CTJC Bulletin Chanukah 2021

Displaying the Miracle Pirsumei Nisa

By Barry Landy As my friends know very well, I have been a very keen skier for many years, and have very often taken a skiing holiday over the school winter holiday. Inevitably, since Chanukah and Xmas usually occur around the same time, many of these skiing holidays have included Chanukah. As a result, we have lit our Chanukah candles in some very strange circumstances.

Quite early in our family skiing career (1975?) we hired a flat in a chalet in Verbier. The chalet contained three self catering flats, and the tour company took us all in a bus from Geneva.

Much to my surprise a little way into the journey up pipes a voice "Aren't you Barry Landy?" I could hardly deny it! It turned out that the voice came from a student who had left Cambridge just a few years earlier, and he and a large group of Jewish friends were staying in the flat below ours. For the first and only time on such a holiday we had a minyan for -Shabbat and- for Chanukah too.

On another occasion we left home in the middle of Chanukah, when it was still daylight, and knew that we would not arrive in the ski resort until after dawn the next day. It was the third day of Chanukah - how were we going to light our candles? I solved that one in a rather eccentric, and possibly dangerous, fashion. We lit the candles in the car, while waiting in the port car-park for the cross channel ferry. I knew in advance how long the wait was likely to be, and how long the candles burned, and made sure that they would complete their duty before we had to drive onto the boat. I hope the people next to us in the queue enjoyed the (somewhat muted) strains of MaOz Tsur which emanated from our car.

This brings me to the title of this article, Pirsumei Nisa. or proclaiming the miracle. The Chanukah candles are lit in a very precise manner; one the first day, two the second, and so on, up to eight the final day; Page 14