Hanukkah

If there's a food with nearly universal appeal, it would probably be the potato, and, more specifically, potato pancakes or latkes, as they are called in Yiddish and traditionally served by Jews at Hanukkah time. Certainly, you don't have to be Jewish to love latkes, commonly made from grated potatoes and onions and fried in oil. Or to make them. Similar dishes of fried potatoes are found in many cultures and cuisines, including American hash browns, Indian aloo tikki, Swiss roesti, and more.

Halls were holly-decked, shoppers swarmed Santa, and the air jingled with carols and bells. "Mommy, they have so much Christmas stuff in the malls," 6-year-old Sophie Freedman complained to her mother last year. "Why don't they do anything for us?" The relentless onslaught of Christmas cheer is one reason that Sophie looks forward to Hanukkah Wonderland every year. Part gift shop, part craft center, part game room, this year's wonderland fills an empty bank building in the Summit Square Shopping Center in Middletown.

Mel Gibson has conquered the box office with The Passion of the Christ, his foreign-language epic biopic about the last hours in the life of Jesus. And Gibson conquered those heights even though a number of Jewish groups have complained that the film sends an anti-Semitic message. Now, Gibson has told WABC Radio's Sean Hannity that he plans to make a flick about a Jewish rebellion in Roman-controlled Jerusalem 200 years before the birth of Christ. That would be the event celebrated each year at Hanukkah.

The hora is a frenzied Israeli folk dance in which the participants form a ring, hold hands, then step and kick to a spirited melody. On ice skates it should prove to be even more of a spectacle. Rabbi Yitzchok Kahan's eyes light up when he describes his plans for the area's first "Hanukkah on Ice" family festival. Song, dance, ice-skating and a menorah carved from ice are planned for the Wednesday night event at the Flyers Skate Zone in Voorhees. The event, sponsored by the Chabad Lubavitch Center in Cherry Hill, is open to the public.

The story of Hanukkah, which begins this evening, is a real page-turner. It includes religious persecution, murder, rebellion, freedom fighters, liberation, faith, rededication, heroes and a miracle. As intriguing as Hanukkah is, it is a minor Jewish festival. It is significant beyond its origins because it falls around Christmas. In recent years, the holiday really has come into its own. You know Hanukkah has gone mainstream when a movie star such as Peter Coyote shows up at the Gershman Jewish Community Center in Philadelphia to speak at the screening of the film The Hebrew Hammer, in which he co-stars.

My elderly father's unexpected part in my son's wedding at the Ritz-Carlton last month, reminded me of the "lasting miracle" at the center of Hanukkah. On that Saturday evening in November, in between my father's "routine" Thursday blood transfusions at Fox Chase Cancer Center, he managed to walk down the aisle beside my radiant mother - who herself walked with a cane. For his grandson's wedding, Dad, almost 89, was suddenly, blessedly strengthened. Nonetheless, I had a bed ready for him at the hotel.

When I was growing up on Scotland's windswept Shetland Islands, Hanukkah foods meant more than latkes, those crisp potato pancakes that in our house were devoured within seconds of being transferred from skillet to platter. It was my mother's Hanukkah cakes - rich, buttery and fruit filled - that upheld her reputation as a generous hostess and superb baker. We were the only Jewish family in the Shetlands in the 1940s and '50s. Back then, when the doors to our home were never locked, friends and neighbors would drop in unannounced during Hanukkah, the eight-day Festival of Lights (which this year begins Dec. 19)

The Inquirer asked readers to recall their holidays, sharing events that have remained the same over the years, and those that have changed. Here is what four residents had to say: After countless trips to Kiddie City, our living room looked like a toy store on Christmas morning during the years when our children were small. Their pleasure was real, but the glow faded after a while. When our 5-year-old, unwrapping her last present, wailed, "Is that all there is?" it was as if a light bulb flickered on. Is that all there is?

Yes. That is indeed a giant menorah strapped to the top of an old station wagon in front of the Acme on City Avenue. It belongs to the black-hatted Rabbi Mordechai Dovid Feldman, 54, supervisor of the supermarket's growing kosher section. The menorah began as a fun display of Jewish pride but took on a more sober meaning after the fatal terrorist attacks on Israelis in Kenya and Israel yesterday - the eve of Hanukkah, which starts tonight. "I want to show other people that there is light.

The big phone call came a week ago, out of the blue. Roy Feinberg was wary. "When the call comes - 'the White House' - you think it's a joke," he said. This was no prank. White House staffers on the prowl for a showcase Hanukkah menorah had learned about the eminent Judaica collection at Congregation Rodeph Shalom, the large Philadelphia synagogue where Feinberg is executive director. A flurry of phone calls and faxes later, the staffers had found what they needed. So tomorrow night, when Rodeph Shalom members gather to begin Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish festival of lights, they won't be lighting the first candle in the big brass menorah they've used for years in their historic sanctuary on North Broad Street.