.

"But (it's not) a restaurant," Morrison added. "We don't do dinners."

No matter. For the Jewish homemaker in Glasgow, there are an astonishing number of kosher fixings to choose from.

There are frozen Empire (all-the-way-from-the-U.S.A.) chickens, Rokeach salad dressings, Osem soups and sauce mixes, pasty-pink crusts, smoked Scottish salmon, calf's-foot jelly poured around hard-cooked egg halves, bagels, and the sweet-and-sour rye bread for which Glasgow is famous.

Corned beef is called salt beef and, because of the way it is cured, it is browner than that marketed in the United States. Pastrami here is made from turkey. And only pickled tongue is similar to the American product.

For Hanukah, there are latkes, doughnuts and cheesecakes.

"Almost everything is imported from Israel and America," Morrison said, ''except for the baked goods, which are baked by a Polish baker at (a nearby bakery), and the wursts, tongue and salt beef, which are sent in from Manchester, England.