How to Spell Chanukah...And Other Holiday Dilemmas

How to Spell Chanukah

18 Writers Celebrate 8 Nights of Lights

edited by

EMILY FRANKLIN

A
LGONQUIN
B
OOKS OF
C
HAPEL
H
ILL
2012

Acknowledgments

Thanks to:
Amy Gash, Faye Bender, Heather Swain, and Adam, who gives me a year-round festival of lights.

For my children

Contents

introductio
n
:
HANU
CHANNUK
CHANUKAH
by Emily Franklin

THE BLUE TEAM
by Joshua Braff

CREATURE COMFIES
by Joshua Neuman

WEEK AT A GLANCE
by Elisa Albert

CHANUKAH YOUR HEARTS OUT!
by Steve Almond

THE GUINEA PIG
by Jennifer Gilmore

THE ONLY DREIDEL IN IDAHO
by Jill Kargman

ROCK OF AGES
by Jonathan Tropper

TRADITIONS BREAK
by Eric Orner

OAK STREET, 1981
by Peter Orner

DOLLS OF THE WORLD
by Joanna Smith Rakoff

CHANUKAH GLUTTON
by Tova Mirvis

MY PEACEFUL AND GLORIOUS BROTHERS
by Edward
Schwarzschild

OH, LORD. OH, LOURDES. ALORS!
by Mameve Medwed

MY FATHER'S MENORAH
by Adam Langer

AN ISRAELI CHANUKAH
by Amy Klein

PRESENTS!
by Ben Schrank

THE LIGHT, THE SWORD,
AND THE NINTENDO DS
by Karen E. Bender and Robert Anthony Siegel

EIGHT NIGHTS
by Laura Dave

ABOUT THE EDITOR

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Introduction

Hanu
Channuk
Chanukah

T
WO YEARS AGO, THE SMOKE DETECTOR WENT ON OVERDRIVE IN THE MIDDLE OF MY LATKEFEST.
R
EINFORCEMENTS (IN THE FORM OF HUSBAND, IN-LAWS, CHILDREN) WERE CALLED TO OPEN THE DOORS AND FAN THE AIR WITH PLACE MATS.
I
STOOD IN THE KITCHEN, GREASE STAINS ON MY PANTS AND SHIRT, SMOKE INFLAMING MY EYES, AND WONDERED WHAT THE HELL I WAS DOING.

After all, growing up had hardly been a plethora of potato pancakes. Chanukah came and went with only a few years of lighting the candles, but on December 24 my brothers and I piled into the car to head—stereotypically—to Grandma's house (though hers was a brownstone in Boston, not a cute cabin in the woods). It wasn't that all Jewish traditions went amiss, but Chanukah, quiet and unassuming, got pushed aside, the wallflower of Jewish holidays. We had a menorah, but we also had stockings and a ten-foot tree complete with ornaments we'd made.

“Can you make cheese latkes this year?” my seven-year-old asks me at the market.

“Um, I could . . .” I answer, thinking back to the smoke-filled kitchen. The truth was that two years ago I'd gone a little overboard. Between my prior days as a chef and my desire to make Chanukah every bit as enticing for my children as Christmas had been to me, I'd spent hours grating. Not just regular potatoes for pancakes—think sweet-potato latkes, zucchini latkes, half regular–half sweet pancakes. “Maybe this year we'll just do a big batch of regular latkes. Okay?” I watch his face for disappointment.

He nods. “Sure. But we'll still have gelt, right?”

My turn to nod. The small mesh bags of plastic-tasting chocolate coins still make me happy. The kids look forward to it, and my husband and I laugh while listening to the Leevees' tune “Gelt Melts.” (Favorite line: “If Goys can eat a chocolate bunny, why can't we eat chocolate money?”) “We'll definitely have gelt.”

“And charity night.”

“Of course.”

I thought I would miss the holiday time I had as a kid. What I know now, having watched the season morph from tree to menorah, and deciding with my husband to let go of Christmas and embrace the festival of lights, is that what matters to us—to the kids, to our family—is making the holiday our own. We have traditions: latkes, gelt, a night when one child chooses a charity for us to donate to and we skip gifts, rotating years for each member of the family to pick a cause. The kids decorate the dining room with Jewish stars, some crayon-colored, others coated with glue and sparkles. And when we light the candles, with all three of the kids (ages eight, six, three, and six months), there is magic in the room. Each night is a little different; each year is, too. Variations on a theme.

T
HE ESSAYS IN
How to Spell Chanukah
speak to the variety and the sameness of Chanukah. Ranging in tone from comedic to snarky, poignant to poetic, each contributor shares with us the meaning of Chanukah as they've experienced it. As many ways as there are to spell the holiday, so are there ways to enjoy, anticipate, loathe, and love the festival of lights.

This year I will be appreciating the small things—watching my children's faces when they sing the prayer over the candles, hearing my husband play from the sheet music I've bought him as a gift, tasting the oily crunch of biting into a latke, the pleasant combination of sour cream and applesauce, and the flicker of lights. I will enjoy the quiet that comes after we've tucked the kids—and each of the eight nights—away. And then, perhaps nibbling on a leftover pancake or trying—yet again—the plasticky gelt, I will curl up with a good book. May you enjoy doing the same.

Emily Franklin

JOSHUA BRAFF

The Blue Team

A
S A FEROCIOUSLY RELUCTANT YESHIVA BOY IN THE 1970S,
I
THOUGHT THAT CHANUKAH WAS WITHOUT A DOUBT THE MOST JOYOUS TIME OF THE YEAR.
U
NLIKE THE FOUR HUNDRED AND TWELVE OTHER
J
EWISH HOLIDAYS THAT SURROUND IT ON THE
H
EBREW CALENDAR, THE FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS USED TO ARRIVE LIKE A LIFE RAFT OF OPTIMISM FOR ANY
of us who felt
Judaism had been
crammed down our throats. And yes, of course, it, too, is a holiday that recalls an incident in which a mighty king decided that the Jews of the time were having too much luck or fun or prosperity. And yes, of course, this resulted in mass bloodshed throughout the streets of Judea. But unlike Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, it was always made clear that the story behind Chanukah held relatively little significance. And I always appreciated that. It was about a guy named Judah Maccabaeus and his four brothers and how they rebelled against King Antiochus because he ordered the chosen people to reject God and all their Jewish customs. After three years of gorging each other with spears and swords, the Maccabees won the war and the Syrians were forced out of Judea, which would become Israel. Judah and the boys reclaimed the Temple in Jerusalem and were granted a miracle of eight days of light from only one day's worth of oil. The result of this miracle for me was that my horrific school was closed for a week, a mountain of gift-wrapped boxes formed in my living room, Rudolph and Santa Claus were both on TV in Claymation form, and not once did anyone tell me to fast. Even my Moroccan-born yeshiva teachers were in good moods, showing us their tobacco-stained smiles for the first time since Purim.

Each December when the Chanukah winter break arrived, the principal, Rabbi Litsky, would hand us a gift as we got on the bus that Friday. I called them “Chocolate Jews,” but they were Judah Maccabaeus–shaped candies wrapped in blue-and-white tinfoil. When you bit Judah's head off, he was hollow inside and you could wear him on your pinkie and lick him like a cocoa lollipop. What a holiday! No pestilence, no slavery, no locusts, no cattle disease or atonement. No synagogue, no guilt, no mortar, and no real lesson to be absorbed and passed down to my Jewish offspring. Thank God. Chanukah was merely the blue team in the color war against the mighty red team, Christmas. We were smaller and got way less press, but who could deny that eight days of presents was oh so much better than one? All that buildup they had with the chimney and the cookies and the sleigh bells ringing and it was over in a New York minute. But with all the obvious differences, I always thought the two holidays had quite a bit in common as well. Both were intended to be religious events but seemed less about God and more about the mall. Both had bearded men on their respective wrapping paper, both had just dynamite, knee-tapping songs written for them, and both were celebrations of truly brave Jews.

Chanukah in our house also meant it was time to bring out the papier-mâché replica of the Temple my mother made around the time I was born. I'll have to ask her what gave her the gumption to do this; she constructed a dollhouse, really, a miniature synagogue with a sanctuary and an arch with tiny Torahs and plastic Maccabees and little Hasidic men who came complete with tallises and long gray beards. I think the dome of the building was made of a Tupperware fruit bowl and the tan walls were cardboard, and I remember maroon carpeting and a bimah with pulpits. In hindsight, there was no greater way for me to shed my frustrations with the rituals of yeshiva life than to play with the Temple B'nai fruit bowl. I set up all the evil Syrians in battle formation, making them surround the synagogue with spears in hand. Then I removed the dome so I could reach inside the sanctuary and set up the Jews. Some of them were slump-shouldered and actually had sorrowful expressions on their faces, and to this day I have no idea where my mother found a toy store that sold sad, davening action figures. But she did. So the scenario was simple. The Jews want to pray, the Syrians want to kill and pillage, and the Maccabees want to protect the melancholy action figures. It was all about timing. My role was simple and I was very good at it: play God.

Luckily for me, I spent heaps of time in school learning how the almighty, blessed be He, handled things when he lost his temper. You had to first let the drama build. This meant the tiny Jews start their service. All they want to do is pray. Next, you need the Syrians to surround the Temple. After that, you need your Maccabees to get into slaughter formation. And lastly, with the bad guys in the windows and the good guys ready to defend Judea, the war begins. Many die in the battle as God—me—looks down on yet another atrocity in the name of well . . . me. And that's when I step in. One by one I'd start lifting the Syrians by their itty-bitty heads and hurling them across the living room.
AAAAUUUGGGHHH!
they'd scream as they flew and bounced and rolled under the sofa. My dog, Shana, would chase them and sniff their dead bodies. And in no time, the frightened worshippers inside the Temple would climb to their feet with the help of my mighty hand and once again continue with their prayers. “Thank you, God,” they'd say to me as they put their tallises and yarmulkes back on, dusting off their knees. I'd then reach in through the open dome and tap them on their heads with the tip of my thumb. “You're welcome,” I'd say in my deepest James Earl Jones voice. “Now cheer up and smile, for Christ's sake. It's Chanukah!”