Lighting up Chanukah

Chanukah begins this year on the same day as Christmas. It brings to mind a very difficult time I had when I was nine years old. I was the only Jewish kid in my class in Duluth, Minnesota.

I was the only one in my class who was not celebrating Christmas

unsplash photo by Tyler Delgado @creatd

While all of the other children were getting caught up in the excitement of Christmas, singing Christmas carols at school, and bringing in decorations and lights and talking about the presents they were hoping to find under the tree, I felt as if I alone was denied this wonderful experience of the Christmas celebration.

It wasn’t a Jewish thing to do. I was an outsider.

unsplash photo by Robert Zunikoff https://unsplash.com/@rzunikoff

In our home, we would have Chanukah. Yes, there were candles to light and prayers to be sung and the family would gather for our celebration. We would have delicious latkes and jelly donuts, and spin the dreidel and sing our own songs. As a nine-year-old, all I could see was that while my classmates were shouting with joy at the lights and decorations and excitement of the Christmas holiday, the idea of spinning a dreidel just wasn’t going to cut it to make me feel better.

I began to question what value there was in being Jewish when you had to miss out on something as big as Christmas.

unsplash photo by Sheri Silver. https://unsplash.com/@sheri_silver

It was hard, truly painful in fact, because I didn’t know if I wanted to be part of a religion that was isolated from the joy and fun of this magnificent and magical celebration everyone else had gathered together to enjoy.

It all seemed terribly unfair and it hurt to be shut out.

The Christmas break finally came, and so did Chanukah. We had our celebration and lit our candles and ate our traditional foods but none of this was enough to lift my spirits. Our house was dark while all of the others in our neighborhood were ablaze with lights and heavily decorated trees and presents.

My older brother Jerry was distressed to see me so sad and came up with a daring scheme to shake me out of my glum mood. As soon as Christmas was over he invited me to join him on “an adventure.” It was bitterly cold, and Jerry was dressed in his warmest boots, shoving my heavy jacket at me and urging me to hurry up.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” he said with a laugh and thumped me on the back to hurry me along, as he led me to the back lane behind our house.

By this time, the Christmas trees were discarded, some left with bits of tinsel and paper where they waited to be transported to the dump. It made my heart break seeing them like that. I waited for Jerry to make a point about the sad look of Christmas past. But instead he explained his outrageous plan. “We’re going to find a tree to take home and give it a new life.”

“Do you mean decorate it and put it up in our home?” I asked with wide eyes.

“Yup.”

“What will Mom say?”

“I guess we’ll find out.” He pointed to a massive tree ahead. “ What do you think of this beauty here?”

The discarded tree Jerry picked was magnificent. Together we dragged it home and stuffed it into the Butler’s pantry.
photo by Merle E. Singer

To my great surprise, our mother said not one word about it.

The next day, when I came home from school, there was a large box waiting for me in the front hall at the foot of the stairs. It was Mom who had left it there for me, without a glance or a word of explanation. Inside the box, there were strings of lights, colored papers and garlands to hang. I set the tree up and took my time decorating it, and then moved on to making my own decorations from colored papers and popcorn. I covered the entire front room in decorations. Still, there was not one word of criticism from my mother. I was staggered but ever so grateful.

Mom saw past the “improprieties” to allow me to enjoy something very special. Her support for my need to find happiness was greater than her need to maintain her strict view of the “right way” to do things in a Jewish home.

My relationship with my mother was a complicated one and often difficult over the years. She had an outsized personality and a burning desire to keep things in order and to “take charge.”

What my mother did for me that December when I was nine remains in my mind as the kindest thing she ever did for me, and thinking about that these many decades later brings me happiness all over again and I am reminded it of it every time we celebrate Chanukah.

Chanukah, at its core, celebrates the resilience of Jewish identity, the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Greeks, and the miracle of the oil in the Temple that burned for eight days. It symbolizes the triumph of religious freedom, dedication to faith, and the enduring spirit of the Jewish people. I grew up in a home where this understanding of what it meant to be Jewish was firmly in place. Adding decorations to our holiday did not in any way diminish my mother’s view of the “Jewishness” of our home.

Over the many years in my career as a rabbi, the question would always come up about holiday lights at Chanukah, and I would often share the story of my childhood Christmas tree.

Personally, I like a lot of lights and I think there is a way to handle lights and decorations with the sensitivity that mother did that can make it a special family tradition in a way that works for your family without disrespecting your Jewish values.

When our children were young, Myra and I decided everyone in our family would light his own Menorah. To this day we follow that custom in our family.

Only once did we have a bit of a mishap. After lighting the candles, Myra turned to the kitchen to start bringing out dinner. A young visitor watched as a candle fell to the table cloth and dashed into the kitchen. “Mrs. Singer! Your table’s on fire!” The fire was quickly put out but the memory lives on in the stories my sons have continued to tell to their children.

As for the question of how we maintain our Jewish identity as we navigate our way through the Christmas and Chanukah season with minimal stress and maximum joy, my answer is that we live in blended community with many traditions from different countries and different religious customs.

As Jews, we place great importance on the commandment to love our neighbors. In this light, it is a very Jewish thing to help our neighbors celebrate their holidays.

This was the very essence of Myra’s desire to bring presents and holiday foods to a group of families in Boca Raton who did not have the money to make Christmas special. This is how the Giving Tree began. You can read more about that very first Giving Tree Christmas in December 1994 here.

In closing, I am including this video that I produced some years ago to serve as an invitation for a Chanukah party Myra and I were hosting at our home. Yes, Chanukah can be every bit as much fun and as exciting as you want it to be. Make your celebration this year one that will create memories that you will cherish for the rest of your life.

When I think of Chanuah and the religious holidays of the winter season, the light is reminiscent of our hope, strength and determination. For the Jewish community, the menorah’s illumination reminds us of our perseverence, freedom, and the magic of miracles. Happy Chanukah.

Shabbat Shalom,

—Rabbi Merle E. Singer

I was the only one in my class who was not celebrating Christmas

I began to question what value there was in being Jewish when you had to miss out on something as big as Christmas.

The discarded tree Jerry picked was magnificent. Together we dragged it home and stuffed it into the Butler’s pantry.

As Jews we place great importance on the commandment to love our neighbors. In this light, it is a very Jewish thing to help our neighbors celebrate their holidays.

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