Month: December 2023

Put on your yamaka, it’s time for Hannukah……

Contrary to Adam Sandlar’s song about “eight crazy nights” of presents, Hanukkah is not Jewish Christmas. Hanukkah celebrates a small band of warriors led by Judah the Macabee – Judah the Hammer in English – defeating a great army and retaking the temple in Jerusalem. Temples have eternal lights. At that time, the light was lit by oil. Now, the eternal light is lit by an electric bulb. Once the temple was retaken, the eternal light had to be lit. But there was only enough oil for one day. It would take eight days to fetch more oil and return. That one day’s worth of oil lasted for eight days.

A Hanukkah story written by Woody Guthrie’s mother-in-law and set to music by and sung by Woody is here: https://youtu.be/mpg-kkwXpwE?si=FYrFBOmAEIaVH9Y8

In 1888, Karl Tiedemann, his wife Augusta, and their 10-month-old daughter Otelia boarded a boat in Hamburg, Germany climbed down into the hold of the ship where the not rich folks lived dormitory stile with utterly no privacy and little fresh air, for a three-week voyage to the New World. Think about that for a minute. No disposable diapers. No bottles of formula. Otelia got nursed in public and her diapers were washed out by hand. Karl and Augusta spoke Yiddish and moved to a country where they had to learn a new language. How desperate would you have to be to make that voyage?

I’m alive because Karl and Augusta were desperate enough and had enough good sense to leave Dittersdorf, East Prussia. On Kristalnacht, November 9, 1938, the good people of Dittersdorf and surrounding area rounded up every Jew they could find and murdered all 2000 of them. That’s why the pro-hamas rally held at New Mexico State University on the anniversary of Kristalnacht was so offensive to me.

Karl and Augusta came to the US disguised as German Lutherans. They were neither. They told their grandchildren, all of whom only spoke English, that they spoke Hoch Duetsch – a highly grammatically correct version of German. They probably did. At that time in East Prussia, all business was conducted in Hoch Duetsch.

My grandmother was Otilia’s daughter. By the time I came along in 1952, the family myth was firmly engrained and taught to me. I was taught to never, under any circumstances, do anything to make someone think I’m Jewish. I was also taught to respect all religions. My grandmother nearly had a heart attack when I told her I ate a bagel in a diner. Oddly, my grandmother then started buying bagels, toasting them, and making bagel sandwiches.

One day, my grandmother rattled off the names of herself and her siblings: Sydney, Benjamin, Esther (my grandmother), Harold, Alfreda and Naomi. “We sound like we’re Jewish!” One day, my grandmother told me what her grandmother, Augusta, said. “And she spoke Hoch Duetsch!” Not like that she didn’t.

Every holiday, there were lit candles on the table while we ate. The candles were always held in candleholders that were Otilia’s. It wasn’t until I got married that I discovered candles during holiday dinners weren’t ubiquitous.

We were different.

Years later, I read the same phrase that my grandmother used in a book written by Faye Kellerman and realized, we are Jewish. Eventually, I chose a Jewish psychologist to help me through mental misery. He asked me who taught me to be Jewish. Huh? What was he talking about? Is that why I was so attracted to Jewish friends I had collected in school?

I have my grandmother’s candlesticks that originally belonged to her mother. I believe they were Otilia’s shabbat candlesticks.

I worked in the NM Public Defender Department for 16 years. Every December, the office was – illegally – decorated like Rockefeller Center for Christmas. There was no menorah. Although it was forbidden by the head of my office, I snuck a ceramic menorah I had made specifically to sit on the windowsill of my office window into my office. Jim took dowels and whittled them into “candles.” Every night before I went home, I put another candle in the menorah. Because no one knew what it was, I was able to hang a mezuzah next to my office door.

Thursday, December 7, after sundown I will light the first candles of Hanukkah. The ceramic menorah I made sits in a window. Sometime during the eight days of Hanukkah, I will make latkes. There will be no presents.

I am proud to be seed of the Jews.

חג שמח, chag samaech, happy Hanukkah.