Traditionally, Chanukah “Gelt” refers to real, metal clinking coins that are given during the holiday to children or to charity. But many of us have come to associate Chanukah with edible chocolate treats wrapped in coin-like silver or gold foil bagged in treasured yellow netting.

Actually, the Maccabees never saw chocolate, which dates back only to Spaniard Hernán Cortés. When he conquered Mexico in 1519, the Aztec emperor Montezuma offered him a spicy, bittersweet drink. Made from cacao beans, this luxurious “chocolatl” (“xoco”-bitter; “atl”-water) drink was reserved for prominent occasions, weddings and funerals, and Aztec nobility had their beloved beverage buried along with them in their tombs. The highly prized cacao beans were used as legal tender currency, long before the 'minting' of Chanukah chocolate coins.

Europeans got their first taste of chocolate when Cortez presented King Philip of Spain with 3 chests of cacao beans and bottles of chocalatl from his Mexico expedition. Chocolate became an aristocratic favorite. The Spanish planted cacao in their colonies, from where it was transplanted to the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon—today the world’s largest producers. Cacao found its way to England, where “chocolate houses” gave coffee houses stiff competition in the 1700s.

Not until 1828, however, did an enterprising Dutchman make this divine food sweet. He extracted the fat, ground the remains into a powder which he dissolved in hot water, added sugar, and voila!— the world’s first sweet chocolate drink.

Still, no one ate chocolate until 1847, when an English firm added cocoa butter and sugar to ground cacao to create a hard chocolate. In 1876, the Swiss added milk to create the milk chocolate we all love.

Producing that heavenly taste requires some earthly steps. The foot-long cacao seedpods are harvested, the beans removed and fermented under banana leaves, and then dried to prevent mold.

The beans are roasted and the meaty kernels or “nibs” extracted. Grinding the nibs produces the non-alcoholic cocoa “liquor,” which is filtered to separate the cocoa “butter” from the powder.

To make dark or milk chocolate, cocoa liquor is combined with cocoa butter, sugar, vanilla, and/or lecithin—and, for milk chocolate, powdered milk. Ground to a fine paste, the mixture proceeds to smoothing machines that heat it to 160º F for several days. Complex chemical changes develop the delicate chocolate flavor.

European-STYLE Chocolates
With all due respect to American Hershey's hugs and kisses, it is the European master chocolatiers who perfected chocolate as an elegant art form. Most classy chocolates originate from European capitals like London, Paris, Amsterdam and Zurich.

Here in the U.S. Manhattan Chocolates – Shufra gourmet chocolates offer high end European style quality, and proudly carry the OK certification.

Manhattan Chocolates is directed by Michael Herzog, another branch of the prominent Herzog family, world-renowned for their superior Kedem wines and noted quality kosher products. Manhattan Chocolates produces over a million pounds of upscale chocolate a year at its new 40,000 sq. foot plant in Bayonne NJ.

They offer a full line of elegant Kosher for Passover chocolate selections, and supply prestigious customers like the European Hermelin Kosher airline caterers. Manhattan Chocolates is also a popular brand used for school and organizational fundraisers.

All Manhattan Chocolates are Lactose Free and certified Pareve, perfect for elegant wedding and Bar Mitzvah dinners whose meat dishes and menu require strictly pareve chocolates.

But Is It Kosher?
Consisting basically of cacao bean derivatives, chocolate seems to present no kosher difficulties. A few additives, yes, but these should be easy to supervise, right?

Ingredient substitution is a marvel of modern food production, but raises serious Kosher concerns. Some countries permit “cocoa butter equivalents” (CBE) as substitutes for natural cocoa butter. These fats may non-kosher. This is even more likely in “cocoa butter substitutes” (CBS), widely used in the “chocolate-flavored” coatings in ice creams, cakes and candies.

The added ingredients also require inspection: Lecithin, an emulsifier to maintain proper viscosity during production, can contain non-kosher ingredients. And the powdered milk used in milk chocolate may be produced on non-kosher equipment.

Production presents even more kosher challenges than the ingredients. Chocolate manufacturing machines are hot during production, and are difficult to kosherize with the required boiling water. Water and chocolate don’t mix well; the fudge-like result can clog the machinery and ruin it! When non-kosher ingredients were previously used on the equipment (or dairy ingredients before a run of non-dairy dark chocolate), it takes great care and effort to kosherize it properly.

A pioneer in kosher chocolate supervision, OK Kosher Certification sent its inspectors out to Africa's Ivory Coast to investigate cocoa production from start to finish. In its investigations,

OK Kosher Certification discovered that one of the world's largest facilities processes animal fat on the same equipment as the (supposedly) dairy product used in chocolate.

OK now oversees production of the world’s finest chocolates, so the OK symbol on chocolate assures the consumer that it’s not just divine—it’s perfectly divine.

Pure Pareve Production
Fortunately for the discriminating consumer, OK's highly computerized systems trace thousands of product and factory listings to ensure a kosher quality product. While other chocolates labeled “pareve” resort to dubious leniencies, OK Labs insist on the highest Kosher standards. In 1998, Rabbi Levy of OK Labs signed a historic agreement with the world’s leading chocolate producer, for exclusive pareve production equipment covering 17 facilities in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, England, the US., Canada, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Singapore.