What is Hanukkah Gelt? & 4 Ways to Celebrate the Holiday with It
Foil covered chocolate coins, called gelt, surface every December for Hanukkah. The word gelt (Yiddish for money; also, Dutch and German for gold) connected Hanukkah and money way back in the 16th century. In those days, Jewish teachers traveled to distant villages to instruct impoverished and illiterate Jews; they refused payment since teaching Judaism is considered a value in itself. But at Hanukkah, the instructors accepted gelt/coins. Those coins signified appreciative, though modest, compensation for dedication to Jewish education (also a play on the Hebrew words for education and the holiday). Around that time, too, chocolate arrived in Europe from the Western Hemisphere as a drink.
Chocolate Coins
Eating chocolate developed later, as did chocolate shaped coins. According to food writer Tina Wasserman, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European Jewish chocolate makers made the first chocolate gelt. Jenna Joselit, in The Wonders of America, notes the increased purchasing capacity of American Jews in the 1920s that prompted Loft’s Candies to produce chocolate coins for Hanukkah.
Long before that, currency connected to chocolate. For the peoples of Meso-America, money grew on trees, in the form of cocoa beans. Counterfeiters filled empty cocoa shells with clay or earth, passing them off as valuable.
Today Hanukkah’s gelt tempts our palates with tastier, richer, darker chocolate offerings. Author and chocolate maven, Francine Segan, told me that her children refused to eat the “traditional” gelt. As Segan explained: “Good chocolate needs to contain 100 percent cocoa product, without cheap substitutes or additives, along with quality sugar and flavorings. Just as we want to be feeding our children real food, we should be giving them real chocolate.”
Ways to Celebrate Hanukkah with Gelt
Taste
Explore chocolate gelt options, including some fair trade coins from Lake Champlain and Divine Chocolate. Rate the quality of the taste, the crunch, and the social justice aspects of the chocolate. Is the chocolate milk or dark? Are there other unusual ingredient add-ins? Is it organic chocolate? Is the company concerned with green packaging? Do you like the taste?
Bake Gelt Cookies
These yummy Peanut Butter Hanukkah Gelt Cookies maintain the shape of the chocolate gelt on top and are a good way to use up your chocolate gelt. Move over Christmas cookies!
Make “Truffle” Gelt
Craft your own Hanukkah gelt. Try whipping up this recipe for chocolate "truffle" gelt or explore other on-line options.
Throw a Hanukkah Chocolate Party!
My recently released picture book, Boston Chocolate Party (co-authored by Tami Lehman-Wilzig from Behrman House), offers up fun, creative, and historically rooted activities for the holiday. The story captures the coincidence of the last night of Hanukkah in 1773 with the Boston Tea Party and the commonalities in the stories of freedom sought by the ancient Maccabees and our nation’s founders. The recipes also lend themselves to a rich, chocolatey, Hanukkah party for home or school. Head to On The Chocolate Trail to find activities for a chocolate themed Hanukkah party.