A Noahide Chanukah Diary
“I printed up instructions for how to light the candles, where to place them. We celebrated with an awkward tension. How do we do this? We have no cultural references.”
Last year I bought a chanukia (Chanukah candelabra) so we could celebrate Chanukah for the first time as a family. For Bnei Noach to venture into the area of celebration is a bit nerve-racking. We know what not to do. But celebrating is positive and linked to cultures that we are most likely not a part of. I was excited to bring some celebration into our home, to establish some meaningful traditions as a family. I bought a too shiny, silvery chanukia with a music box underneath. Truthfully, it was not the one I wanted.
I waited until the day before Hanukah to shop for one and the selection was limited. There were the tacky and wacky theme chanukias. Does the world really need chanukias depicting a crazy old lady in wacky glasses, running with arms full of shopping bags? Or a tired moose with candles on his antlers? I vote no. Then there were the elegant and hand-crafted, high-end jobs. I could see the craftsman sitting in his ancient little workshop in the mystical city of Tzfat, tapping away ever so gently to achieve the perfect hammered detail in the light of his beeswax candles. I pondered and pondered, going back and forth between different models, picking them up, looking at them from up high, from down low, bugging the heck out of the saleslady. Tzfat option ‘A’ was snatched out from under me by a more decisive and hip looking dad with his little daughter. Happy Chanukah kid, you got the prettier one. That forced me to pick the too shiny, generic model that plays a song I do not know. Gam zu letovah. This too is for the good.
With a sigh of relief the woman rang me up. “Iz good, iz nice. A classic,” she said. I brought it home and set it up. I printed up instructions for how to light the candles, where to place it in the home. We celebrated with an awkward tension. How do we do this? We have no cultural references. I want this moment to be imbued with meaning, to be fun for my husband, to capture our son’s attention. Nope. It was pretty much just plain awkward. Do we sing songs? We eat latkes, sure – that we can do. My husband cooked up a lovely batch that we covered in organic chunky applesauce. Delish. That was about it.
This year I was curious to see how it would go. I felt like it could be better this year. I was pumped up, feeling more confident. God doesn’t want perfection from us, I kept telling myself. He wants for us to try our best. I got another latke (potato pancake) recipe, from Martha Stewart of all places, and a recipe for pink applesauce, thank you very much. No store bought for us. A few days before the first day of Chanukah I got our son some terrific little religious books – perfect for a three-year-old from the used book store. It was a sign I felt. This year it was going to be better. I mean how often do you find six or seven kids’ books about Chanukah and Torah that are perfect for your toddler at a used book store? Give me a break! Daniel and the Lions, Jonah and the Whale, a lift-the-flap Chanukah book with no less than 27 flaps all intact, and David and Goliath, which I felt sure would be his favorite. I even left a few at the store so as not to be greedy.
The first night went OK. I retrieved the chanukia and pulled it out of the packaging. Little Styrofoam pills were stuck to the wax from last year. The wax from last year, the red and blue drips, made me feel sentimental. Those are the drips from our first highly imperfect Chanukah. Nice. I set it up the in the window above our dining room table, a perfect public yet convenient location. I prepped the candles that are too fat on the bottom and did a new printout of the prayers, only this year I carefully modified them to be appropriate for Bnei Noach. That felt strange, but then again, Hashem is not seeking my perfection, I reminded myself. My husband lit the candles and everyone recited the blessings as I read them off bit by bit, hoping God would approve of my wording. Jake mumbled the jumbled up words in a precious toddler-y way and occasionally pronounced a real doozy with perfection, “..sustained us and enabled us!” We were wowed. The candles burned the requisite half hour past sunset and then melted down the arms. Drips from our second Chanukah.
The next day at our twice monthly Bnei Noach Torah study, I confidently proclaimed to our group “Oh, and Happy Hanukah, by the way, ” flipping open my notebook. The rabbi looked at me, paused and said, “Oh yes, that starts tonight.” Tonight. Oops. OK, so there was some premature celebrating. Now I am clearly going to burn in hell because I am sure it says somewhere in the Talmud, tractate something or other, that people who light the candles on the wrong day have negated the prayers of all of their family for the past year. God forbid. I sat through two hours of Joseph revealing his identity to his brothers, feeling like a big jerk. Had I been Joseph, I would have screwed that all up and announced it too early.
The next day I revealed to the rabbi and his wife that I had messed up and started a day early. They just laughed, so I figured my fears of gehinom (hell) may have been overblown. I explained to my family that we had had a practice run the night before. Night one, part duex went great.
Night two, we were on a roll and I got over-confident. Before I knew it, we were rushing around, juggling dinner, a Chanukah gift for our son, my husband trying to leave for a hockey game- it was not good. Where are the matches? We give our son the gift too soon. Then we try to take it from him, realizing he is not going to recite the blessings with us while distracted by the present. Big mistake. He starts yelling. This is not the right mood. I am interrupting the blessing to threaten a timeout. I am pretty sure that is not supposed to happen. We get him to calm down long enough to say the blessings too loudly and with tension and right before the last line, Jake belches his head off. I resist yelling, “Say you are sorry to Hashem!” because that sounds strange. This is like the anti-Chanukah. What is happening? My husband hung around until we regained some normalcy. I sat my plate down at the table and told him it was OK to go. My son chowed cutely on his peanut butter and jelly taking big bites out of each quarter. The candles burned and reflected off the window. “This is nice,” I thought. A piece of wrapping paper floated a millimeter away from the flame, I leapt up and snatched it in a panic, which wrecked the mood again. A Chanukah immolation averted, relaxing vibe ruined. Why can’t this go well, Hashem? We are trying.
I picked up the copy of “Jonah and the Whale” our son had earlier cast aside in a huff. I read it to him. “This is Jonah. He lived a very long time ago in a country called Israel. He was a good man who believed in G-d.” So far, so good. Jake likes it. On the next page Jonah is pulling the sheets up over his head because a voice is booming through this window, “Go to Nineveh!” said G-d. He laughed like Jonah has just been sent to his room. He can relate to this. “Jonah didn’t want to go.”
We read the book two more times on the couch, adding lines and voices each time, and then one more time in bed. He loved it, especially the part where the whale spits out Jonah on to the beach. Jake said, “Git out my tummy!” I close the door to his room and sit on the couch while the candles get shorter and shorter.
“Chanukah number two was good, Baruch Hashem,” I wrote in my diary. “And I am beginning to love our little menorah and the plinky little song it plays.”
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