Areas of Unrest

24 December 2000 - Chappy Chanukah!

QOTD: "Ask advice, but use your own common sense." - Yiddish proverb

Reading: Eric Idle, The Road to Mars

Listening to: Theodore Bikel Sings Jewish Folk Songs

Actually, Chanukah started Thursday night, but I've been too wiped out by this blasted cold to write. I'd thought I was better and went into work on Thursday and Friday, followed by a complete return of every cold symptom known to mankind. Sleeping most of the day yesterday helped some, as did eating chicken soup, but I'm still not quite recovered.

One consequence was cheating and heating up frozen potato latkes (from Trader Joe's). They aren't bad, but they're not like my mother's, which are the best. And to prove it, here's her recipe:

5 medium to large potatoes
1 medium onion
1 carrot
1 large egg
matzah meal
oil for frying

Peel potatoes, onion and carrot. Grate all of them using the fine grater. Do not under any circumstances use a blender or food processor, as the texture will be all wrong. It's best to find a child or two to grate the onions for you.

Beat the egg and add it. Add enough matzah meal to make a thickish batter. Fry in an inch of oil in a heavy skillet. Drain on paper towels and serve with granulated sugar.

I should explain that apparently granulated sugar is the right Litvak (Lithuanian Jewish) thing to do and the notion of eating latkes with applesauce was unknown in our house. Personally, I like sour cream, but I like sour cream with pretty much anything.

On a more serious note, I find that my attitude towards Chanukah has improved tremendously over the past few years. I enjoyed it as a child, of course, reveling in little gifts and chocolate coins and betting with my brother on which candle in the menorah would burn out last. We always lit candles and then put on an electric menorah after the candles burned out. We treated that as morally superior to people who just had an electric menorah.

Then I got into this whole period of being annoyed at how much attention Chanukah gets. If you ask the average American to name a Jewish holiday, it's almost certainly the one they'll name. Maybe they've heard of Yom Kippur or Passover, but I doubt that one in a hundred would have any clue as to Sukkot or Shavuout. And Chanukah is a minor holiday, being of the post-biblical era. I still lit the menorah, but I also lectured people annoyingly when they wished me "Happy Holidays," pointing out that they were really a couple of months late if they were sincere.

I don't know what changed, but it doesn't bother me as much any more. I'm polite enough not to lecture people who are just being ignorant, not malicious. But, more to the point, I've thought a bit more about what Chanukah really means and realized it really falls at the perfect time of year. The history is that the Maccabees were, essentially, religious revivalists, fighting the assimilitionist tendencies of Jews who wanted to be absorbed into the Hellenistic world. The act of lighting a menorah, of remembering the rededication of the Temple, is the perfect anti-assimilationist message. Maybe somebody seeing the candles burning in my window is reminded that the U.S. is not a Christian country.