Latkes: The soul of Hanukkah culinary tradition

"What makes a potato pancake a latke?" my younger daughter asked me last week, just before the eight-day Jewish festival of Hanukkah, which begins this year on Sunday evening (all Jewish holidays begin at sundown the day before). A latke, I explained to her, is not just a pancake made from potatoes, it's a potato pancake with a poor man's pedigree, a history, a tradition and a neshamah, a soul.

By Phyllis Glazer

December 17, 2008