OMG, from The Atlantic (last year, actually, h/t Metafilter): How did Jews celebrate the festival before they migrated away from the Mediterranean shores? The latke, it turns out, has its roots in an old Italian Jewish custom, documented as early as the 14th century. That, it seems, is where Jews first fried pancakes to celebrate Hannukah. Only ( Read more... )

AHA! I successfully tracked down (i.e. it occurred to me to search for) a paper I saw presented almost twenty years ago, despite not remembering who it was by or what the title was, or when it was published to more accuracy than a decade (10 > X > 20 years ago). It gave me many thinky thoughts, and I've thought about it off and on in the ( Read more... )