an abundance of oil

Every holiday has its unique preparations. Today I found myself buying an abundance of oil, seven bottles to be exact (I should have added an 8th). It took me three trips to shlep all the bottles of grease from my car to the kitchen. I got a gallon of grapeseed oil for frying latkes, one kind of olive oil for roasting, another for dressing. A few varieties from Palestine, Lebanon, and Turkey for tasting. While I was at it I resupplied on toasted sesame oil. This is afterall a celebration of oil. Though unlike the Maccabbes, I will be starting out with an enormous amount. If it doesn’t last all week I will be concerned. 

Often I am drawn to Hanukkah as the festival of lights. But this year, I am thinking more about the oil, and what it means to have a holiday that encourages the consumption of greasy foods. When I was growing up fat was the enemy. Diet culture deemed anything fat-free to be healthy. I can still recall the plastic flavor of a Snackwell cookie. 

Rabbi Minna Bromberg’s new book Every Body Beloved: A Jewish Embrace of Fatness is encouraging me to reflect on Chanukah as an opportunity to reclaim our relationship to our bodies and to food, and to fatty foods in particular. It reminds us that fat is not something to be feared. It is fuel; it is silky, viscous, life-giving, luscious and delicious. 

In the very first pages of the book she recounts this story being with her daughter at a preschool Chanukkah party while 39 weeks pregnant: 

“The preschool had hired a young man to play guitar and lead the singing and dancing…After a few lively renditions of familiar Chanukah tunes, we took a break to eat sufganiyot…

Kids and parents alike were served the fried, jelly-filled Chanukah pastries. An absorbed hush fell over the munching crowd. Soon the young man picked up his guitar again, and once again I was impressed…And that’s when he check, check, checked his mic and said, “Okay! Let’s all get back to dancing, unless you’ve gotten too fat from those sufganiyot!” (5). 

Reading this story, I could hear the spiritual screech in the room, and feel the weight of his words in my own body. Rabbi Bromberg captures her internal reaction brilliantly:


“Doesn’t this guy know that Chanukah celebrates the miracle of fat?!?...
The miracle of Chanukkah is that that oil, that fat, lasted for eight days. We eat fried foods on Chanukah in remembrance of the luminous fat that allowed our traditions, and by extension our people, to survive. We celebrate fat as that which sustains and renews us in the face of hardship. We also eat fried foods because fat is yummy. And we do not need to be afraid of or uncomfortable with our own fat hunger – neither the hunger of fat people nor the hunger for fat” (12-13).

Holy, holy, holy is the human body in all its forms. 

Rabbi Bromberg’s book beckons us to create a world where “we can trust our own hungers,” where “every body is beloved.” And her wisdom seems especially needed on this side of Chanukkah and the Holidays, so that we can enjoy ourselves and model for the young people in our lives a Jewish of embrace of delight, pleasure and desire. 

One of the most incredible parts of the book is that in between the chapters she interspersed letters she has written but never sent. A letter to her seven-year-old self. And a letter to the people at Yom Kippur services who would not move to let her through. And a letter to her college boyfriend who broke up with her because she was fat and Jewish. You get the idea. They are in essence teshuvah letters. 

Before Shabbat comes in, who might you write to knowing you never have to send it?

I am grateful to Rabbi Bromberg for the idea of Chanukah being the yearly reminder to embrace our bodies and “broadcast the miracle of fat.” I encourage you to get on her mailing list to enjoy A Year of Fat Torah! ​