Tag Archives: Hanukkah candles

December 19, 2022 · 10:32 am

The Chanukah Candles Challenge

by Dvora Treisman (Figueres, Spain)

In 2001 I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area with my cat and husband to live in Barcelona, his hometown. After a couple of years we moved to Tarragona, then further south to L’Ametlla de Mar, and then we divorced. At that point I moved to Figueres near the French border, the birthplace of Salvador Dalí. For all those first few years, I would go to the kosher shop of a synagogue in Barcelona to buy Chanukah candles. One year I made the trip, an hour by train from Tarragona, to find that they were sold out. I made do with votive candles. The next year I found that Chabad-Lubavitch had set up in the center of Barcelona, so I headed over to their shop to get my candles. One year a friend who came to visit brought me two boxes, so I was set for a while.

It was 2012 and once again I was on my yearly quest to find Chanukah candles. This was not like California where any supermarket would have them sitting on the kosher foods shelf next to the gefilte fish. I was now living in Figueres where, I am sure, I am one of only two Americans and the only Jewish person. I knew of the two places that sold them in Barcelona, but Barcelona was two hours away by train.

Girona, being only about 30 minutes away, seemed like a better bet. In medieval times, Girona’s Jewish community was an important center of Jewish mysticism. There are no Jews left, but there is a Jewish museum in the middle of the historic district. This is what was, in the middle ages and before the Expulsion, the Jewish ghetto, the area just bordering the cathedral. The museum has a shop with books, mezuzzahs, menorahs, and chanukiot, and would surely have the candles.

The entrance to the museum didn’t look how I remembered it from my visit twelve years before. When I entered, the spacious reception area was empty, except for the two young women sitting at the reception desk. Neither looked up as I approached, so I said “Bon Dia” and that roused one of them.

When I had visited before, the museum was called the Center Bonastuc Ça Porta. Bonastuc Ça Porta is one name used to refer to the famous rabbi, philosopher, and kabbalist of Girona, Moisès ben Nahman, also known as Nachmanides, also known as Ramban. Kabbalah uses ciphers among other methods in its mystical interpretations of the Bible. Maybe that accounts for why this rabbi had so many names. I asked if this was the place where the famous rabbi used to live. Apparently I had that all wrong. This was the Jewish Museum, the young lady informed me. It’s not a house, it’s a museum. It seemed she didn’t suffer fools.

Clearly this woman was not interested in welcoming me into whatever there was on offer, rabbi’s house or not. So I asked where the shop was and headed in there hoping to find more tolerance and, more importantly, candles.

The shop looked just as I remembered it. It has a dark, old fashioned bookshop feel, overflowing with books, and other curiosities, among them many menorahs and chanukiot. I asked the man if he had any candles for the chanukiot. No, he didn’t. I asked if he could direct me to where I might buy some. No, he had no idea. Probably nowhere in Girona, he told me. I don’t think it ever occurred to him that those decorations he was selling have a use, and he evidently had no interest in what someone might do with the candelabras if they bought one.

At that point, I felt disgusted with this Jewish museum that doesn’t welcome visitors and the Jewish shop that doesn’t stock candles for the menorahs it sells. It was time to move on.

I had met Jaye through my blog and we became friends. She was a New Yorker living in France near the border and we sometimes would get together up there or down here in Figueres. This time I took the train up, she hopped on at her station, and we went together to Perpignan. Her agenda was to go to an Asian grocery to pick up some ingredients, and mine was to find the kosher shop where I planned to buy those elusive Chanukah candles.

When we arrived in Perpignan we went first to the address I had found for the kosher shop. I was a little doubtful because when I looked up the address on Google maps street view, it showed a car repair shop. But I had some vague hope of a Chanukah miracle.

It really was a car repair shop. So on we went to do other things, saving the Asian grocery for last. Once there, while Jaye was collecting her cooking supplies, I began browsing around. I was enjoying myself going up and down every aisle when all of a sudden, zap! There were packets of candles that, although they didn’t have Hebrew on the packaging and didn’t come in mixed colors, seemed to be the same size as Manischewitz candles.

My Chanukah candles that year were all white, they were made in Thailand, and they fit my chanukiah perfectly. Two friends in California had offered to send me candles, but no need. I travelled two hours to a city in France and, in an Asian grocery, found the perfect candles that were made in Thailand. For modern times, modern miracles.

Dvora Treisman was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Los Angeles.  She moved to Berkeley in 1971 with her first husband where he attended graduate school at UC Berkeley and she found a job there in administration.  Years after their divorce, she married again — a Catalan from Barcelona whom she met while salsa dancing at the Candlelight Ballroom, and in 1999, at age 52, she, her cat, and her new husband went to live in his hometown.  This essay is excerpted from her recently published book No Regrets: A Life in Catalonia.  It can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, other online retailers, and can be ordered from your favorite bookshop. https://www.amazon.com/No-Regrets-Catalonia-Dvora-Treisman/dp/B0BM3SWN93/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2YWBQOOKV14B1&keywords=no+regrets+a+life+in+catalonia&qid=1670865953&s=books&sprefix=no+regrets%2Cstripbooks%2C170&sr=1-1

She is also the editor of the book Ken Nirim: Reflections and Stories, a Collaborative Project of Former Members of Hashomer Hatzair in Los Angeles, available from Blurb. https://www.blurb.com/b/11400592-ken-nirim-reflections-and-stories

And she has a blog called Beyond The Pale:  https://beyondthepale-dvora.blogspot.com/

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December 23, 2019 · 7:00 am

The Silver Lions

by Steven Sher (Jerusalem, Israel)

for Ari

This old chanukiah

brought over from Poland

from my grandparents’ home

that I lit as a boy

and my son now lights

and my grandson covets

these Chanukah nights

with its twin silver lions

standing guard over flames—

listen and you’ll hear

the lions roar across

a hundred years

rattling every window

on their watch, illuminating

Vilna then New York,

defending Jerusalem.

Born in Brooklyn, Steven Sher is the author of fifteen books. He made aliyah five years ago, and now lives in Jerusalem near his children and grandchildren. To learn more about him and his work, visit his website: https://steven-sher-poetry.wixsite.com/writing

 

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November 26, 2018 · 10:28 am

I Was the Dreidel 

by Madlynn Haber (Northampton, MA)

I was the dreidel, which was the starring role in the play called “The Dreidel That Wouldn’t Spin,” when I was 11 years old.  I can’t remember having any lines to say. But I do remember the costume. It was made of four pieces of cardboard, which formed a square, with elastic bands holding the cardboard up on my shoulders.

I can’t remember the story either. What was the plot? Why didn’t the dreidel spin? How did it resolve? I assume the dreidel found a way to spin. I like to picture myself twirling around on the stage—a swirling, tap-dancing dreidel in a great Broadway musical. But  that’s not what happened. There wasn’t even a stage. Just chairs set up in rows in a dingy basement.

It was a poor Jewish neighborhood after-school program, unaffiliated with any synagogue or congregation. That’s one of the parts that stayed with me, the lack of affiliation. Also the immobile dreidel, boxed in, unable to spin, stubbornly refusing to go along.

After the play, the cast gathered together around a menorah. We each said something as we lit a candle. It couldn’t have been the traditional blessings. It wasn’t a traditional Hebrew school. We learned Yiddish instead of Hebrew and believed in socialism instead of God.

I had asked to go to Hebrew school when I was in the fourth grade and after I found myself drifting into churches, kneeling and staring at the statues of Mary and Jesus. My parents couldn’t afford the price of joining a synagogue where I could go to Hebrew school and learn how to pray. Instead, they sent me to this secular Jewish school where I learned to play bingo in Yiddish.

I remember very clearly the image of my father’s face as I looked out into the audience above the light of those Chanukah candles. It may have been the last time I saw him in my childhood. Shortly after, he moved away and wasn’t heard from again. (As an adult, I tracked him down, found the rooming house where he lived, and visited him at the taxi company where he worked.)

On the day of the play, my father came to pick us up in a long, black Plymouth. It must have been shortly after my parents’ separation. We didn’t have a car when he lived with us, and he acquired the Plymouth right after he left. Coming down the front stoop with the screen door slamming behind us, my mother and I got our first glimpse of that car with its high fins. My father was smiling, a proud grin on his face as he opened the car door to let us in.

I slid into the front seat, positioned between him and my mother.  She shut the door and made a tight fist with her right hand.  Then, she sharply tapped on the top of the dashboard. With a slight sneer, she said, “Kind of tinny isn’t it?” My father’s smile faded. None of us spoke after that comment as we drove to the Jewish School.

Years later I learned the traditional Chanukah blessings in Hebrew. Memories of starring in that play return when I light the menorah. I remember the silence in the car.  I can see my father’s grinning face. I can hear my mother’s sarcastic voice. And I can remember myself when I was eleven and I was an immobile dreidel, unable to spin.

Madlynn Haber is a writer living in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her work has been published in the anthologies Letters from Daughters to Fathers and Word of Mouth, Volume Two, and in Anchor Magazine and a forthcoming issue of Exit 13 Magazine.

 

 

 

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