It is Hannukah, and like its spelling, this Jewish Holiday has a variety of ways in which we celebrate, as to its origins, and both the spiritual and cultural lessons one might learn!
For my family, Chanukah (see, another spelling of it), was about the glow of the candles, and the very special MENORAH, from which the eventual 8 candles shone, dripped their wax, and soon melted, leaving behind a trace, a hint, a story of EXACTLY what THIS current year’s current events included. There was never a recipe or a set of directions as to HOW we should celebrate Hanukah (yet another spelling), BUT there was always the MENORAH upon which we lit the candles one evening at a time…ONE DRIP DROP OF WAX.
As kids, we had the official this was Grandma’s MENORAH. It was a plain, almost simplistic copper-made MENORAH! As my Grandmother would add, “a right to the point MENORAH, but it has been the one Grandma Braff purchased when she arrived in America, from Romania, and the one from which she embraced her new identity as an American, but retained her grasp on the days before, being a young Jewish Girl. As a parent starting my own family, we had the clay MENORAHS the kids made while at the JCC, and the family MENORAH, with the puddles of yellow, or white or blue wax, falling from the fingers of my kids.
For me, Hannukah- Chanukah- Hanukah, will remain, reasons why we persevere, we hope, we dream, and we fight to face the next horizon with fortitude and promise, DESPITE the VILLIANS of this world who seem to delight in this worlds DEMISE!
