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Bringing you the Buzz on Savings & Events
Volume 2, Issue 32
December 7th 2014
On ChanukaH
SUNDAY December 21
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Three Ways to Give Thanks this Chanukkah Chanukkah is a special time for us to say thank You for all the little and big miracles in our lives. by Sara Debbie Gutfreund
I
was sitting in a taxi on my way to Jerusalem. The traffic was growing slower, and I began to worry that I would be late for my clients. It was my first year working as a family therapist, and I had begged my supervisor not to assign me any Hebrew speaking clients. My Hebrew was decent but definitely not good enough to understand the necessary emotional nuances in therapy sessions. The couple that I was about to meet was the one exception on my English-speaking client list, and I was really struggling with them. Every time I met with them they would begin fighting in rapid Hebrew as soon as they sat down. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. My cell phone rang as the taxi inched its way forward on the road. It was my supervisor. “Can you please just assign them to another therapist who can actually understand what they’re saying?” I pleaded with her. “You can do it. Your Hebrew is good enough. You just need to be a little more confident. Don’t give up so easily.” Her voice sounded a million miles away as I glanced anxiously out the window and hung up the phone. The taxi driver looked at me in his rearview mirror. “Giveret, what’s wrong? Did you forget to say thank You to Hashem today?” I stared at his bare head and glittering Chai necklace. What was he talking about? “Do you think that today is just another day? Do you think He made these beautiful mountains with this sun setting into them for you to look out the window and frown at the wonders of the Creator? What happened?” At first I was so surprised, I couldn’t speak. But then I decided to tell him in my halting Hebrew about my clients. “I had a marriage like that too. We were always fighting. I can’t even remember what we used to fight about. But always fighting. And Giveret, I will tell you why. Because we didn’t know how to say thank you. Not to Hashem. Not to each other. I’m divorced three years now, but it didn’t have to be this way.” I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” I finally answered. This seemed to be the wrong response because the driver began yelling. “No Giveret, don’t be sorry! It doesn’t help to be sorry. Help them. Stop feeling
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sorry for yourself and help them. Here take this.” The driver turned around and gave me a tiny blue key chain that had the words “Thank You” written on it in Hebrew. “I can’t take this,” I said, trying to give it back to him. “Take it! Give it to them.” “No, you don’t understand. A therapist can’t give gifts to her clients. It doesn’t work that way.” But he waved his hand in protest as we pulled up to the office building. “Remember what I said, Giveret. The Creator doesn’t make mistakes. Don’t forget. Today is not just another day.” Hesitantly, I slipped the keychain into my pocket and braced myself for the coming session. As soon as the couple sat down, they started to argue. I wasn’t even sure that they knew that I was there. After a few minutes, I finally spoke up. “I don’t understand a word you guys are saying.” The husband stopped yelling in mid-sentence as they turned to face me. “Which part didn’t you understand?” the wife asked. “All of it. Since you walked into the office. I don’t even know what you’re arguing about.” They stared at me in silence. I was so embarrassed. The room began to feel like it was closing in on me. Maybe I should have kept quiet. “Have you tried thanking each other for the little things?” I stammered in my American- accented
Hebrew. The husband erupted. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. Now I believe you. You haven’t heard anything we said. Our problems aren’t going to go away from thanking each other! Besides what do I have to thank her for?” I wanted to sink into my chair, but then the wife looked at her husband with a half -smile. “Hold on, maybe there is something here. It’s true we don’t say thank you. Maybe we can try.” I pulled out the key chain from the cab driver. The husband reached for it and cradled the tiny blue letters in his hand. “Thank you,” he read out loud, and for the first time he smiled, putting the keychain inside his pocket. Sometimes I wonder where that tiny keychain is today. And I often think about the cab driver’s words. Today is not just another day. Say thank You. This sky. This sun. This gift of gratitude. It was made just for you. Chanukah & Giving Thanks Chanukah is a special time for us to say thank You for all the little and big miracles in our lives. When we look into the beautiful, pure flames of the candles we remember that no day is just another day. There are blessings around all of us every moment, just waiting for us to notice them. This year during Chanukah, consider the following three ways to say thank you. (And not only on Thanksgiving.) 1. Write a letter. In a recent experiment, people were asked to write a short paragraph about someone who had transformed their lives. After ~ CUSTOM REUPHOLSTERY ~ they wrote the paragraph, the Experienced European Craftsman experimenter SERVING THE FLATBUSH COMMUNITY FOR handed them a 35 YEARS phone and told WITH QUALITY & RELIABILITY them to call the P L A S T I C C OV E R S person that they SLIPCOVERS • PLASTIC FREE HOME ESTIMATES just wrote about & FABRIC • TABLE PADS 718-787-1294 and read them WINDOW TREATMENTS
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what they had just written. Some of them didn’t know the number. Some people went to cemeteries to read their letter at the gravesite of the person they hoped could hear their appreciation. Others reached the person they wrote about and broke down crying as they read their words out loud. Across the board, the participants’ happiness levels rose by as much as 20 percent just from this exercise. So try writing a short Chanukah card or email to someone that changed your life. It’s best if you send it, but even just writing it reminds us how blessed we are to have inspiring people in our lives. 2. Keep a gratitude journal. On each day of Chanukah, write down three new things that you are grateful for each day. This trains our brains to search for the positive in our lives. After a month of keeping a gratitude journal, people begin to think more optimistically and clearly. They stop constantly scanning the environment for the negative, and they notice others’ strengths instead of their weaknesses. The half hour after lighting the candles is a special time for thinking about the new blessings of today. Share them with your family as you sit around the menorah. We look into the flames shining with hope, and we remember our own ability to turn darkness into light. 3. Act gratefully. Do one small act of kindness each day of Chanukah. Open a door for someone. Leave a note somewhere that will make someone smile. Pay for the person’s coffee who is behind you in line. Take a coat you never wear and give it to someone on the street. Give an anonymous donation. Smile. Send a Chanukah gift to someone who needs it. These small actions increase our own feelings of gratitude and create a chain of kindness. And like the tiny, blue keychain, we never know how far our gratitude will go. Take this gift and pass it on.
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My Last Line of Defense
How Chanukah kept me Jewish when all else failed. by Ross Hirschmann
G
holidays, or maybe it was because nobody had grand expectations of making a “Chanukah to Remember,” or maybe it was because no one particularly cared. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, Chanukah was relaxed and even fun. And it wasn’t because of the presents. Believe me, with five kids to shop for there weren’t a lot of presents. As a boy Chanukah had particular appeal because well -- let’s face it -Chanukah is a really good war story. It’s like D-Day for the Jews. My father was a decorated B-25 pilot during WW II and I grew up hearing his war stories. They captivated me. The battles, the heroics, beating the odds, successfully completing the “mission impossible” -- my father had done it all. But he did it as a part of the United States Army. Chanukah told the story how the Jewish Army overcame the odds and beat the stuffing out of the Syrian Greeks. The Chanukah story had everything dad’s war stories had: battles, heroics, beating the odds and completing successfully the “mission
rowing up, there was not much about Judaism that I loved, or even liked for that matter. Passover was a bust (the Four Questions was the only acting gig I met that I didn’t like), and don’t get me started on Yom Kippur (can you say, “Starvation without meaning”?). With my father making me miss high school football games and dances for something he called “Shabbos,” you can pretty much guess how I felt about Judaism by age 16. Hated it! But there was one Jewish thing that I connected with from the time I was a kid: Chanukah. I know it sounds so cliche to say that the only Jewish holiday a secular Jewish kid from Walnut Creek like me enjoyed was the one that occurred close to Christmas, but it’s true. I’ve always loved Chanukah. In fact, it was Chanukah that probably saved me from giving up on Judaism all together. As a kid, my house was not the place to be for the holidays. Any holiday. There was always so much pressure to have the “perfect holiday” that usually everyone ended up very
tense and unhappy by the day’s end. My father was always particularly tense around Rosh Hashana, but not without some justification. It was tough trying to get five little kids into the car so we could all get to temple on time to celebrate the festive New Year. But since we were always running late, (inevitably someone’s shoe was missing or hair wasn’t just right) we usually brought in the New Year in a manner that was, well, let’s just say “less than festive.” Yom Kippur was the same situation, different holiday, but with the added “wildcard” of a fast mixed in. Thanksgiving did not fare much better either. The turkey always took longer than the “meat guy” at Safeway said it would (which led to us reliving the Yom Kippur fast), the yams weren’t as good as the year before and the true pain of having to sit through yet another Detroit Lions football game on TV all added up to, well, not much fun. But Chanukah was different. Maybe it was because my dad lost steam after all the tension of the “big”
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impossible.” But Chanukah had something more: it had Hashem. The story of Chanukah not only gave me a sense of a proud and even “tough” lineage as a kid, but it also taught me what my mom always told me: You can always rely on Hashem to take care of you. Every night after we lit the menorah, we’d sing Rock of Ages. Even as a kid, my eyes always welled up with tears when we sang the verse, “And Thy word broke their swords, when our own strength failed us.” The thought that Hashem, with just one of His words, could break an enemy’s sword and defeat him for us was overwhelming to me. Somehow it got through to me that alone we’re helpless, vulnerable, defeatable. But with Hashem’s help we can do anything, overcome anything, accomplish anything. Even when we believe we can’t. Now that I am a religious adult, I see even more profundity in the Chanukah story. It’s still a great war story, but now I also realize that it’s a story about my own battles: first against Judaism when I was growing up, and now my present struggle to preserve Judaism within in my family. Growing up, I was surrounded by
the world of Walnut Creek, a world that encouraged me at every corner to assimilate into the general, American, Christian culture. As a kid I thought, “Well, that sounds good to me!” I mean who wants to stand out as “odd guy out” or worse as “Jewish Guy Out”? Not me. I was no Judah Maccabee. In fact I was just the opposite -- I was my own Syrian-Greek. I encouraged myself to assimilate as much as possible. But just like with the Maccabees, Hashem saved me from losing Judaism all together. The odds against this happening were great: all of Walnut Creek and secular culture versus Hashem saving one Jewish soul. The Almighty had to come up with something good, something powerful. And He did. He gave me a holiday I could enjoy, something Jewish that I could cling to. He gave me Chanukah. Having that allowed me to say, “Well, maybe I won’t chuck all this Jewish stuff just yet. Maybe it’s okay to be Jewish -- just a little bit.” In the end, as in the story of Chanukah, Hashem won. Judaism survived in me. When you become religious in your 30’s, however, you also face some pretty tough battles -- against yourself, against society, even against
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some well-meaning family members -- in order to preserve Judaism in your life and your family’s life. Sometimes it seems that the battles are overwhelming and the enemies too much to handle. But even in the face of all of that I realized that the battle has to be won because my wife and I, and our two little daughters are the last strong links to Judaism in both our families. We’re the last line of defense. So during the tough times, I think back to that verse in Rock of Ages and remember that Hashem can help us overcome anything, that He can help us save Judaism in our lives just as he helped the Maccabees so many years ago. My eyes still well up with tears when I think of that verse or sing it. Chanukah reminds me that Hashem is always there for us, and that if we just allow Him to help us fight our battles -- whatever those battles may be -- His word will indeed break our enemy’s sword. Maybe it’s that powerful reminder of Hashem’s love for us that makes Chanukah my favorite holiday. And maybe it’s that powerful message of Hashem’s love for us that kept me from abandoning Judaism during all those years I was so far from it.
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Hello Everyone, What do you know about Homeopathy? That it’s natural? That it tastes good and easy to give to your children? But what is it and how was it discovered? Homeopathy is a field of medicine discovered by a Dr. Samuel Haneman in 1895. He found that when you give a toxin to an ailing patient, which is similar to the exact ailment, the patient will heal. This science of prescription actually requires a great amount of specificity. The more specific the remedy, the greater the healing potential. But how did they discover what each remedy was good for? Doctors would use themselves as guinea pigs by ingesting the toxin and recording the symptoms until they found themselves in the throws of death. Then they would stop and possibly take the same toxin in homeopathic titration to detoxify. These toxins could be simple herbs such as chamomilia, and red pepper, or they could be poisons such as arsenic and lead. Many people question the validity of homeopathy, but it has gained great popularity among the masses. It was originally popular in European countries as well as in Russia where homeopaths abound. Even the Queen of England uses homeopathic remedies. I myself have seen amazing healing results both for myself, my family and my patients.
Seeing is believing as they say. About a month ago I was chewing on some hard, fibrous root vegetables when my tooth fractured down in its root. It was a major fracture of the bone, and it caused me a lot of pain. I need to have that tooth removed. It began to heal, however, two weeks later I began experiencing severe pain to hot and cold. The pain radiated into my jaws and up into my head. My dentist was kind enough to look at me late Wednesday night after my long work day. I thought it was a root canal in another tooth or maybe even another fracture. Upon careful evaluation, both my dentist and myself came to the conclusion that my pain was stemming from my TMJ. Since the extraction, my teeth had changed position placing tremendous pressure on my TMJ joint. (the jaw joint:) Most dentists are very good at what they do but the problems associated with healing the TMJ is still yet to be solved. So, I was left on my own to find a cure. This is actually how I developed much of the treatments for my patients who come into my office day after day. When I have experienced the same pain that you have, I have a better understanding of what you are going through. As I see what helps for me, I can use to help you as well. I try not to take pain killers because that would prevent me from finding out what is the cause of the pain. Yogurt to the rescue! One day, I was finishing my breakfast
with a fresh glass of goats yogurt when I noticed that my pain immediately subsided. Hmmm? Why did that happen? It must be that I’m lacking calcium! It felt good to be out of pain, but it felt even better to think that I found a possible solution for people suffering from chronic jaw pain! I ran out to the health food store and purchased a calcium/magnesium supplement. I’ve been taking approximately 1,000 mg a day and my jaw is no longer going into spasm and pain when eating or drinking cold/hot foods. Please bear in mind that this will work for TMJ pains of muscular origin. If you hear any clicking in the jaw, or if your mouth does not open straight (look in the mirror to see), then we need to do some chiropractic TMJ adjustments to fix the articulation of the joint. Also, the form of calcium is always important. So many people take calcium carbonate such as that which is found in tums. This is not properly absorbed in the intestines. One of the better forms of calcium is the calcium citrate. And, to make it more absorbable, drink it with orange juice. The added acidity increases the absorption. I hope you have learned something today. I know I have. Let me know if you have any questions or health concerns. Until next week......
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Feature
First night of Chanukah, 5715 December, 1954
“T
HEY GET PRESENTS ONLY ONE NIGHT,” MOMMY STRESSED. “But we get presents for eight nights!” I think she may even have held up eight fingers, to make sure we didn’t miss the point. I stared at her. I don’t know what my younger brother, Ricky, thought, but I was taken aback, insulted, hurt. Was that who she thought I was? Wanting or needing silly presents? Bribes?! I was not quite nine, but I knew what Chanukah was about. Didn’t I go to Sunday school — at least some weeks? I’d heard the story: Chanukah was about not bowing down to idols. I’d seen the rehearsals for the Sunday school Chanukah play, about Chanah and her seven sons, and how they didn’t bow down to idols, no matter what — not even the littlest one. Earlier that year, we’d heard the story of young Avraham who broke his father’s idols. I thought it was a really neat story. For weeks, I’d fallen asleep each night going over the story in my head, marveling about how Avraham went against the whole world — and to think that I was his great-great-great-something-granddaughter!
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RIVKA RIESMAN
Besides, when I was very little, Mommy had taught me to say the six words of Shema at bedtime, though that practice had long been forgotten. She had explained what the words meant: That there’s One G-d — not three, like Carol Ann next door and lots of kids believed. Not many like people far away in India believed. We were Jews and that was the best thing to be, because we knew this truth. Did my mother really think that I needed toys each night to keep me from celebrating a holiday for some other god? Each night, the presents got more elaborate and expensive (following some kind of principle of ma’alin, I suppose, escalating the festivities). Mommy had wrapped them with her usual creativity: in the shape of an orange-crepe paper candle or a silver menorah or a sky-blue Jewish star, an oil flask, or dreidel. Now that I think of it, they were presents that automatically reflected Greek values, because that was the culture we were living in. I remember a first-night gift: a set of bows and arrows, with suction cups at their tips, for Ricky and me together. We had fun with that for an hour or so, until we got bored and went back to watching TV, which was full of seasonal specials. I remember a big, round box of Faberge bath powder, its acrid fragrance tickling my nose, with a huge,
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fluffy green powder puff. Ricky got a baseball mitt. I remember a cobalt blue bottle of Evening in Paris perfume. My mother showed me how to dab it onto the insides of my wrists and onto my earlobes; she didn’t explain why I would want to do that. I remember a red satin jewelry box that tinkled out a melody, with a diamond-shaped mirror on the cover. And a fancy beaded sweater. And roller skates. And the grand finale — a big, shiny bike with training wheels. I was a nine-year-old bookworm; what did I care about perfume and beaded sweaters? I resented anything that tore me away from my books. I thought baths were a waste of time that could be spent reading; why did I need bath powder? Bikes and skates, I suspected, were just a ploy to get me outside, when I wanted to be inside. (There was a book in there among the presents somewhere, which I greeted with some interest; it turned out to be about a girl who worked hard to become a ballerina and finally made it to the corps de ballet. Even then, I remember thinking
WE WERE JEWS AND THAT WAS THE BEST THING TO BE, BECAUSE WE KNEW THIS TRUTH.
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THERE IT WAS, EVERY GREEK VALUE: BEAUTY, CULTURE, SPORTS... NOT TO MENTION MATERIALISM.
that she was working very hard just to dance around on a stage, and wondering why anyone would want to do that.) There it was, every Greek value: beauty, culture, sports…not to mention materialism.
Some friends were talking recently about substance versus image. Naomi mentioned Jackie Kennedy’s death, on a bed of silken sheets, how she arranged the room just so for the occasion, surrounding herself with her best-loved books and objets d’art. Sarah reminisced about how, during those Camelot years when Jackie renovated the White House, her name was synonymous with culture, fashion, beauty, wealth…image, mystique. “Who can imagine what the reality was?” she wondered aloud. “Was there a reality, beyond the appearances, beneath the surface…or was the surface all there was?” Ruthy commented that, in lashon hakodesh, the holy tongue, where each word is the essence of its meaning, the word for Greece is Yavan, which is written yud, vav, final nun — three straight lines, with no depth, nothing beneath the surface. “And after all,” she added, “Jackie Kennedy’s second husband was Greek…”
I guess my mother thought she understood children and what they really wanted. Or maybe, having lived through the Depression, she and my father valued money far more than their daughter, raised in the lap of luxury, ever could. But I still think she should have had more faith in me, higher expectations, more understanding of who and what I was. Toys, games, certainly clothes and perfume — none of these meant much, if anything, to me. I was glutted with them. It wasn’t that I was used to being given everything my heart desired. More that I was given everything long before it ever entered my mind or my heart to desire it. Besides, I was pretty cynical. Like all my contemporaries, I’d been raised on glitz and glitter and hype, and they left me cold. When we watched the Mickey Mouse Show sign off each afternoon with “M-I-C … See you next week! K-E-Y … Why? Because we love you!” Ricky and I exchanged amused glances that clearly conveyed, Oh, sure you do! How could you love us?! You never even met us! We were used to hearing commercials about
detergents that got laundry “whiter than white” and reading magazine ads with words like “sensational” and “out-of-this-world.” Watching Peter Pan, our eyes would narrow, looking for the invisible wires that we knew must be there to send everybody flying — and we didn’t bother clapping for Tinker Bell to come back to life. It had been too many years to remember since anyone we knew believed in Santa or the Tooth Fairy. And that book about ballerinas? There had been a time when I’d been awed by their ability to dance on the very points of their toes, but once my mother enrolled me in the Michelle Moreau School of Dance, I saw how the girls in the advanced classes put on their toe shoes, with a platform inside the toe that only made it look as if they were standing on their tippy-toes. Some might think my mother’s apprehensions understandable. After all, from Thanksgiving on, we were inundated, bombarded with “their holiday.” A boy in my class had a largerthan-life sled-and-reindeer scene lit up on the roof of his home. Strings of flashing colored lights hung everywhere, on every bush and light pole. There were trees with shining tinsel inside the library down the street, wreaths on neighbors’ doors, music blaring in stores and streets, seasonal stories in the magazines, department store display windows featuring outfits in red and green, and “Ho, Ho, Ho!” sounding from every downtown corner. At school, there were endless discussions among our classmates on the all-important topic of who wanted to get what. My class had been working for weeks on a mural of Santa’s workshop, covering the whole wall of the classroom. The best painters got to work on Santa or the elves. I was assigned to paint the tall slanted table on which he was filling in his ledger, my hand trembling slightly at the great responsibility as I carefully applied the brown paint. In ceramics class, we’d made lopsided mustard-yellow ashtrays for our fathers and pins to present our mothers. We’d cut out pointy leaves of limp, gray clay, painted them a hideous, liv-
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id green, added tiny berries of bright red. Fired and glazed with a tiny gold pin pasted on the back, it still didn’t look anything like any jewelry my mother ever wore. But the teacher knew everything, so I proudly presented the pin to my mother, who frowned and never wore it. And there were the rehearsals for plays and pageants… “Mommy! Mommy!” I came home one day in great excitement. “I’m the ‘Narrarrarrator’ for the class play!” Miss Williams had sat me on a big, red velvet armchair, front stage, in the school auditorium. A huge, velvet-covered book was placed in my hands, with a gold tassel of a bookmark. She’d stood way at the back and told me to start reading. I read with confidence and expression, loud and clear. After all, wasn’t I the best reader in the class? Besides, in those days when each school day began with such a reading, the words and cadences were familiar; I knew them half by heart: “And there were, in that same country, shepherds abiding, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And behold…” When I finished, Miss Williams was smiling. When I told my mother, she wasn’t smiling. She whirled around in the small kitchen, grabbed up the booklet of phone numbers that hung beside the phone, and dialed very fast. I could hear poor Miss Williams’s apologetic squeaking over the line, and my mother’s caustic answer, imitating her inability to say “Chanukah” correctly: “No, a Hahnakah skit is not acceptable, either! Religion has no place in the public schools!” She thought she was defending a principle of democracy, I suppose, but I wonder if her emotion wasn’t coming from somewhere deeper. And the school choruses... We Jewish kids snapped our mouths firmly shut and shook our heads obstinately, singing only the “neutral” songs about sleigh bells and winter wonderlands, but after half a century or more, have any of us forgotten the words to all those songs we didn’t sing? They were coming out of our ears, day and night. Yes, my mother’s apprehensions were understandable. But if she’d only known…none of that stuff was even interesting to me. I automatically filtered it all out as just
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so much more of the usual clamor and glare that inundated our lives all year round. What was interesting, what was strange and novel and different, was this: Each night, my busy, working mother stopped whatever she was doing, put a little gold-colored menorah on the television set (the natural focal point of our home, though the irony of that escaped me at the time), chanted the blessings from the back of the candle box, lit the tiny flames, and sang “Ma’oz Tzur.” How can anyone compare flashing colored artificial lights with a real, live flame? That moment of suspense when the tiny red glow touches the wick. Will it catch, or…? Then it sparks, flares high into a flame, sways and dances, now red, now yellow, now orange. Reaching, reaching… And then — despite having no lack of convenience-food goodies of every variety in the house — my mother went into the kitchen and hand-grated potatoes for hot, crisp, goldenbrown potato latkes with applesauce. Yum. True, it was only interesting for a few minutes; then Ricky and I were again absorbed in whatever television show was in progress (Mommy had timed the candle lighting for the commercial break, of course). But I can still clearly picture those few minutes of broken routine, while I remember nothing of those shows.
The mission of parenthood is manifold: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. There’s so much effort involved in keeping children fed, clad, shod, washed, combed, warm, healthy, happy, safe, educated — and coming up with the money to pay for all of that. But our parenting of bodies, hearts, and minds is only the backdrop of our true task: to parent souls — to kindle, with the fire of our own souls, the spark that will flare into flame and turn their souls to fire. And how can we touch their souls if we aren’t in touch with our own? So much was wrong in that great darkness that engulfed us then and still engulfs us now. But a little bit — tiny as a can-
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dle spark — was right. And a little bit is enough. “A little light pushes away much darkness.” There was a little light, and it was enough.
Rosh Chodesh Kislev, 5728 December, 1967 Fast forward thirteen years, and there I was, entering the shuk in Meah Shearim. I’d arrived in Eretz Yisrael just before Rosh Hashanah, and was boarding with a nice family, the Zeligmans. I went to the shuk every afternoon, drinking in the atmosphere, never getting enough of it. Hey, what was this? The home supplies store right at the entrance of the shuk had the usual display spread outside: plastic shopping baskets, basins, buckets, brooms, and… aquariums?! That was definitely something new. Though they were empty of fish, water, or anything else, I recognized them right away. My family back in the States had a long aquarium, running the length of one wall of our sun porch. My father had built it himself, and had made quite a hobby of raising tropical fish in it. There were neons, zebras, fan fish. Even the speckled, hideous ones were wondrous creatures in their own way. These were much smaller than the one we had at home. Some were square, some rectangular. The question was: What were they doing here at all? Were the neighborhood residents interested in raising goldfish? Walking on, I discovered that store after store was displaying aquariums! What was this, a new fad? Finally, I went into a gift shop, where I thought I might find some small gifts to send back to the States, to some of the children for whom I used to babysit. Mobiles of felt camels? Maybe. Cute kippot? Possibly. Ah! Wooden
dreidels! Just the thing! They were painted in bright, happy colors. I picked one up and turned it slowly in my hand, admiring the craftsmanship. Nun, gimmel, hei, pei … What?! That wasn’t right! It should be nun, gimmel, hei, shin! Nes gadol hayah sham. “A great miracle happened there.” How could such a mistake have crept in? I put down the defective dreidel and picked up another. But I soon discovered that the whole batch was defective. Did the shopkeeper realize this? Was my Hebrew good enough to point it out to him? I decided to try. Picking up one of the dreidels, I went over to the counter and pointed to the pei. “Pei?” I queried. “Lo pei! Shin!” The shopkeeper stroked his snowy beard, looking bewildered. Then his face cleared. “B’America, zeh sham (In America, it’s there),” he explained, pointing to somewhere far off in the distance. “Nes gadol hayah sham.” I nodded vigorously. He shook his head and said, “Nes gadol hayah po (A great miracle happened here).” Searching his English vocabulary, he came up with, “Herrre!” He pointed down at the floor tiles for emphasis. Despite the unseasonably warm weather, a chill passed through me. It started in my heels, traveled up through my spine, and rooted me to the spot. Here. It happened here. It was not some story of somewhere far away that you read about in books, but here. For real. If archeologists were to dig up these very floor tiles and excavate deep enough, they would discover relics of the Hasmonean Era. The miracle of the oil that burned for eight days happened in the Beis HaMikdash, within easy walking distance from where I stood. I bought a dozen of the dreidels and made my way home. C h u m y laughed appreciatively when I told her the story. “But Chumy,” I remembered, “you know what else? Something very strange that I saw in the
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I STOOD DRINKING IN THE SIGHT OF ALL THE SISTER LIGHTS SHINING DOWN AT ME FROM EVERY PORCH AND WINDOW ALL AROUND.
shuk. Aquariums! Why would they be selling aquariums?” “Aquariums?!” “Yes. Glass cases, edged with metal. About so big…” “Glass cases…” For a minute, she looked baffled. Then she threw back her head and laughed. “Those aren’t aquariums! Those are cases for Chanukah menorahs!” “Cases for… Why do Chanukah menorahs need cases?” “Well, you see, outside of Eretz Yisrael, people light their menorahs in their homes, because it’s considered dangerous to attract too much attention from the non-Jews. But the real mitzvah is to publicize the miracle. So here, where it’s safe to do so, people put their menorahs outside — and the glass cases are to keep off the wind and rain.” I thought of the frum families I knew back in the States. It was true. They lit their menorahs inside. For that matter, anyone who built a sukkah did so in their backyard. I thought of the Hillel House at the local university. Same thing. After all, they were just down the hill from the stately, columned buildings of Fraternity Row, each one with its Greek name of Theta Beta Omega or whatever. More than once, the Jewish fraternity had had a cross burned on its front lawn. No point in inviting trouble. I nodded. I began to take in the fact that here was, at last, a place where one could feel like a fish in water. The next day, I went and bought an “aquarium” of my own. A few weeks later, I lit my Chanukah lights in it. Outside. Then I stood drinking in the sight of all the sister lights shining down at me from every porch and window all around, as far as eye could see. And so, the tiny glow caught, sparked, flamed, fired…and is baruch Hashem, burning still.
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ביקור של כ"ק גאב"ד ירושלים שליט"א בניו יארק (חלק ב')
סיום מסכת ע"י תלמידי ישיבת וויעליפאל
שמחת החתונה של נכד ר"י ארחות תורה
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הגאון ר'מלכיאל קאטלער ר"י לעיקוואוד במסע למאסקווע עם נגידי ותומכי ישיבה גבוה ד'לעיקוואוד
עצרת הספד ב'ביהמ"ד לדרמן בבני ברק לז"נ קדושי הר נוף הי"ד בראשות גדולי ישראל
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Chanukah Shaindy Klein
A
typical Chanukah menu sounds as though it were planned by the undertwelve crowd: potato pancakes, fried, of course, in lots of oil; sweet cream-cheese rugelach; strawberryjam-filled donuts (sufganiyot) covered in powdered sugar; fried apple fritters; cheese-filled donuts fried in oil and dipped in honey; cheese blintzes; and more. Is it all just a ploy to keep kids lingering around the candles and enjoying a family meal? Not at all! Chanukah food traditions have their origins in the first years that the holiday was celebrated, and are meant to remind us of certain miracles associated with the events of Chanukah itself. And of course, remembering the miracles and the freedom that we’re all celebrating adds a special flavor to everything we serve… Why do we eat fried foods during Chanukah? Most of us are familiar with the miracle of the oil — that one day’s supply of oil lasted for eight days. And we know this is the origin of the mitzvah to light the menorah for eight days. It is also the reason why we have the custom of eating foods cooked in oil. But there are deeper connections between olive oil and Chanukah. Mystically, both the menorah and the oil used to light it are associated with chochmah, wisdom. The war between the Greeks and the Jews was also a war over whose wisdom would endure. The Greeks wanted everyone under their rule to think and study exactly as they
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did. They were violently opposed to the idea of G dly wisdom, and so forbade the study of Torah. Also, the word shemen, Hebrew for oil, contains the same letters as shemoneh, eight, the number of days that the miracle of the oil lasted. So now we know the basic connection between fried foods and Chanukah. But where did all the different traditional Chanukah foods come from? Over the centuries, different Jewish communities throughout the world have found a variety of ways to incorporate both oil and dairy (due to the miracle that occurred when Yehudis, daughter of Mattisyahu the High Priest, cut off the Greek general’s head after tempting him with wine and cheese) into their Chanukah meals. One of the most famous, Israeli sufganiyot, may actually derive from a yeast dough pastry mentioned in the Talmud. These pastries were cooked in oil and called sufganin (absorbent) because they absorbed a lot of oil in cooking. They did not contain milk, but were sweetened and perhaps even filled with honey. Since they were cooked in oil, they became a Chanukah staple early on. In India, the sweet yeast dough remained primarily a flour and honey or sugar combination, but milk and butter were added as well, making the Indian version of sufganiyot also a dairy treat. In Ashkenazi communities, where olive oil was scarce and expensive, goose or chicken fat was often used for frying. Potato latkes, apple fritters, and other nondairy fried foods became the norm, although today when olive (or other pareve) oil is affordable and commonly used, dairy is often added — usually in the form of a dollop of sour cream on top.
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3-dimenSional Flower Shaped FritlaCh One can’t get more traditional than serving fritlach on Chanukah. The sooner you eat these after making them, the better they are, although you might want to give them time to cool first! Ingredients: 3 eggs 5 T. sugar pinch of salt 4 T. wine 4 T. oil 2½ cups flour (more if necessary) oil for deep frying confectioners’ sugar for topping Directions: Combine eggs, sugar, salt, wine, oil and flour into a soft dough. On a floured surface, roll out the dough so that it’s paper thin. Cut out 3 circles with the floured rim of a drinking glass. Place one circle on top of the other. Press down the center of the circle with your fingers to stick all 3 circles together. Cut ½-inch slits all around, starting from the outside and cutting in towards the center, leaving approximately ½ an inch between each slit. Repeat with remaining dough. Heat oil in a frying pan for deep frying. Fry on both sides until golden brown. Remove and drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar. Serve fresh. Yeild: 10 Fritlach
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hints & tips If making and freezing yeast dough ahead of time, wrap with plastic wrap and let rise for a minute before placing in the freezer. This will fill all the minuscule air pockets with dough, eliminating freezer burn and that “freezer taste.”
SafeTY WhIle frYINg: The Home Safety Council recommends the following precautions when frying foods:
1
Do not leave the stove unattended.
2
Turn the handles of frying pans toward the back of the stove so that children can’t reach up and grab them.
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5
Keep dishtowels, paper goods, paper bags and curtains at least three feet away from the range when cooking. Roll up loose-fitting sleeves.
Keep hot pans, trays and foods away from the edge of the counter so children cannot reach them.
Have a safe and happy Chanukah!
doughnutS (SuFganin)
Donuts are a terrific old-fashioned treat. There are never enough to last eight days! Ingredients: 5 cups flour 1 oz. yeast 3 oz. margarine 2 T. sugar pinch of salt 1 cup water or milk 3 egg yolks 1/3 cup orange juice oil for frying Directions: Knead flour, yeast, margarine, sugar, salt, water or milk, egg yolks, and orange juice into a soft dough. Allow dough to rise in a warm place for 1 hour. On a floured surface, roll out dough to ½-inch thickness. Cut circles using the floured rim of a drinking glass or a donut cutter. Heat oil in a frying pan for deep frying and fry each circle for 2–3 minutes on each side, until golden brown. Remove donuts from oil with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels to absorb excess oil. Note: To prevent oil from burning, place 1 carrot into oil. Icing: White version: ¾ cup icing sugar 1 T. oil 3 T. boiling water (add more as needed very little at a time till desired texture) Brown version: Add 3 T. cocoa powder to the white version above Mocha version: Add 1 T. coffee granules, diluted in hot water, to the white verison above Place all ingredients in a bowl and mix by hand. Cover donuts in a variety of designs and colors. Have fun!
Yeild: 40 Donuts
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