Hi, has anyone been to these in the past or are planning on going this year? I heard from an alum that it was fun and funny:
Literally the funniest thing we’ve ever been to (and I’m including stand-up in NYC, Edinburgh Fringe Festival for a week seeing some of the top ranked comics in the world). Those professors are just hilarious, even if sometimes you needed an encyclopedia or lots of Googling to understand the jokes. One professor of Egyptology did an analysis of ancient tomb inscriptions to prove the superiority of the latke (a thousand years before the Maccabees lived, which he readily conceded) which was over the top.
This does sound fun.
In the one of these debates I particularly remember an English Prof argued that Hawthorne, in choosing the triangular-shaped “A” to hang around Hester Prynne’s neck, was making a concealed argument in favour of the latke. Indeed, Hester might well have been atoning for the sin of gorging on these little cakes. And Dimmesdale must be the subversive baker of those goods as of the other goods inside her. Hawthorne leaves it to the reader to decide the important question of whether Hester’s unusual appetites are tied to her interesting condition or whether they are destined to continue thereafter as an emblem of her independent spirit and defiance of puritan New England. – And so on.
There was a book published some years back with a good selection of talks from the debate, and I think some more recent debates can be viewed on You Tube.
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Latke-Hamantash-Debate-Fredman-Cerna/dp/B00E04B3YE
An egregious error must be corrected: The hamantash - not the latke - is the triangular cake whose doughy succulence, not to be compared with a greasy fried pancake, was being celebrated in “The Scarlet Letter”.