Chicago Magazine
For nearly 60 years Chicago professors have gathered their wits and witticisms to debate The Big Question: Which is better—the latke or the hamantash?
You don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy the Latke-Hamantash Debate, but you do need an appetite for academic wordplay. A taste for latkes, hamantashen, or both also helps.
Hillel House held the first debate in winter 1946. It was a time, notes Ruth Fredman Cernea, editor of The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate (University of Chicago Press, 2005), “when scholarly life discouraged an open display of Jewish ethnicity. The event provided a rare opportunity for faculty to reveal their hidden Jewish souls and poke fun at the high seriousness of everyday academic life.†CONTINUE
