Blintzes, Tostones, and Ceviche, This Family’s Hanukkah Spread Is a Map of Their History

In Joel Linkewer’s family, meals are a map of where they’ve lived, tracing a route that’s 13,000 miles long from Belarus and Poland to South America, to Puerto Rico, and finally Miami. 

When he was growing up, Hanukkah was celebrated with paper chains, cut outs in the shape of dreidels, and electric menorahs around his house in Miami. “Basically, the blue and white version of the Christmas decorations,” he says. His grandmother Ana Raquel and aunt Bettina would come over, often with dishes in tow, for a meal of Ashkenazi blintzes stuffed with pillowy potatoes, crisp and golden tostones or smashed and fried plantains from Puerto Rico, and on some years, a spicy and refreshing ceviche, which the family also learned to make on the Caribbean island. “This was our Hanukkah meal and it kind of changed and evolved with each place that we celebrated the holiday,” Joel explains. 

In the 1930s, just before World War II, Joel’s great-grandparents left Eastern Europe. His grandmother’s family found their way to Santiago, Chile, while his grandfather’s relatives settled in Buenos Aires in Argentina. Despite living nearly 900 miles apart, the couple met at a wedding and later married. After a few years in Argentina, they moved closer to Ana Raquel’s family in Chile living as part of the Santiago Jewish community. Here, she picked up recipes like spinach empanadas, a love of fish, and a passion for Hanukkah celebrations. “When my grandmother was growing up in Chile, it was a really big thing there,” says Joel. “She went to a Jewish school and they would put on a big festival for the community and she had always looked forward to it.” 

In the early 1970s, when Joel’s father Jorge was little, the family moved again, this time to Puerto Rico, where his grandfather Abraham hoped to find work in Spanish. In San Juan, the family adopted ceviche and tostones into their tradition. And, after studying in the U.S. Joel’s father and much of the family settled in Miami. “That’s where the dots connected up,” says Joel. The recipes from all of their journeys came together on one table, made by his sister Lori, aunt, dad, grandmother, and his mother Jessica, who learned them from Ana Raquel. 

At the Hanukkah celebrations, there’s always extra oil on hand after frying the tostones, so the family often fries latkes, and sometimes even falafel. It’s “horrible for the body, but good for the soul,” Joel says.