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Olive Oil Shines In Lead Role For These Chanukah Traditions

Rabbi Avraham Scheinberg

My name is Avraham Scheinberg, and I’m assistant rabbi here in San Antonio at a congregation, Rodfei Sholom. Some interesting things that we do on Chanukah— obviously we do the regular: lighting the menorah; play dreidel; we have latkes; my wife makes amazing Sufganiyot, Chanukah donuts with jelly.

But something that’s different that we do a little bit is that I light my Chanukah menorah with oil, with olive oil actually. For my kids we use the candles, but for myself I use olive oil. The reason I do it is because we’re trying to remember what happened at the Temple with the miracle. The oil lasted for 8 days, and that was actually olive oil that they used. That’s the reason of course that we eat latkes. That’s the reason that we have fried donuts, because we’re trying to remember the miracle of the oil. 

It’s really a beautiful flame.

Louisa Jonas is an independent public radio producer, environmental writer, and radio production teacher based in Baltimore. She is thrilled to have been a PRX STEM Story Project recipient for which she produced a piece about periodical cicadas. Her work includes documentaries about spawning horseshoe crabs and migratory shorebirds aired on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered. Louisa previously worked as the podcast producer at WYPR 88.1FM in Baltimore. There she created and produced two documentary podcast series: Natural Maryland and Ascending: Baltimore School for the Arts. The Nature Conservancy selected her documentaries for their podcast Nature Stories. She has also produced for the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Distillations Podcast. Louisa is editor of the book Backyard Carolina: Two Decades of Public Radio Commentary. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her training also includes journalism fellowships from the Science Literacy Project and the Knight Digital Media Center, both in Berkeley, CA. Most recently she received a journalism fellowship through Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she traveled to Toolik Field Station in Arctic Alaska to study climate change. In addition to her work as an independent producer, she teaches radio production classes at Howard Community College to a great group of budding journalists. She has worked as an environmental educator and canoe instructor but has yet to convince a great blue heron to squawk for her microphone…she remains undeterred.