Making Olive Oil for Chanukah: A Classroom Guide with Fresh Olives

For years, Rabbi Shimon A. Jaffe has used fresh olives to help his students experience an ancient process they had previously encountered only in texts: crushing ripe fruit, separating the oil, and understanding why the manner in which that oil was produced mattered for the lamps of the Temple Menorah.

A Phone Call Before Chanukah

Rabbi Shimon Jaffe first contacted me in November 2018 with a question I had never been asked before.

He wanted fresh olives—not to cure and eat, and not because he was planning to make olive oil in anything resembling a modern mill. Rabbi Jaffe was preparing a lesson for his students about olive oil as it was produced in the time of the Chashmonaim, or Hasmoneans, and he wanted the children to experience some part of the process with their own hands.

He wanted to take a subject the boys knew from Torah and Talmud and make it tangible.

Rabbi Jaffe teaches fifth-grade boys in New Jersey. His annual olive oil project grew from those early conversations and has continued through successive classes. Each year the students handle real olives, crush the flesh, press the paste, watch oil separate from the other liquids in the fruit, and connect those observations to the ancient texts they are studying.

I have spent much of my professional life thinking about olive oil through agriculture, milling, sensory evaluation, and food. Rabbi Jaffe helped me look at the olive from another direction, and today we sell fresh olives to schools, faith communities, youth groups, and other organizations looking for a hands-on learning experience.

One part of Rabbi Jaffe's lesson especially surprised me. I am not a scholar of Talmud or biblical texts, but after a lifetime spent around olive oil I thought myself fairly well acquainted with its history, use, and lore. The idea that the grade "finest first oil" was reserved for the lamps of the Temple Menorah was new to me. To a modern olive oil merchant, the contrast is striking: today lampante describes virgin olive oil that is not fit for consumption as it is, while the ancient text reserved its finest oil for those lamps.

From Lakewood to an Olive Orchard in Corning

In 2022 Rabbi Jaffe came to Corning and had the opportunity to go into an olive orchard himself.

There is a considerable difference between explaining an olive tree and standing beside one. Mature olives do not ripen uniformly, even on a single branch. Green fruit may hang beside olives turning rose, purple, and nearly black. Fruit higher in the canopy may mature differently from shaded fruit below. The ancient descriptions of successive harvests become easier to imagine when you can see that progression on the tree.

Rabbi Jaffe picked ripe fruit here in Corning and saw the agricultural side of the lesson he had been recreating in his classroom thousands of miles away.

For me, his visit completed a circle. What had begun several years earlier with a request for a box of olives became an opportunity to walk through the actual crop together.

The Source Behind Rabbi Jaffe's Lesson

Rabbi Jaffe shared the key points of his lesson with me, including the source he uses with his students and the three stages of olive oil extraction he asks them to consider. His original teaching notes begin with:

סוגיא מנחות פו.

His lesson points his students to the discussion in tractate Menachot 86 and organizes the extraction into three stages:

שמן ראשון — first oil
שמן שני — second oil
שמן שלישי — third oil

The Mishnah describes olives being crushed and placed in a basket so the first oil can flow out, followed by additional oil obtained through pressure and then further grinding and pressing. The first grade was suitable for the Temple Menorah; later grades could be used for meal offerings.

The discussion is tied to the biblical expression:

שמן זית זך כתית למאור

—pure olive oil, crushed for lighting.

Maimonides later codified a detailed hierarchy of these oils. Rabbi Jaffe's notes describe the first oil as שמן זית זך and כשר למנורה ולמנחות—pure olive oil suitable for the Menorah and for meal offerings.

His classroom project does not attempt to reproduce an ancient olive press archaeologically. Its value is more immediate: children can see that crushing begins to release liquid, pressure recovers more, and further working of the paste changes both the quantity and character of what comes out.

How to Press Fresh Olives in a Classroom

Rabbi Jaffe's method can be adapted into a hands-on Chanukah olive oil press workshop with surprisingly simple classroom equipment.

Cover the work tables before beginning and give students gloves. Set out three bowls for each working group: one for whole olives, one for pits, and one for the pitted fruit.

Students first remove the pits from the olives. Rabbi Jaffe uses this step partly because it gives every student a hands-on role in the project. Not every child will use the mortar and pestle or press, but everyone can pit olives, work with the fruit, and take part in the inevitable gloves, stains, and mess of the exercise. Removing the pits also makes the fruit easier for children to crush with a mortar and pestle.

The ancient source itself describes crushing olives without specifying that they were pitted first. Rabbi Jaffe notes that there is a minority view that the olives used for the Temple oil may have been pitted, but this is not the generally accepted interpretation.

Once the olives are prepared, place the fruit into a sturdy mortar. Students can take turns crushing until the skins and flesh become a coarse paste.

Avoid over-processing the olives. The objective is to break the fruit cells and release their contents, not reduce the paste to a smooth purée. Excessive grinding can create very fine particles and encourage the oil and fruit water to remain bound together in an emulsion, making the oil more difficult to separate.

Once the fruit is thoroughly crushed, stop pounding and begin gently stirring or working the paste. In commercial olive-oil production this mixing stage is called malaxation. Its purpose is to encourage the many microscopic droplets of oil released during crushing to encounter one another and coalesce into larger droplets, which separate more readily from the fruit water and solids.

A classroom exercise does not need to reproduce the timed malaxation cycle of a modern olive mill. The useful lesson is the change in technique: first crush the fruit, then work the paste gently rather than continuing to pulverize it. Students may begin to notice small beads or a sheen of oil developing on the surface.

Transfer the paste into a mesh bag or piece of cheesecloth and close or wrap it securely. Place the bag in a colander or strainer over a large bowl and apply gentle, steady pressure.

The liquid that emerges will not look like a bottle of finished extra virgin olive oil. It normally contains olive oil, fruit water, and fine particles of olive flesh. Important:  If the paste has become heavily emulsified, those components may be slower and more difficult or even impossible to separate.

Allow the expressed liquid to settle. As the oil droplets coalesce and the phases separate, students should begin to see oil collecting toward the surface. Rabbi Jaffe's classroom method may add water at this stage to make the separation easier to observe, after which the oil can be skimmed from the top.

The work should be energetic but controlled. Ripe olive juice stains clothing and surfaces readily, particularly when the fruit has reached the deep purple and black stages best suited to this project.

For this exercise, the objective is demonstration and lighting—not the production of shelf-stable culinary olive oil.

First Oil, Second Oil, Third Oil

Teachers who have access to a small press can take the lesson one step further.

After the first gentle extraction, place the mesh bag or cheesecloth full of olive paste into the press and apply greater pressure. The additional liquid recovered gives physical meaning to שמן שני. The remaining paste can then be worked further and pressed again to illustrate שמן שלישי.

A classroom will not reproduce the exact equipment, quantities, or oil quality of the Temple period, but the progression is clear: crushing releases one oil, pressure recovers more, and further grinding and pressing recover still more.

What Should Students Expect to See?

The first surprise is often how little recognizable golden oil appears when an olive is initially crushed.

Ripe olives contain substantial oil, but immediately after crushing that oil is dispersed through the fruit water and solids in countless microscopic droplets. The resulting paste may behave like an emulsion rather than immediately releasing recognizable oil.

Gentle stirring after crushing helps those droplets meet and coalesce. Pressing and settling then allow the oil, water, and solids to begin separating.

With a mortar, mesh bag, and hand pressure, a class should expect a modest quantity of visible oil rather than a bottleful. That is sufficient to demonstrate separation and, when enough material from several groups is combined, can provide oil for a lighting demonstration.

A mechanical or cider-style press can recover considerably more. Customers using a cider press followed by gravity separation have reported approximately 16 fluid ounces of oil from a 20 lb box of ripe olives. Under similar conditions, a 10 lb box might yield approximately 8 fluid ounces.

Those figures are planning estimates, not guarantees. Actual yield varies considerably with olive variety, maturity, oil content, equipment, technique, and extraction efficiency.

Rabbi Jaffe's exercise is deliberately less efficient. Its purpose is to let children understand the process rather than maximize extraction.

How Much Fresh Fruit Should a Class Order?

For a first classroom project or a single class, our 10 lb box of Fresh Raw Ripe Olives gives several groups enough fruit to handle, pit, crush, and press while keeping the project manageable.

The 20 lb box is better suited to larger classes, multiple groups working simultaneously, programs serving several classrooms, or projects using a mechanical press where collecting a more visible quantity of oil is an important part of the demonstration.

The olives we select for this program are mature, oil-rich fruit harvested in Corning. Color may range from purple through nearly black, with natural variation within the box. The olive variety may change as the late-season harvest moves among orchards, but each individual box contains a single variety.

For an oil-making lesson, that maturity is an advantage. Later fruit generally contains more developed oil than the firm green table olives harvested earlier in the season.

Fresh olives are perishable agricultural products, so teachers planning a specific classroom date should order with transit time in mind. For larger school, faith-community, youth, or community programs, I am also happy to help think through quantity and shipping timing before the order is placed.

A Lesson That Ends in Light

What I like most about Rabbi Jaffe's project is that it does not ask children merely to imagine the transformation from olive to oil.

Their gloved hands become stained with ripe olive juice. They discover how much work it takes to crush a handful of fruit, see the murky liquid emerge from the press, and watch as oil slowly separates and rises. Only then does the lesson arrive at light: the first, clearest oil described in Menachot had a special place in the lamps of the Temple Menorah.

Rabbi Jaffe has found a way to make that distinction comprehensible to children without reducing it to an abstraction.

What began with Rabbi Jaffe's telephone call before Chanukah in 2018 has become an annual meeting point between a California olive harvest and a classroom in New Jersey, where ripe fruit shipped from Corning is turned by students into oil a few days later.

About Rabbi Shimon A. Jaffe

Rabbi Shimon A. Jaffe teaches fifth-grade boys at Cheder Toras Zev in Lakewood, New Jersey.

His annual Chanukah-season classroom project draws on the process described in tractate Menachot and later codified by Maimonides, using fresh olives and simple equipment to help young students experience the physical stages of olive-oil extraction.

Fresh Ripe Olives for Classroom Oil Pressing

Our late-season Fresh Raw Ripe Olives are selected for soundness, maturity, and oil development. They are available in 10 lb and 20 lb boxes for home projects, classrooms, schools, faith communities, youth groups, community centers, and small-batch pressing demonstrations.

Choose the quantity that best suits your class or group and allow time for UPS Ground transit from Corning. The fruit is shipped fresh, raw, and uncured for the project you have planned.

Shop 10 lb Fresh Raw Ripe Olives

Shop 20 lb Fresh Raw Ripe Olives