Hanukkah came and went discreetly in the land of stale baguettes. Last week it was Thanksgiving and then BAM! – the Hanukkah bells were ringing. (Can someone see about getting Hanukkah bells?) Now it’s the last night of our Festival of Lights, and I have no menorah or chocolate coins to show for it. What I do have is a kitchen that reeks of oil and a new pair of socks (Night #1, bought ‘em for myself).
From what I’ve witnessed in Lyon and Roanne, menorahs in French windows are few and far between, and plastic blue and white Stars of David in windows even fewer and farther. Two cars were spotted in Lyon with florescent menorahs on top, but that was exceptionnel, according to the menorah-car spotter. (In French, “exceptional” always means “rare and unusual,” not “unusually excellent.” Although menorah cars are nothing short of excellent.)
Hanukkah is not widely recognized or celebrated here. There aren’t loads of French Jews, and the gentiles don’t know loads about non-Christian, non “pure-French” cultures. Please excuse this sweeping generalization, but it was expressed by a number of French gentiles and I’m pairing their words with my observations.
For my students, I combined a Hanukkah lesson with some preposition work. Try this on for an ego-booster:
Hanukkah means “rededication” __ Hebrew and celebrates one ___ the greatest miracles ___ Jewish history. Only one small jar ___ oil was found in the Temple, normally enough __ last one day. But miraculously, the lamp stayed lit ___ eight days.
Most of the kids had never heard the word Hanukkah (rather, “ah-nu-kah”), much less did they know anything about it. A handful had a vague idea about lighting candles and getting presents. The Festival of Lights part was familiar, though, because in France, December 8th begins the Catholic Festival of Lights, a religious celebration turned massive light installation honoring Saint Mary, who was Jewish (sorry, had to say it).
Other parts of the Hanukkah story were familiar for different reasons. Upon reading this sentence,
A small group ___ Jews, called the Maccabees, rebelled.
one girl exclaimed, “Oh! Ross talked about the Maccabees!”
For anyone without a TV or an issue of People Magazine (surely you’re better off without the magazine), she meant Ross Geller, a character on the show “Friends.” Ross and Monica, brother and sister, are the show’s token New York Jews. They bring a pretty authentic Jewish flavor to the show, whose production team is comprised largely of Jews. Holiday customs and Jewish guilt included!
I laughed and asked did she remember what Ross said about the Maccabees? No, just that he was wearing a strange costume (an armadillo suit, in fact) when he recounted the miracle of the oil that lasted eight days and the Maccabees’ triumphant recovery and rededication of the Temple (she only remembered the costume part). But for once, the exportation of American popular culture had helped my cause – name recognition goes a long way in the high school world! The others were impressed with Maccabee-Friends girl.
Back at the ranch, my German roommate knew a bit about Hanukkah and was delighted to learn that Jews eat latkes (potato pancakes, or potato fritters) – turns out they’re a popular German treat. Even better, the Germans also eat them with applesauce!
And so it happened that we hosted une soirée allemande-juive – a German-Jewish dinner featuring potato pancakes/latkes/Reibekuchen. We were an international group, as per uzh: two English boys, and the gals, Italian, German, French, Taiwanese, and American.
I turned the lights off and set the scene with some klezmer tunes (traditional Eastern European Jewish music), telling them the story of Hanukah and how we light candles each night to remember the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days, affording sufficient light to rebuild the Temple. I told them how we play dreidel…which is about as interesting as actually playing dreidel. 1) Spin the four-sided top. 2) See which letter lands on top. 3) Put some chocolates in the pile, take some out, or do nothing, depending on the letter. 4) Repeat.
Don’t get me wrong, one round of dreidel is great. But to quote Howard Jacobson in his Nov. 30 New York Times op-ed article, “Hanukkah, Rekindled,”
How many years did I feign excitement when this nothing of a toy was produced? The dreidel would appear and the whole family would fall into some horrible imitation of shtetl simplicity, spinning the dreidel and pretending to care which character was uppermost when it landed. Who did we think we were — the Polish equivalent of the Flintstones?
All the same, I was kicking myself for not tossing a few into my suitcase.
I concluded with a favorite Jewish saying: They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat.
The others didn’t know if it was ok to laugh at this, and I assured them it was. It’s what Jews do, after all, and what we always talk about doing – we recount our tragic stories, then we laugh, then we eat. Take Ross in that ridiculous armadillo suit, telling the Maccabees’ tale: he’s nothing if not a tragically comic – or comically tragic? – friend.
The latkes were a success, every bit as oil-laden as the Maccabees intended them to be. I think my German Jewish Oma (grandmother) would have been happy to see us there, plates and forks covered in oil, enjoying them together.
