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When roast goose was a Hanukkah delicacy, and latkes were fried in its schmaltz
As someone who grew up with the tradition of eating potato latkes with smetene, or sour cream, I was completely thrown when I first read Sholem Aleichem’s story “Khanike-gelt,” about the gifts of money traditionally given on Hanukkah.
In the story, a boy in a shtetl describes what the first night of Hanukkah was like at his house. Near the beginning, the father tells his two young sons to go call their mother from the kitchen so that she can hear him bless the Hanukkah candles.
“Mama, quick, time to light the Hanukkah candles!”
“Oy, Hanukkah candles!” Mama exclaimed, tossed aside her utensils (she had slaughtered geese, was frying the goose fat and was making leavened latkes) and hurried into the living room, with Brayne the cook close behind.
I remember wondering: How could she make latkes with goose fat — schmaltz, in Yiddish — when this Hanukkah delicacy is supposed to be eaten with sour cream? After all, there’s no mixing meat and milk in a kosher home.
As it turns out, eating latkes with sour cream wasn’t nearly as popular in the shtetl as having them fried in goose fat. Accounts from the 19th and early 20th centuries report that geese were confined and force-fed during the autumn to fatten them up, Yiddish folklore scholar Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett wrote in this YIVO article.
“They were slaughtered before Hanukkah in order to render enough fat to last through the winter, when butter was scarce. The thick goose skins were rendered with the fat, which was later strained; the cracklings, grivn (or grieven or gribenes), a great delicacy, were stored separately,” Kirshenblatt-Gimblett explained.
Not only were Hanukkah pancakes and fritters fried in goose fat; goose fat was also rendered for Passover at this time and Passover utensils were specially taken out of storage for the purpose.
Some people even made a living selling kosher-for-Passover goose fat, as described in another Sholem Aleichem story, “Gendz” (Geese), a monologue by a woman, Basye, who sells living geese and goose fat. In it, she describes, amid various humorous digressions typical of Sholem Aleichem’s stories, her tough life and the struggles of Jewish women in general.
“Geese famously render lots of schmaltz,” Yiddish food scholar Eve Jochnowitz told me. “Early winter is when they were likely to be slaughtered to provide meat and oil that would serve for the holiday and stay frozen all winter, thanks to the cold.” In fact, she added, a sandwich of goose fat and grated radishes was a beloved snack among the shtetl Jews.
Roasted goose was a traditional holiday entree during the Middle Ages among Jews living in the Rhineland and Eastern Europe, wrote food writer Ronnie Fein. Even the Talmudist Rabbi David Halevi (also known as the “Taz”) noted that goose grivn was a gift given to those who were honored within the community.
In a New York Times article about Hanukkah goose, Gefilteria co-founder Jeffrey Yoskowitz wrote that, on the shabbos of Hanukkah, well-to-d0 Jews would host a feast with roast goose, latkes fried in its schmaltz and most likely pickled vegetables. He quoted the French food writer Édouard de Pomiane, who wrote in 1929 that the goose was a “beneficent animal” for the Jews of Poland as it supplied so much to a household, including feathers for bedding, flesh for roasting and fats for rendering.
And Michael Wex writes in his book Rhapsody in Schmaltz, that the smell of smoking goose fat became the traditional “scent” of Hanukkah.
Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated to the United States often brought the tradition of Hanukkah geese along with them. In her book 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement, Jane Ziegelman said that many 19th century Jewish homemakers raised geese on the Lower East Side, just as they did in the Old Country. But now, they did it in tenement yards and basements, a practice surely disapproved of by sanitary inspectors.
On Hanukkah, she writes, these makeshift goose farms were at their busiest. Restaurants even put up signs reading “Goose liver is here.”
But New York Jewish immigrants weren’t the only ones raising geese. In this home movie, filmed about 1928, shared by Cindra Sereghy-Scull, you can see geese outside her late Aunt Vilma’s home in Cleveland, Ohio.
Chances are, one of those geese was served for Hanukkah dinner that year.
The post When roast goose was a Hanukkah delicacy, and latkes were fried in its schmaltz appeared first on The Forward.
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Ukraine Has ‘Irrefutable’ Evidence of Russia Providing Intelligence to Iran, Zelenskiy Says
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends a press conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (not pictured) and European Council President Antonio Costa (not pictured) on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
Ukraine‘s military intelligence has “irrefutable” evidence that Russia continues to provide intelligence to Iran, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after meeting the head of military intelligence.
“Russia is using its own signals intelligence and electronic intelligence capabilities, as well as part of the data obtained through cooperation with partners in the Middle East,” he said on X.
Kremlin last week dismissed a Wall Street Journal report that Russia was sharing satellite imagery and improved drone technology with Iran as “fake news.”
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Belgium Deploys Soldiers to Reinforce Security at Jewish Sites
Belgian army personnel patrol a street as part of a deployment of soldiers outside Jewish institutions in Antwerp and Brussels following attacks at Jewish sites in Belgium and other European countries, in Antwerp, Belgium, March 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Soldiers were deployed on the streets of leading Belgian cities on Monday to bolster security for the Jewish community, after what officials said were antisemitic attacks in Belgium and the Netherlands.
The move follows an explosion this month at a synagogue in Liege that authorities called an antisemitic act.
“From today we’re putting soldiers back on the streets in Brussels and Antwerp because safety is a basic right,” Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken said in a post on X on Monday.
The deployment, in collaboration with federal police, will provide security at Jewish sites including synagogues and schools, Belgian authorities said in a press release last week.
Antwerp “is again a little safer … the Jewish community too. We say NO to antisemitism!” Francken said on Monday.
The upgrade in security also follows an arson attack on a synagogue in Rotterdam and an explosion at a Jewish school in Amsterdam in neighbouring The Netherlands.
Dutch police have arrested five suspects, aged 17 to 19, over the synagogue attack in Rotterdam.
The US embassy in Oslo was also targeted in a bombing earlier this month branded by Norwegian investigators as an act of terrorism. None of the attacks caused injuries.
A Belgian defense ministry spokesperson said on Monday that soldiers would be deployed in three different phases: First in Brussels and Antwerp, later in Liege.
Rights advocates have raised concerns about possible attacks against Jewish communities around the world following the launch of the US and Israeli war with Iran. Four ambulances belonging to a Jewish community organisation in north London were set ablaze on Monday.
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Trump Puts Off Threat to Bomb Iran Power Grid; Tehran Denies Talks Taking Place
Streaks of light illuminate the sky during an interception attempt amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, as seen from Tel Aviv, Israel, March 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
US President Donald Trump said on Monday he had given orders to postpone for five days the attacks he had threatened against Iranian power plants, and said the US was in talks with Tehran about ending the US-Israeli war on Iran.
However, Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, mooted to be the leader representing Iran in contacts with the US, posted on social media that no talks had been held with the US.
As reciprocal airstrikes continued, financial markets had broadly welcomed the reports of efforts to negotiate an end to the war. Even after Qalibaf’s comments, the Brent crude oil benchmark was down around 8% to about $103 a barrel.
Iran has effectively closed the key Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows.
Trump wrote early in the US morning on his Truth Social platform that the US and Iran had had “very good and productive” conversations over the past two days about a “complete and total resolution of hostilities in the Middle East.”
OIL DROPS, STOCKS RECOVER ON PROSPECT OF PEACE TALKS
He later told reporters that his special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had been negotiating with Iran before the war, had had discussions with a top Iranian official into the evening on Sunday, and would continue on Monday.
“We have had very, very strong talks. We’ll see where they lead. We have major points of agreement, I would say, almost all points of agreement.”
“All I’m saying is, we are in the throes of a real possibility of making a deal,” he told reporters before departing Florida for Memphis.
He declined to say who the US was speaking to in Iran but said it was not Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who was wounded in the Israeli attack at the start of the war that killed his father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to Washington.
“We’re dealing with the man who I believe is the most respected and the leader,” Trump said.
An unnamed Israeli official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters that Qalibaf, increasingly influential, was representing Iran and that talks on ending the war could be held in Islamabad as soon as this week.
A reporter for the US news outlet Axios also said mediating countries, which he named as Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan, were trying to convene an Iranian-US meeting in Islamabad this week including Witkoff, Kushner, and Vice President JD Vance.
Trump said he had spoken with Israel, which he said would be “very happy with what we have.”
Although Mojtaba Khamenei holds the ultimate authority in Iran, and the foreign ministry led past negotiations with the US, Iran experts say the realities of wartime decision-making have effectively shifted control to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which now exerts decisive influence over key areas including foreign policy.
A source briefed on Israel’s war plans said Washington had kept it informed of its contacts with Tehran, and that Israel was likely to follow Washington in suspending any targeting of Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on talks or on Washington’s decision to suspend strikes on some targets.
Global markets rose sharply, with US stocks up more than 2%.
On Saturday, Trump had warned that Iranian power plants would be destroyed if Tehran failed to “fully open” the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping within 48 hours. Trump set a deadline of around 7:44 pm EDT (2344 GMT) on Monday.
The IRGC threatened retaliation, saying it would attack Israel’s power plants and those supplying US bases if Trump followed through with his threat.
MARKETS AND ECONOMIES IN TURMOIL
Iranian media reported that they had on Monday attacked targets in Israel and US bases in the region.
More than 2,000 people have been killed in the war the US and Israel launched on Feb. 28, which has devastated Iran’s leadership and military capabilities while driving up fuel costs and accelerating global inflation fears.
However, the threat of strikes on Gulf electricity grids raised fears of mass disruption to desalination for drinking water, and further rattled oil markets.
While attacks on electricity could hurt Iran, they could be catastrophic for its Gulf neighbors, which consume around five times as much power per capita.
Electricity makes their gleaming desert cities habitable, in part by powering the desalination plants that produce 100% of the water consumed in Bahrain and Qatar. Such plants use seawater to meet more than 80% of drinking water needs in the United Arab Emirates, and 50% of the water supply in Saudi Arabia.
Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said the resulting energy crisis was worse than the two oil shocks of the 1970s and the gas shortage connected to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine put together.
Iran‘s Defense Council escalated its threatened retaliation on Monday, prior to Trump‘s delay, saying Tehran would cut all Gulf routes by laying sea mines if Trump followed through, state media reported.
The Israeli military said early on Monday it had begun its latest broad wave of strikes on infrastructure in Tehran.
Iranian news agencies said six people had been killed and 43 injured in strikes in the western city of Khorramabad.
The Iranian Red Crescent posted a video of a residential building in affluent northern Tehran with most of its facade destroyed and emergency staff rescuing someone on a stretcher from the upper floors.
Across the Gulf, the Saudi defense ministry said two ballistic missiles had been launched towards Riyadh. One was intercepted while the other fell in an uninhabited area.