Photo: Paradesi Synagogue, Cochin, built 1568. Dan Lundberg / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Hanukkah in an Indian Jewish home is a festival of light celebrated with food that could only have come from India. Where Ashkenazi families eat latkes (potato pancakes) fried in oil and Sephardic families fry sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts), the Indian Jewish communities developed their own Hanukkah foods that reflect local ingredients and tastes while preserving the central tradition of foods fried in oil, commemorating the miracle of the oil in the Temple.
The Bene Israel community of Maharashtra celebrates Hanukkah with fried sweets made from rice flour or semolina, seasoned with cardamom and coconut, and fried in sesame oil. The use of sesame oil is particularly meaningful for the Bene Israel, who have traditionally pressed and used sesame oil for cooking and who maintained the Hebrew name for their oil-pressing trade even during the centuries when they were isolated from the broader Jewish world. Fried semolina cakes sweetened with jaggery and flavored with cardamom are another Bene Israel Hanukkah treat, reflecting the Maharashtra tradition of sweet fried foods for festive occasions.
The Cochin Jewish community in Kerala prepared Hanukkah sweets using the abundant coconut of their region. Fried coconut-rice flour balls, similar in form to some standard Kerala sweet snacks but prepared with the deliberate intention of using oil in honor of the holiday, were a Cochin Jewish tradition. Some families also prepared banana fritters or fried plantain preparations, using fruit that grows abundantly in Kerala rather than the potato that would be used in a European Jewish household.
The Baghdadi Jewish community in Calcutta and Bombay had a broader range of Hanukkah food options, given their greater access to both Indian and imported ingredients. Their Hanukkah table might include fried sambusak (meat-filled pastry similar to samosas, a direct link to Iraqi Jewish tradition), fried sweet pastries soaked in sugar syrup and perfumed with rose water, and Indian-style fried sweets made with semolina, nuts, and cardamom.
What unites all these Hanukkah foods across the three communities is the centrality of frying, the use of local oils and flavorings, and the adaptation of a pan-Jewish custom to an Indian material reality. The festival of lights burns just as brightly in Kochi, Mumbai, and Calcutta as anywhere else in the Jewish world, even when the latkes are made of coconut and rice flour instead of potato.
Source: Hanukkah Recipes: Traditional Dishes from Indian Jewish Communities
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- The Bene Israel of Maharashtra
- The Jews of Cochin
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- Interesting Facts About the Jews of India
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Hanukkah Foods with an Indian Twist
Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is celebrated across all Jewish communities with foods fried in oil. In Indian Jewish homes, this tradition took on a distinctly local character. While Ashkenazi communities developed latkes and sufganiyot, Indian Jewish communities created their own repertoire of fried foods honoring the holiday while drawing on local ingredients and techniques.
Potato dishes, fried fritters, and sweet preparations made with coconut and jaggery all found their place on the Indian Jewish Hanukkah table. The Indian Jewish approach to the holiday blends the universal Jewish emphasis on light and gratitude with the sensory richness of Indian cooking, creating a celebration that is simultaneously traditional and uniquely Indian.
Preserving the Recipe, Preserving the Culture
The documentation of Indian Jewish recipes has become an urgent priority as the communities that created them continue to shrink. In 1948, before the establishment of the State of Israel, there were an estimated 30,000 Jews living in India. Today, fewer than 5,000 remain, most of them elderly. The younger generations have largely emigrated to Israel, where they maintain some connection to their Indian heritage while integrating into Israeli society.
Cookbooks, food blogs, and community archives have played a crucial role in preserving these recipes. Works like “Bene Appetit: The Cuisine of Indian Jews” and various community-produced recipe collections represent efforts by Indian Jewish families to document their culinary traditions before they are lost. Food writers and ethnographers have also contributed by interviewing elderly community members and recording not just the recipes but the stories and memories surrounding them.
For the Indian Jewish diaspora, cooking these dishes is an act of cultural maintenance — a way of honoring ancestors and transmitting identity to children who may have grown up in Tel Aviv, New York, or London, far from Mumbai, Cochin, or Kolkata where their grandparents lived. The food becomes a bridge between generations and across geographies, carrying the taste of a world that is gradually disappearing but whose flavors refuse to be forgotten.