How to Spell Chanukah...And Other Holiday Dilemmas (6 page)

But our Sun Valley menorah is what we call our travel menorah — it came from Gracious Home and literally has a $14.99 sticker on it, which doesn't feel too holy, though somehow, when we are gathered around it, none of that matters. Even with our tacky menorah, which was probably made somewhere in Asia, where there are even fewer Jews than Idaho, it's the soul of family together that makes the holiday — not our menorah or our synagogue. In fact, now Chanukah is so synonymous with our brightly hued hotel room in Sun Valley that I don't even miss not being in sanctuary at home;
this
is what the holidays are to me and to my family.

“Chanukah, oh Chanukah, come light the menorah! Let's have a party, we'll all dance the horah!”
we sing.

We're not literally dancing in a circle in our hotel room —
though I think we did as little kids — but it's fun to still sing the songs and rock it ol' skoo.

So where does a holiday exist? Sure, there are familiar trappings
of a service or the rituals, but I then thought about how many Jews through history had to import their holidays with them, without even a candle to light, let alone a place to worship or safely open a prayer book. They brought the holidays with them inside their souls, and that would always be their sanctuary as they drew from the vault of their memories. So Idaho, with its cold piles of snow and low head count of Torah-toting brethren, was barely a challenge. We brought on the whole “we are the only Jews here” ourselves — because it is in America, we always knew we were free to do what we wanted, which has always made it safe and comforting to us, even with raised eyebrows from the blond room service guy who, with arched brow, surveys our Chanukah accoutrements on the side table.

One year, after a dry spell from temple (I guiltily hadn't been since the High Holy Days and never wanted to be a “twice a year” Jew), I was missing that warm, cozy feeling of songs and candles and, not to be cheesy, a “holy space.” At our friends' annual Christmas Eve party, a bunch of people were talking about going to a nearby midnight Mass. The local church is called (swear to G dash D) Our Lady of the Snow. Seriously. Everyone started talking about how the songs are so spine-tinglingly beautiful with the velvety airtight harmonies and the adorable children who line the aisles with candles.

“Jill, come with us!” a pal invited when I remarked how nice it sounded.

Fifteen people were all headed over shortly and gushed about what a stunning, memorable service it would be. Because the picture they painted was so soothing, triggering calming visions of my own synagogue, I decided to go too. And memorable it was indeed.

The service is burned in my brain indelibly, not because I was into it but because of the humiliating gut-churning shizzle that went down. Just when I had been feeling all Zen about being a Jewish person in Idaho, I entered the church. I didn't immediately feel uncomfortable, though the whole nails-in-wrists crucifix thing has always creeped me out a little, and the people all seemed to be wearing knitted Christmas sweaters with yarn reindeer or wreaths affixed to them. It was a sea of red and white turtlenecks, shining cross necklaces, and smocked-dress-wearing blond children. But like I said, as an American I know and love those Christmas songs, so I looked around and hoped the singing would begin soon. There ended up being some songs — but they were more hymnlike in nature than “Winter Wonderland.” And then came the doozy. The priest got up and did his sermon and droned on and on, and just as I was starting to drift from paying attention — it was two
A.M
. New York time, after all — he astounded me. He was talking about something in the Bible where there was a new tax levied.

“The Jews were all upset about paying more,” he bemoaned. “Some things never change!”

There was a ripple of laughter through the church. I froze. My whole row, which was populated by our family's friends, also didn't budge. Slowly, as I simply stared straight forward unblinking, one girl leaned down cautiously to gauge my reaction. I even saw out of the corner of my eye another friend nudge her husband. Suddenly it went from potentially nice heartwarming carol-and-candle night to sinister snickerfest about them greedy Jews. What upset me the most, though, was the dumb smile on the priest's face — he felt like he was in on some big inside joke, knowing everyone would laugh like that. I felt as if a laser beam was shining on me, thrusting me back into Hasidic mode; it was so cringe-inducing I wanted to bolt, for fear a Dr. Evil button would be pushed and my pew would suck me down into a fiery abyss. I swallowed hard, not even acknowledging my pals' attempts at a facial apology on behalf of their assholic clergy, and I stuck it out until the end of the Mass. At the finish, there were candles held by children, but the would-be tender image suddenly felt cold and remote. I couldn't wait to go home and report the sitch to my parents.

I guess I had expected stuff like that from hicks in the sticks hours away, but not in the cozy resort town I loved and certainly not from a leader of that generally kind community. I was so incensed I haven't gone into a church since, and while obviously not all churches are Our Lady of the Snow, I started having the sneaking feeling that that kind of sermon occurred often and in far more incendiary decibels than I'd experienced. That was seven years ago. I've since adored returning every year and relish that time away, but I must admit I never pass that church without remembering the experience. The current me would have stormed up to the priest after and blasted him, but I was in a vulnerable post-breakup state then, exhausted and in shock. Yet going through that strengthened me. See, I wasn't always Super-Jew.

My brother, who has blond hair and blue eyes, has often been mistaken for a gentile, and more than a few times he's overheard various slurs against Jews, spoken by people never suspecting he was Jewish. I, on the other hand, look more stereotypically like a Jewess, so I never heard any weird remarks of that nature. And while I was dragged kicking and screaming to Sunday school, my brother excitedly went and flourished — he even wore a star of David, which at the time I found a tad excessive. But things slowly changed after the whole midnight Mass thing — and a failed relationship with a gentile guy whose mom, in trying to bond with me, said, “Guess what?! We went and rented
Schindler's List
last night!”

Through the years, I got stronger and stronger with respect to the importance of my Jewish identity, and after dating scores of reversible-names
Mayflower
people (example: Rutherford Wellington could be Wellington Rutherford. Doesn't quite work with Abramowitz Ari, does it?), I met and married an NJB, a nice Jewish boy. He loves our time in Idaho and loves spending Chanukah there every year.

And now that we have children of our own, I realize the importance of these traditions as building blocks for who they are. My daughter Sadie, who somehow flukishly got my brother's recessive coloring, which blends in more with homogenized Pacific Northwest than melting-pot Manhattan, will in all likelihood be exposed to the same subtle riffing my brother endured. And I need to make sure she is strong enough to deal with it. A good start is by creating firm touchstones like my parents did — patterned experiences that will always help her return to her family and, ultimately, to herself: yearly moments filled with songs and light and love, like our family made in Sun Valley, a place with firm traditions that honed and strengthened our identity even further than our New York roots by taking them and transplanting them far away in our little family nest perched in nowheresville. So what if our little blue and white candles feel rare —
we
make our own temple in our closeness and warmth, our teeny snow-kissed congregation of seven, and that nearness means more than any yarmulke head count.

JONATHAN TROPPER

Rock of Ages

E
VERY
C
HANUKAH, THE CHOIR AT MY
J
EWISH DAY SCHOOL PERFORMED TWICE: ONCE AT THE SCHOOL'S ANNUAL
C
HANUKAH
C
ELEBRATION, AND THEN THE NEXT DAY AT THE NEIGHBORHOOD'S LOCAL PUBLIC SCHOOL, TO BRING A LITTLE
C
HANUKAH SPIRIT TO “LOST”
J
EWISH KIDS WHO WERE INUNDATED WITH
C
HRISTMAS MARKETING AND KNEW NOTHING
about the miracle of Chanukah but were more than happy to tolerate our singing if it meant missing some class. Our choir was composed of about thirty girls and twelve boys from the sixth through eighth grades.

Fact: Most kids possessed of a functioning set of testicles did not join the choir.

B
UT
I
DID,
for the same reason that boys and men have always done stupid things: because of a girl. There were eleven other boys in the choir, and while I never confirmed it, it's a safe bet that they were all similarly motivated. Except for this kid named Aaron Berkowitz, who could sing in a high, prepubescent mezzo-soprano that brought tears to the eyes of anyone over sixty, and whom we made fun of mercilessly because, as a general rule, mezzo-sopranos fight like girls. Also my friend Joey Weitz, who years later, to no one's great surprise, would be the first member of our grade to officially come out. Joey's voice had already begun to change, it squeaked like Peter Brady when he sang, and he knew it. He had joined to be ironic. But I have to believe that the rest of the boys, like me, were in it for the girls. Where else but at choir practice could an acutely shy, libidinous kid like me stand shoulder to shoulder, swaying as one, with thirty of the better-looking girls in the school, joined with them into a single musical orifice, united under our common objective of singing complicated Israeli songs in three-part harmony and not sucking? It was the closest I would come to sex for quite some time.

The girl was Tara Wahlberg. She was a year older, already in eighth grade, but she had a learning disability that put her in some of my seventh-grade classes. I thought it was cool that she had a learning disability, a sexy bit of damage, like a butterfly tattoo. When a woman is out of your league, she has to be damaged in some way for there to be any hope. Tara had short, messy blond hair that she was growing out from last year's ill-advised pixie cut, intense brown eyes, and full, frowning lips that parted provocatively when she sang. Her voice was nothing special, was actually a little shrill, but she could carry a tune and she sang with no fear, and thus was awarded solos regularly. When she sang, I would watch the rushed expansions of her back ribs through her polo shirt as she took her breaths, and the soft, liquid flex of the calf muscles under her skin as she rocked ever so slightly from side to side. When you're twelve years old, that's really all it takes, some small, unarticulated aspect of beauty you can excavate like a secret and call your own. Tara had smooth, well-formed calves and those full, creased lips, and I was in love, and you don't need any better proof than the fact that I was willing to stay after school every Tuesday to be subjected to the steady abuse of our fat, sweaty choir director, simply to be in the same room as Tara.

Our choir director was a fearsome Israeli of accomplished girth whose name I don't dare write even today, but suffice it to say that it lent itself quite handily to the nickname “Cock-man,” which all the boys called him behind his sweat-stained back. His temperamental outbursts were rendered more sinister by his thick Sabra accent, and the sweaty patches of scalp seen through his thinning curly hair gleamed like polished marble under the stage lights. But there was no denying Cock-man's talent, his ability to simultaneously sing all three parts of the harmony while banging on the piano keys and shouting at us that we were idiots (pronounced
eed-yots
). The guy could multitask. He smelled of sour chickpeas and body odor and was known from time to time, when he was particularly irked, to violently hurl the red banquet chairs we sat on across the room. These outbursts seemed to be reserved exclusively for the boys in the choir, and we were all a little terrified of Cock-man, but love made us bold and so we soldiered on.

Whenever the choir was slated to perform, we would be excused from classes for extra rehearsals. So Chanukah, with two major performances, was a bonanza, two entire afternoons spent out of class, in the close confines of the music theater—just Tara, me, and forty other kids. And as we practiced the various numbers relating to the miracle of Chanukah, I fantasized about my own miracle, a carefully crafted sequence of events that culminated in Tara's kissing me with those soft, frowning lips for a very long time. Usually this involved terrorists of unknown origin and purpose taking over the school and me utilizing my advanced-green-belt karate skills to save her, resulting in said kiss. Other times it was as simple as finding her crying in the dark hall that, for reasons I've never understood, ran between the boys' and girls' bathrooms behind the stage. That was the make-out spot of choice in our school, or so I'd heard, and in my fantasy I found her there alone, crying about her broken family and her learning disability. I would comfort her, and she would put her head on my shoulder, and then she would turn her face up to mine and, sensing my hesitation, which would be cute and appealing to her, she would put her hands on the sides of my face and guide me in to her moist, parted lips for a prolonged kiss.

Fact
:
It takes some doing to hide an erection while standing upright in the bass section during choir practice.

I
T PROBABLY DOESN'T
speak well for my self-esteem that, even in my fantasies, I could only ever envision someone wanting to kiss me under extreme emotional duress, but I should tell you that there had been some precedent. We had performed at the school's annual scholarship dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria a month earlier, and since we would have a few hours to kill in an empty banquet room before we went on, the school had arranged for a projector and a screening of
Superman: The Movie.
Through a series of carefully executed maneuvers, I ended up sitting Indian style on the floor next to Tara, and when she shifted position her bare right knee rested easily in the crook of my thigh, just below the hip. We fit together perfectly, and even when my leg fell asleep I didn't dare move, for fear that our contact would be lost, like a distant radio signal. And then, when Margot Kidder fell out of the helicopter, Tara gasped, and when she gasped, she grabbed my arm and squeezed it. Like it was hers to grab. Like she could grab it anytime she wanted to, because we were tight like that.

So you see, headway had, in fact, been made.

This year we would be singing two songs new to our repertoire. A mid-tempo, modern rendition of the traditional Chanukah song “Maoz Tzur” (Rock of Ages), and a complex Hebrew song extracted from the liturgy called “Al Ha-Nissim” (On the Miracles). The “Maoz Tzur” arrangement called for a duet with a male and female singer, and when Cock-man asked for a girl, about twenty hands flew up. After a few quick tryouts, Tara landed the job, and stepped confidently into the bend of the grand piano, the accepted spot for rehearsing soloists. Then Cock-man asked for a male soloist. The only volunteers were Aaron Berkowitz, who already had three solos in the performance, and Joey Weitz, whose eyes twinkled with glee at the thought of mangling the song in front of a full auditorium. Cock-man frowned at the room, clearly displeased with his choices, and I knew this was my chance. If I raised my hand, I was a shoo-in to sing with Tara. It would mean staying late for private rehearsals, and we would be linked, however briefly, as singing partners. But even though I secretly thought I was a pretty decent singer, the prospect of singing alone had always terrified me. Only after Joey Weitz had taken his place next to Tara by the piano did I feel my hand slowly, inconspicuously rise to shoulder height and then quickly fall, the ghost of a braver version of myself who would show up from time to time but never seemed inclined to stick around.

And so we all sat quietly while Joey and Tara learned their solos, Tara staring into space as she sang, Joey belting out his squeaky rasps on key with a comic earnestness no teacher would dare call him out on, and me hating myself for being a coward in matters of the heart.

O
N THE FIRST
day of Chanukah, all the members of the choir came to school wearing blue and white, the national colors of Israel and the standard uniform of every Jewish day school choir under the sun. White polo shirts and navy slacks for the boys, navy or denim skirts for the girls. Tara surprised me by wearing a formal white blouse, opened at the neck to showcase a wide expanse of porcelain skin and sheer enough that, in the right light, you could make out the tantalizing outline of her bra and the twin bulbs of her emerging breasts. That shirt was a revolution, was its own little Chanukah miracle.

That day we performed before five hundred students and teachers during the school's afternoon Chanukah assembly, and halfway through Joey and Tara's solo, Joey forgot the words. Rather than fall silent, he began to sing “La la la” along with the melody, grinning as the guffaws spread like a wave across the auditorium. Anyone else would have been embarrassed, but Joey just cranked up his faux earnestness a few notches, really projecting his scratchy, pubescent
La
's to the cheap seats. Not so Tara, who was clearly mortified. Her body tensed up and her voice suddenly wavered as she turned a pleading eye toward Cock-man, who looked ready to stand up and hurl his grand piano at Joey.

The moment the curtain came down, Tara fled backstage to the girls' bathroom, face red, eyes wet. I felt bad for her, but also undeniably aroused. In my dreams, those were the tears that led to our kiss. Tara Wahlberg crying in the girls' bathroom was nothing less than foreplay. So as Cock-man stormed the stage like it was the beach at Normandy, screaming accented bloody murder at Joey Weitz, I slipped off the stage, and then into that inexplicable dark hallway that ran behind the auditorium connecting the two bathrooms.

And there she was, my lovely, damaged Tara in her miraculous shirt, standing against the wall, weeping. But what I had failed to account for in my fantasy is the way in which eighth-grade girls are drawn like moths to melodrama. There had to be at least five other girls standing in a circle around her, rubbing her back, handing her tissues, whispering irately to one another, or just kind of looking on, waiting for some unknowable feminine call to action. When I stepped into the hall from the boys' bathroom, they all turned as one to look at me, and it felt like one of those movies where the white guy wanders into the black bar and the band stops playing and everyone just looks at him, wondering what fart in the cosmos has brought him to this unlikely place. These were eighth-grade girls and I was a seventh-grade boy, which made me something other than a legitimate human, so I wilted under their stares and crumbled into an insubstantial pile of sawdust.

Back on the stage, Cock-man was still screaming at Joey while the rest of the choir stood by, gleefully stupefied. “You don't deserve solo you eed-yot! You don't even deserve this choir!” Cock-man shouted at him.

“It was a mistake,” Joey said, admirably keeping his cool in the face of Cock-man's whirling, sweat-soaked rage.

“I make a mistake and kick your head!” This was 1981, when a teacher could say something like that without making the evening news.

“I don't see what the big deal is.”

“Get off my choir!” Cock-man screamed, the vein in his forehead writhing like a serpent.

“I'm not standing on it!”

“You get out, now!”

And thus was Joey Weitz kicked off the choir. Cock-man sat down on his sagging piano bench and pulled out the crumpled, yellowed handkerchief he'd been using for the last decade or so to wipe his prodigiously sweating brow. “Now,” he said, rubbing his temples with thick, sausage fingers, “who will sing with Tara?”

And only after I noticed everybody looking at me kind of funny did I fully understand that I had raised my hand, which just goes to show you what the right shirt on a woman will do.

T
HUS, MY TWELFTH
Chanukah brought me a twofold miracle: my singing debut and proximity to Tara Wahlberg. Because, you see, I really did think I could sing. I sang in the shower, I sang in my bed, I sang pretty much anywhere I knew no one could hear me. I sang Billy Joel, Elton John, the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen. I knew, with the unshakable conviction of a twelve-year-old, that, in a pinch, I could step in to front the Electric Light Orchestra or play Danny Zuko in
Grease.
I was destined to be a star. All I needed was the right venue to unleash my talent on the world.

Fact: Many contemporary male novelists really wanted to be rock stars. You will find that we are suspiciously well versed when it comes to rock music. We can rattle off detailed histories of our favorite bands and singers, quote an insane amount of lyrics by heart, discuss the chord structures, list the many times we've seen them in concert, and scribble a list of their essential albums with no forethought at all. Many of us play instruments. Read McInerney, read Ellis, read Hornby, read King, read Rushdie and countless others, and you'll find enough failed rock stars to people a thousand reality shows. We spent a good deal of our childhoods picturing ourselves onstage in a sold-out arena, singing our heart out for twenty-five thousand screaming fans, or sitting for an interview dressed in funky, rock-star clothes, or going to bed every night in hotel suites with sexy, scantily clad groupies who were more than happy to give it up in the name of rock and roll.