|
|
|
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THIS FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS, I have a sense of life illuminated. This year,
the candles shed light on how our lives unfold, past, present and future.
The far past of the candles hails back to the Macabees and their saga of
Jewish survival, but in our past, survival is also the message. Out of history,
our families' ancestors came, emerging from the darkness of the steppes,
the pogroms, the concentration camps into the light of Chanukah in America.
The recent past is closer to our homes, the homes those travelers made.
In the flickering light, I can see my Russian grandparents lavishing us with
toys; my German grandmother always saving her gifts "for good;" her second
husband, our Opa, always gentle, doing little magic tricks, finding tiny
glass animals or shiny coins behind our ears. In the yellow flicker of time,
I find my mother hiding our presents each night under the linen tablecloth,
where they wait in tantalizing lumps until the menorah is lit. I see my two
little brothers, now tall and busy men in their forties, as small boys,
excited, sweet, impatient, happy.
Today's candles find our childhood family -- brothers, cousins, aunts and
uncles -- united around the menorahs, but living far apart from each other
with households in Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Florida. One of my
brothers sees a Manhattan office building out his windows. The other can look
past the candles on the menorah lit by his two little boys to see a quiet
street lined with Victorian houses in the New Jersey suburbs. From our house,
we see coconut palms and bougainvillea.
Each modern menorah is still a beacon of survival, a light shining
despite the Russian Army and the SS, despite modern divorce and rootlessness.
This is true even of those menorahs lit by relatives who practice little
religion today, who have no particular operating awareness of their links to
history, of their innate survivalist nature, or of their place in the modern
family of Yiddishkeit. Still the candle flames dance on their faces, and the
light knows.
Tomorrow's candles already glow for the next generation. The blazes light
the faces of other little boys: our nephews and our son. As our son solemnly
lights his own menorah, his teenage sisters standing beside him ignite
candles held in the menorahs they made in elementary school: the roll of clay
with holes poked in it for the candles, the board with bottle cap candle-brackets and ever-shedding glitter. I light the tree-branched silver
menorah that was a wedding gift 21 years ago, and my husband kindles the
oil-lamp menorah, the bright one, the flare that passers-by can see clearly
when they look at our window.
And while they are looking in, I am gazing out. I look back in time to my
grandmother as a small child in Riga, and to my mother holding my baby hand
as I kindle my candles, our house one the few with a menorah in our small,
southern mountain town.
Reflected in the glass, I see our laughing children, eager to rush from the
fresh candles blazing on the windowsill to the gifts now tucked under our
table cloth. They don't know yet that this moment of light is meant to last
forever. They won't understand its meaning — as ritual, root, security,
history, memory — until they stand up to light the flames alone...or with
children of their
Jewish World Review Dec. 26, 2000 / 29 Kislev, 5761
Festival of Lights
By Erica Meyer Rauzin
JWR contributor Erica Meyer Rauzin writes about the contemporary Jewish
condition. Comment by clicking here.
