Teresa Monica Harari Schnee attended Catholic school and donned a cross around her neck when she was a little girl in Buenos Aires, though her family is Jewish, explains her daughter Isabella Schnee. Monica’s family on her mother’s side can trace their heritage to the Iberian Peninsula before the Inquisition, then to Syria, England, and finally to South America in 1935. While her father’s family is Lebanese-Moroccan and came to Buenos Aires in 1916. 

Monica lived through Argentina's Dirty War, where between 10,000 and 30,000 people, including children, were “disappeared.” To protect themselves, her family kept their Jewish heritage quiet. They observed major holidays, but Hanukkah wasn’t important in their home. 

When she married Isabella’s father, Steve Schnee, who comes from an Ashkenazi family by way of Brooklyn, he introduced her to his family’s celebrations. Isabella remembers Hanukkah as a sweet holiday in their home. She constructed a menorah from nuts and bolts and the family ate sweet potato latkes, but the traditions also went deeper. When they moved to New Jersey, Monica enrolled in Judaic studies courses at the Jewish Theological Seminary. “Hanukkah was about engaging with its history and meaning, and finding our own ways to connect to the themes of resilience and celebration,” Isabella explains. 

Monica would talk about the importance of oil in the holiday story and serve this olive oil cake — sometimes alongside a fruit compote — at a Hanukkah party with family friends. She sees the cake as an evolution of baked goods the family has served for holidays and special occasions — starting with her grandmother’s walnut cake, which became a honey cake in the following generation, and finally this olive oil cake for Hanukkah.