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December 3, 1999/24 Kislev 5760, Vol. 52, No.14
Optimism best gift of all
JUDITH BOLTON-FASMAN
Jewish Family & Life
Hanukkah is as much a miracle of timing as anything. Here in the middle of the winter is a festival of lights that radiates hope and wonder.
In her primer "Jewish Days: A Book of Jewish Life and Culture Around the Year" (Noonday Press), Francine Klagsbrun relates a beautiful rabbinic commentary about Adam's fear when he experienced his first days of descending darkness.
"Woe is me," said the world's first man. "Perhaps because I sinned, the world around me is getting darker and returning to chaos and confusion."
In response to his seeming reversal of fortune, he fasted and prayed for the return of light. When winter solstice arrived, Adam had come to understand that these cycles of lightness and darkness "were the way of the world."
Adam's asceticism is an ironic antecedent to what has become the most commercialized of Jewish holidays. Hanukkah obviously didn't have such a glittery start; its proximity on the calendar to Christmas has made North American Jewry feel obliged to observe it with some of the spirit of the prevailing culture.
Klagsbrun, however, presents a compelling case for Hanukkah actually being modeled after Sukkot. She relates that when the victorious Judah Maccabee and his ragtag army finally emerged from the hills, one of the first things they did was to purify the Temple and rededicate it. Their ceremonies, which they extended for eight days, as in the seven for Sukkot and the one for Shmini Atzeret, included carrying palm branches and singing psalms of praise. Klagsbrun points out that although there is a description of this event in the Book of Maccabees, there is no mention of lights. That came centuries later in Talmudic discussions.
Each year I grow more uncomfortable with watching Hanukkah observance forced to keep up with Christmas festivities. What was once a minor Jewish holiday is now in fierce competition with the most dazzling of Christian holidays. It takes Maccabean strength not only to keep up, but also to keep the two holidays distinct.
Anything that requires this much effort and thought from me always involves my children. And where there are children, there lurk memories of one's own childhood. We are either haunted by, or are sentimental about, those memories, or as I suspect with most people, a little bit of both. For me it all comes out in the gift giving.
As a child, I spent many a Hanukkah trying to convince my Cuban-born Sephardic mother that Purim was not the holiday to receive gifts.
As a parent, I spend months choosing (agonizing really) over what to get my two children. I've finally settled on giving them two major gifts each, which are presented on the first and last nights of Hanukkah. In between, my daughter and son get token (less than $10) gifts.
This debate of whether to give or not to give for all eight days of Hanukkah becomes swiftly irrelevant after encountering Marci Stillerman's affecting story "Nine Spoons" (HaChai Books). The book, appropriate for children 9 and older, is the post-Holocaust equivalent of a small still voice in the wilderness. Subtitled "A Chanukah Story," Stillerman's story tells of a group of women incarcerated in a concentration camp but determined to do the forbidden and celebrate Hanukkah for the children in their midst. In order to commemorate Hanukkah, they collect nine spoons, a precious commodity in the camp, to forge the candleholders for a menorah.
But this quiet book is much more than a touching corollary to the Hanukkah story. It contains an important message about the Holocaust and the centrality of Jewish observance. It fills in gaps of silence about life in the camps without traumatizing children or diluting history. It also conveys the ineffable belief that we, as Jews, have in history, ritual and a future.
With Maccabean defiance, these women literally dared to stave off the encroaching darkness with the humble flame of a candle. They transformed deprivation into Adam's holy asceticism. In the deepest and blackest of winters, they too found his optimism. And they expressed that optimism through the natural pageantry of the Jewish holidays. Anything that merited so much risk was surely for the children. That is at once jolting and inspiring, the essence of the best and most lasting of Hanukkah gifts.
Judith Bolton-Fasman is an associate editor at Jewish Family & Life!, the online magazine at www.jewishfamily.com, which originally published this article, and is the editor of JFL's book section, Jbooks.com. This article was redistributed to member newspapers by Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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