f Medieval Hanukkah Traditions: Jewish Festive Foods in their European Contexts

Evidence for foods eaten on the festival of Hanukkah by Jews in the Middle Ages is found in a poem called Even Bohan, written in Provence in the fourteenth century, which includes real medieval foods, together with food names from the Talmud. The anonymous story Megillat Yehudit, copied in 1402 probably in Provence, also includes details of both allegorical and real foods. These Hebrew documents are discussed here, together with collateral evidence from medieval rabbinic commentaries, which interpret Talmudic food words using terms from their own European vernaculars. We can thus identify some Jewish festive foods with foods from contemporaneous non-Jewish sources.