A Presentation I Gave At Work

As part of a"diversity" series at work I was asked to give a talk about how my family celebrates Chanukah. Below is what I presented. It does stretch the truth a little but it is basicallyl all true. Enjoy!

To understand my family’s observance of Chanukah it is important to know where we came from. There were 3 different parts of my upbringing and particularly my Jewish upbringing which bring us to the way we will be celebrating Chanukah starting Sunday evening.


I was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in the Brighton Beach neighborhood. There were several very distinctive things that, I think, made growing up their unique. Firstly, almost every adult that I knew was born somewhere else and spoke heavily accented English. The other was that almost every adult that I knew had a number on their arm; the area had a very heavy concentration of Holocaust survivors. I thought it was quite natural.


I lived quite a sheltered existence. I really thought that everyone was Jewish. It was a shock when I got to PS 216 on Avenue X where the major question from my new classmates was, “you Jewish or Catlick”. It took me a long time to figure out that they were saying Catholic and an even longer time to discover that there were other religious denominations in the world.


It is a tradition at Chanukah to put the 8 branched Chanukah menorah in a window so that it is visible to the outside world. I remember at an early age during the nights of Chanukah walking around our neighborhood of apartment buildings marveling at the number of windows displaying lights and then hurrying home to see the lights in our own 3rd story window of the apartment where my mother still lives. It gave me a feeling of belonging.


Growing up my extended family would hold a Chanukah party. It was one of the 3 times in the year that we all got together. The other 2 were at Passover and Thanksgiving. Besides lots of food, singing and candle lighting there were 2 traditions that we carry on to this day. One is a grab bag. Each participant brings a gift of minimal value. It used to be a maximum cost of $5 but recently we raised it to $10. There is a whole system of giving out numbers and drawing gifts and then elaborate trading when you get something that you don’t want. This has no religious significance whatsoever but everyone enjoys it and looks forward to it.


The second tradition is to read a story out loud. Someone in my family found a book several years ago of Chanukah stories by the Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. Each year we pick a different one and read it as a finale to the evening. They are mostly stories about Chanukahs past in Eastern Europe that evoke for us a world and lifestyle that no longer exists.


When I was in my thirties (and before coming to the Times) my family lived in Israel, in the Galilee about 10 kilometers from the city of Nazareth. We lived on a kibbutz (a whole story in itself). If you don’t know what a kibbutz is, think commune, without the marijuana. Anyway, it was a small community with an agricultural base that was home to about 120 people. It was not a religious community but it did observe most traditions and on Chanukah each member of each family would bring their Chanukah lamps to the communal dining room and we would sing the blessings, light the candles, play games and eat together. Picture 100 or so lamps blazing. It can really take your breathe away.


The other cool thing that happened there was that the local community council organized events each evening at a different community so we would go out each evening, hear a concert at another kibbutz, see a play in a small town nearby, or see an art exhibition at another. In Israel this is truly the darkest, coldest, and most depressing part of the year. In January, flowers start to bloom but December is just cold, rainy, and unpleasant. If Chanukah didn’t just happen to fall then we probably wouldn’t want to get out of bed.


So, now I live in Westfield, New Jersey. It’s not a particularly Jewish place but every year we put together the best of our past experiences to create something fun. For each of the 8 nights that we are home we invite folks over and insist that they bring their Chanukah lamps. If they don’t have, we supply them. Everyone is required to light one. Another tradition of the holiday is to eat fried foods to commemorate the oil in the resanctification of the Temple in Jerusalem. Each evening my wife comes up with something different to fry. Of course, we have potato pancakes but we make homemade doughnuts, eggplant parmigiana, ricotta pancakes, and many other things that it is making me ill to think of. When all of the candles are lit we look at them from the inside and then run outside to see what they look like from the street. It never fails to impress me.


What makes Chanukah wonderful are the simple traditions that each family develops. Ours were shaped by a Brooklyn upbringing and an Israeli adulthood. Check back with me in a few years and I’m sure we will have added something from our experience in suburban New Jersey