Category: Hannukah

Posted in Antisemitism, Hannukah, Judiasm

You’d Think After 5786 Years They Would Give Up

Posted on by debthumanblog

There were armed guards. There was enhanced police protection. Guards and police scanning the rooftops in search of snipers. Scanning the crowd of families looking for terrorists.

I wasn’t in a war zone. I was at a public Hanukkah celebration in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The day after a terrorist attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia. Before I left, I told Jim that I’d leave the celebration at the first sign of trouble. We both knew that I meant I’d leave when the first bullet struck.

People have been trying to wipe out the Jews for 5786 years. We are still here.

Hanukkah is the celebration of a tiny band of warriors defeating a huge army. A celebration when we threw them out of our temple, cleaned out their gods, and consecrated the temple. When we took back what is ours. The Torah. The right to study Torah. The right to pray. The right to be Jewish. There’s an eternal light in temples that must never be extinguished. Today, that light is electric. Then, the light was oil. But there was only enough oil for one day. Some went off in search of the proper oil. It took them eight days to get the oil and come back to the temple. That one day’s worth of oil lasted eight days.

Hanukkah is when I remember we are still here. We have never been defeated. We survived the Spanish Inquisition. We survived the Holocaust. We survived Hamas and Hezbollah. We survived being shut out of neighborhoods and jobs. My great-great-grandparents lived by the rule of never doing anything in public that would cause someone to think they were Jewish. They lived in secret because they lived beyond the Pale of Settlement. We’ve had setbacks, but we are still here. We have a homeland. Even in the middle of a war, Israel is still the only place on the planet where it’s safe to be a Jew. We are a mighty, tiny group. 0.2% of the world’s population. Since the beginning, we have had to fight for our right to exist.

When was the last time you went to a Christmas party and there were armed guards, extra police scanning the crowd looking for terrorists. Scanning the rooftops looking for snipers. Trying to stop trouble before the first bullet flew.

Posted in Hannukah, Judiasm

חנוכה

Posted on by debthumanblog

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.