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4 Hanukkah recipes from across Asia that meld local cultures with Diaspora traditions
TAIPEI (JTA) — Asian-Jewish cuisine is a complex tapestry.
Jewish communities have existed across Asia for longer than many might assume, especially near major historical trade routes in places such as India, Singapore and Indonesia. Other communities developed during and after World War II. Some were part of or assimilated into local cultures, while others blended culinary traditions from other lands with the cuisines of their new homes.
So what do Jews in various parts of Asia eat on Hanukkah? Jews hailing from India, Singapore, Indonesia and Japan spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about some of their go-to holiday recipes.
Jeremy Freeman’s negi latkes use a type of onion native to China and grown across East Asia. (Jeremy Freeman)
Tokyo, Japan: Negi latkes
Before moving to Japan with his wife, Maiko, five years ago, Jeremy Freeman was selling vintage Jamaican records in New York City. In fact, Maiko was the one with the restaurant — Oni Sauce, a Japanese home-style food stand in Brooklyn’s Smorgasburg market.
But when the two made the move to Tokyo with their kids, they decided to switch it up. Freeman’s Jewish background takes the stage at their Tokyo restaurant, Freeman’s Shokudo — specifically, the smoky side: Freeman’s specializes in smoked fish and meats with a rotating seasonal menu. They often dabble in Japanese-Jewish fusion, with offerings like the bialy (made on request by a local Japanese bakery) with whitefish salad made from smoked saba (mackerel), smoked daikon pickles and tobiko, or flying fish roe.
On Hanukkah, Freeman whips up these potato latkes made with negi, a type of onion native to China and grown across East Asia, that falls somewhere between a scallion and a leek. Negi has a stronger flavor than white onions typically used in latkes, and they also produce a lot less water, creating a batter that’s cleaner and easier to work with. At Freeman’s Shokudo, they’re topped with creme fraiche, tobiko, and ikura or salmon roe.
Recipe
Ingredients
2 large potatoes
2 negis (Japanese leeks)
2 eggs
1/2 cup matzah meal
Tobiko
Ikura (salmon roe)
Dill
Sour cream
Directions
Grate potatoes with the large hole side of a box grater. Use your hands to squeeze out as much liquid as possible.
Chop negi into thin slices as you would with scallion. Mix with potatoes and add the two eggs (beaten) and matzah meal. Season with salt and black pepper.
Heat skillet or cast iron pan with safflower oil. Add a drop of the potato mixture to test oil temperature. When it sizzles, the oil is ready. In batches, so as to not crowd the pan, add potato mixture in a thin layer for pancakes about the size of a palm. When browned on one side, flip the pancake. Make sure the pan does not get too hot.
To serve, add a dollop of sourcream and top with ikura and tobiko and a sprig of dill.
Rosita Goldstein says Indonesian and Jewish cooking go hand in hand. (Rosita Goldstein)
Singapore/Indonesia: Deep-fried corn fritters
Rosita Goldstein’s Saturday morning Shabbat meals have become something of a local legend among Singapore’s Jewish community. Twice a month for a decade, she hosted anywhere from 30 to 100 community members at her home, where she prepared abundant spreads of Jewish and Indonesian classics now memorialized in a cookbook.
Goldstein, who is originally from Indonesia and converted to Judaism after meeting her husband, Harvey, in Singapore, says culinary traditions from Indonesia meld easily with kashrut, or Jewish culinary rules.
“A lot of recipes don’t use pork,” she said. “And then second of all, in the Jewish tradition, we don’t mix meat and dairy, and it’s very easy, because in most of Indonesian food, we use coconut milk.”
Life is a little slower now for the Goldsteins, who recently moved to Virginia and hope to split their time between the United States and Singapore. On Hanukkah, these deep-fried Indonesian corn fritters, served best with sour cream and sweet chili sauce, are a family favorite. In Indonesia, they’re a popular street food, but they are also a nod to the Hanukkah custom of frying in lots of oil.
Recipe
Ingredients
2 cups fresh or frozen corn kernels
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 cup thinly sliced spring onion
1/4 cup chopped celery leaves
1 large egg
1 cup water
Oil, enough to deep fry the corn fritters.
White ground pepper, and salt to taste.
Directions
In a mixing bowl, mix the ingredients together until the flour, baking soda, garlic powder, white pepper, salt, egg and water are all well combined.
Add the corn kernels, spring onions, and celery. Mix it well.
Heat the oil in the pan. Using a spoon or small ladle, spoon portions of batter into the hot oil and fry. . Do not overcrowd the pan. Cook both sides of the corn fritters until golden brown.
Serve with sour cream and sweet chili sauce.
Esther David serves her vegetable patties with coriander chutney on Hanukkah. (Esther David)
Gujarat, India: Vegetable patties with coriander chutney
According to legend, the Bene Israel trace their beginnings in India to a shipwreck on the country’s west coast over 2,000 years ago. When British rule began in 1858, they came to Gujarat, a state on the coast and embraced local life there while maintaining their Jewish identity, leading to the formation of unique customs and culinary traditions.
Esther David is a Bene Israel Jew who grew up in Gujarat and writes about the Jewish Indian experience in her novels. Her most recent book, “Bene Appetit,” recounts the diverse traditions and cuisines of India’s five Jewish groups — traditions she says are quickly being forgotten due to modernization and immigration.
At Hanukkah, fried vegetable patties or fritters are traditional, usually served alongside carrot halva. David likes to serve the fritters with coriander chutney.
Recipes
Vegetable patty ingredients
6 potatoes
½ cup green peas
¼ teaspoon red chili powder
½ teaspoon cumin powder
1 tablespoon chopped coriander leaves
Salt to taste
Eggs, breadcrumbs, flour and oil for frying
Instructions
Peel potatoes and shell green peas. Cook both until soft.
Mash the potatoes and combine with peas. Add red chili powder, cumin powder, coriander leaves and salt to taste. Mix with oiled hands. Divide the mixture into equal portions and shape into round patties. (Optional: add 1 small grated carrot to the mixture of potatoes and peas.)
In another bowl, whisk eggs until frothy and dip each patty in the egg mixture. Then roll in a platter of flour and breadcrumbs and cover on both sides.
Heat oil in a pan and fry patties on both sides until golden brown. Drain and serve hot.
Coriander chutney ingredients
1 small bunch fresh coriander leaves
10 leaves fresh mint
1 medium green chili
½ cup grated coconut
¼ teaspoon sugar
Salt
Instructions
Clean and finely chop the coriander, mint leaves and green chili. Mix with the grated coconut, sugar and salt. Process in a mixer and serve with the patties.
Brod goreng means “fried bread” in Indonesian. (Screenshot from YouTube/Beqs Kitchen)
North Sulawesi, Indonesia: Brod Goreng
The Jewish community in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, might be one of the smallest in all of Asia. Made up mostly of descendants of Dutch Jews who came to Indonesia with the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century, the population has declined over time as Jews have attempted to assimilate amid an environment that is not always welcoming to them. In 2013, a historical Dutch synagogue in Surabaya, on the island of Java, was demolished by a real estate developer following protests by Islamic groups.
Yaakov Baruch, the rabbi for North Sulawesi’s community, is a descendant of both Dutch Jews and Holocaust survivors. He shared a recipe for brod goreng, a sweet fried bread for Hanukkah.
A Dutch-Indonesian culinary creation, brod goreng was only eaten in areas where Dutch Jews were living, Baruch said. “The Jews combined the culinary [traditions] between European and local Indonesian food, since this food is closer with sufgiyanot,” he said. “So the Jews in this country always prepare this ‘brod goreng’ next to our Menorah during Hanukkah.”
Recipe
Ingredients
250g flour
1 egg
5 tbsp sugar (you can add more if you like it sweet)
1 tsp yeast
2 tbsp butter
Water
Oil for frying
Directions
Beat sugar, eggs, butter until slightly white. Add flour & yeast, then add water little by little while stirring, until there are no lumps. Leave it for about 30 minutes, covered with a napkin.
Heat enough oil to submerge the portions. Before frying, stir the mixture for a while, then use a tablespoon to spoon pieces one by one into the cooking oil. They will be sticky when taking them off of the spoon. Fry until golden brown. (Optional: serve with powdered sugar.)
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Jewish Advocacy Groups Sue California Over K-12 Antisemitism
Students from Encinal High School and St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in Alameda, California, participating in anti-Israel demonstration on Jan 26. 2024: Photo: Michael Ho Wai Lee / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
A coalition of leading Jewish advocacy organizations is suing the state of California for allegedly failing to address “systemic” antisemitic discrimination in K-12 public schools.
Led by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and StandWithUs, the legal action stems from consecutive years of antisemitic abused perpetrated against Jewish students, parents, and teachers by anti-Zionists at every level of the school system. Court documents shared with The Algemeiner earlier this week revealed new, harrowing accusations of Jews being called “k—kes,” Jewish students being threatened with gang assaults, and K-12 students chanting “F—k the Jews” during anti-Israel demonstrations promoted by faculty.
In one highly disturbing incident described in the legal complaint, fifth graders from the Oakland Unified School District were filmed by the teacher saying “Another major thing that I’ve learned is that the Jews, the people who took over, basically just stole the Palestinians’ land” and “one thing that’s really surprising to me, and that appeals to me is that the US is helping the Jews.” In another incident, the Oakland Education Association confected a curriculum in which the intifada — two prolonged periods of terrorism in which Palestinians murdered Israeli civilians — was taught to third graders as a nursery rhyme.
“The California education system is teaching the state’s children that Jewish Americans and Israelis are racists, white supremacists, oppressors, and baby-killers who should be shunned,” Brandeis Center chairman and former US assistant secretary of education for civil rights Kenneth Marcus said in a statement on Thursday. “The result is not surprising: Jewish children and children perceived as Jewish are bullied and excluded by their peers and harassed by their teachers, who silence, mock, and even segregate them if they speak out. School officials have done little or nothing at all to help these children.”
Litigation related to antisemitic incidents in California K-12 schools surged following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, which triggered a barrage of antisemitic hate crimes throughout the US and the world. The list of outrages includes a student group chanting “Kill the Jews” during an anti-Israel protest and partisan activists smuggling far-left, anti-Zionist content into classrooms without clearing the content with parents and other stakeholders.
Elsewhere in California, K-12 antisemitism has caused severe psychological trauma to Jewish students as young as eight years old and fostered a hostile learning environment, according to complaints
In the Berkeley United School District (BUSD), teachers have allegedly used their classrooms to promote antisemitic stereotypes about Israel, weaponizing disciplines such as art and history to convince unsuspecting minors that Israel is a “settler-colonial” apartheid state committing a genocide of Palestinians. While this took place, high level BUSD officials were accused of ignoring complaints about discrimination and tacitly approving hateful conduct even as it spread throughout the student body.
At Berkeley High School, for example, a history teacher forced students to explain why Israel is an apartheid state and screened an anti-Zionist documentary, according to a lawsuit filed last year by the Brandeis Center and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The teacher allegedly squelched dissent, telling a Jewish student who raised concerns about the content of her lessons that only anti-Zionist narratives matter in her classroom and that any other which argues that Israel isn’t an apartheid state is “laughable.” Elsewhere in the school, an art teacher, whose name is redacted from the complaint for matters of privacy, displayed anti-Israel artworks in his classroom, one of which showed a fist punching through a Star of David.
In September 2023, the Brandeis Center, along with the ADL and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), sued the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California for concealing from the public its adoption of ethnic studies curricula containing antisemitic and anti-Zionist themes. Then last February, the school district paused implementation of the program to settle the lawsuit. One month later, the Brandeis Center, StandWithUs, and the ADL filed a civil rights complaint accusing the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino County, California, of doing nothing after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was assaulted, having been beaten with stick, on school grounds and teased with jokes about Adolf Hitler.
“Jews consistently are being targeted with hostility because of who they are, including in California and particularly in K-12 public schools. This lawsuit seeks to remedy that,” StandWithUs chief executive officer Roz Rothstein said in Thursday’s press release. “It is imperative that California K-12 schools not be co-opted by those seeking to indoctrinate students into antisemitic hate. However, Jewish students and parents indicate that this is precisely what is happening in California. Shockingly, those tasked with enforcing non-discrimination laws in our schools have failed to intervene effectively to put a stop to this growing problem.”
She added, “This lawsuit was necessitated by that systemic failure and seeks to ensure, going forward, that California’s Jewish students are protected and have access to an education free from discrimination.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jewish Olympic Gold Medalist Jack Hughes Honored by New Jersey Devils as NHL Season Resumes
Jan 23, 2026; Vancouver, British Columbia, CAN; New Jersey Devils forward Jack Hughes (86) handles the puck against the Vancouver Canucks in the first period at Rogers Arena. Mandatory Photo: Bob Frid-Imagn Images via Reuters
Jewish Olympic hockey player Jack Hughes was honored by his team the New Jersey Devils on Wednesday night before their loss to the Buffalo Sabres in Newark.
Ahead of the game, the Devils showed on the Jumbotron a video of Hughes, 24, scoring the overtime goal that secured the United States its 2-1 victory and gold medal over Canada on Sunday in the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. Hughes lost a few teeth during the game when he took a high stick to the mouth from Canada’s Sam Bennett during the third period. The win marked the first time a US men’s hockey team had won gold at the Olympics since a 1980 victory against the former Soviet Union.
“I’m so proud and so happy that the men’s and women’s USA hockey teams brought gold medals back to America,” Hughes told the crowd in a pre-game speech on Wednesday given from the ice, while he held back tears. “And I’m so proud to represent the New Jersey Devils organization and to represent the great state of New Jersey. From the bottom of my heart, all of my [Team] USA teammates, we want to thank you for all the love and support. We feel it. Thank you.”
The Devils center — whose mother is Jewish while his father is Catholic — arrived in New Jersey late Tuesday night after US President Donald Trump recognized him and his Olympic teammates in the State of the Union address. Hughes played Wednesday night as Buffalo won for the seventh time in 10 games, 2-1, on goals from US Olympian Tage Thompson and Peyton Krebs. The NHL restarted its season on Wednesday after taking a break due to the Olympic Games in Milan.
On Thursday, before the New Jersey Devils took on the Pittsburgh Penguins at PPG Paints Arena, Hughes received a standing ovation as the Penguins honored athletes who represented their countries at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Earlier in the week, the popular Hobby’s Delicatessen & Restaurant located blocks away from Newark’s Prudential Center, which is home to the New Jersey Devils, named a sandwich after Hughes. The owners said “Jack’s Golden Goal Sandwich,” which features roast beef and “golden sauteed onions” on a soft roll, is “so tender, you don’t need teeth.”
Trump announced during Tuesday night’s State of the Union that Connor Hellebuyck, the goaltender for the US men’s Olympic hockey team that won gold, will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Hellebuyck made 41 saves in the Olympic game against Canada on Sunday and also assisted on the overtime goal by Hughes that led to the team’s gold medal win.
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Zachary Levi Hosts New Fox Nation Docu-Drama Series About King David
A scene from “David: King of Israel.” Photo: YouTube screenshot
Actor Zachary Levi hosts a Fox Nation original series that premiered on Thursday about the life and legacy of the Bible’s King David.
The four-part docu-drama “David: King of Israel” begins with the episode “The Shepherd,” which tells the story of David as a young shepherd in Bethlehem who kills a lion and a bear to protect his flock.
Episode two, “King of Israel,” premieres on March 5 and explores the aftermath of David’s fight with the giant Goliath, which is described in the Book of Samuel. The third episode will premiere on March 12, and the finale airs March 19. The series features reenactments about King David’s life and expert commentary intertwined with Levi’s narration.
Born in 907 BCE, David was chosen by God and anointed by the Prophet Samuel to one day be Israel’s new king. He reigned as the king of Israel for 40 years and is one of the most important figures in Jewish history. Christians also regard him as the ancestor of Jesus.
“Highlighting faith, redemption, and extraordinary purpose, we’re honored to bring this story to Fox Nation with Zachary at the helm,” said Fox Nation President Lauren Petterson about the four-part series.
“Aside from the account of Christ, the story of David is the most powerful in all of scripture,” added Levi. “In fact, one might argue that it’s even more powerful in some ways, given that David was fully human, and therefore flawed, like us, making his journey more relatable to our own. It’s a story I’ve wanted to be a part of telling ever since I was a child, so it was such a blessing being a part of this production.”
Levi, the “Shazam!” star, who is not Jewish, told “Fox & Friends” on Thursday he grew up in a Christian home and “reading my Bible and David was the story that always stood out to me as the most epic, the most amazing.”
“It can be difficult to relate to Jesus. David is us. David is a person who is called a man after God’s own heart,” he added. The actor, who has a SAG Award for his role in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” also said the four-part series is “like Lord of the Rings in the Bible.”
“You got giants and witches and all kinds of, you know, it’s cool and there’s massive battles, nation upon nation and good versus evil and all the spiritual elements of everything,” said Levi. “It’s a really fascinating story, even if you’re not within the Judeo-Christian lineage.”