speech
I spoke at a local Latke-Hamantash debate tonight. Here's a transcript of my speech (minus the props and the ad-libs, so of course not as funny as my real speech):

I would like to suggest that hamantashen are better for one simple reason: hamantashen taste good. Hamantashen are sweet. They taste like sugar or jelly or whatever the heck is in them. Latkes typically taste like potatoes, which is to say they taste like nothing at all. Latkes are one of these foods you eat because it is a holiday, and that’s pretty much it. Tonight, I would like to convince you that the sweet jellyishness goodness of Hamantashen is precisely what makes them the superior food, both from a Jewish standpoint and from the standpoint of American patriotism.

Let's study some Torah. Psalm 34:9 (according to the JPS translation) says “Taste and see how good Hashem is.” In other words, God tastes good.

So let's examine the facts: hamantashen taste good. God tastes good. Do I need to connect the dots?

By contrast, latkes are potatos- bland, boring. Where in the Torah is it said that God is boring? Where in the Torah or the Tanach is it said that God is bland? Nowhere!

And later traditions reinforce the importance of sweetness and tastiness. At Rosh Hashanah, we pray for a good and sweet new year- not for a bland and potatolike new year.

But what about Hanukah? What about the glorious tradition of Latkes? Let’s examine the facts. In Israel, Eretz Yisrael, the Holy Land, the custom is not to eat latkes. The custom is to eat sweet things - jelly donuts, if you must know, just fried hamtashen. This latkes stuff comes from the potato-infested culture of eastern Europe, part of the Tzar’s evil conspiracies to make Jews assimilate into the potato-infested soil of Mother Russia.

So to endorse latkes over hamantashen is to endorse the exile over Israel, and by implication an attack not just on Zionism, but on the Messianic dream of ultimate redemption in the Holy Land- a dream so enshrined in Halacha that Rambam lists it as one of this 13 principles. It logically follows, then, that to endorse latkes, the snack of the exile, over sweets is to oppose Israel and to support the anti-Zionist agenda of Hamas and bin Laden.

In fact there are rumors (or if there weren’t before, there are now) that our gallant soliders in Iraq have discovered, while rifling through the files of al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq, that suicide bombers are promised 72 potatoes if they blow up a Jew. So whose side are you on: Israel’s or bin Laden’s? Sweets or potatos? Now is a time of choosing.

Now I realize there is a counterargument: that hamantashen are somehow un-Jewish because they have three corners: just like the three cornered hat of Haman, just like the Holy Trinity of Christianity. But I meet that trinity with our own trinity- God, Torah and Israel. Besides, we’re eating the trinity not worshipping it; eating Haman, not appeasing him.

Which brings me to another Trinity that even the non-Jews in this audience can endorse: the Red, White and Blue of the United States of America. Americans are notorious for their love of serious sweet things: hershey bars, ice cream, and yes- hamantashen. By contrast, the British are notorious for their love of bland food like potatoes - and the British, as you may recall, is what this country revolted from and got away from. To quote John Adams in the movie 1776,

No more potatos tasting like mittens
We say to hell with Great Britain!
Hamantashen belong to us!

And its not just the red, white and blue that implicate hamantashen, but the color of our most unique characteristic, our most serious problem: race. Just as America is a mix of white and black and other colors, hamantashen are a mix of vaguely whitish flour and black and other colors (depending on which filling you put in them). Latkes seek to deny our diversity- they are a kind of sickly orange that doesn’t resemble any American, except maybe Strom Thurmond’s hair in its declining years. Hamantashen embrace it, coming in a variety of colors. I believe Martin Luther King put it best when he said:
I have a dream that one day, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of hamantashen.

Hamantash embody the diversity and sweetness of the American experience. Latkes are just nothingness- all one big potato, no diversity, no sweetness. Living with latkes is like living in the gray tyranny of communism, which incidentally began in the potato-infested culture of Russia. In response to this totalitarian challenge I say:

From the black of poppy seeds
To the red of strawberry,
And all the Purim parties
to sea to shining sea,
from the joy of hamantashen, even
apricots and almond paste,
There’s pride in every American heart
and its time we stand and say:

I’m proud to be American
where at least I know I’m free
And I won’t forget Mordecai and Esther
for giving us pastries,
And I’ll gladly stand up
next to you

and eat hamantashen today
Because that’s what makes me love this land
God bless the USA