Free How I Saved Hanukkah by Amy Goldman Koss Page B

yesterday. “So I’m taking the red-eye back to Washington tonight.”
    “Cookie has red eyes,” Ned said. That’s the pet white rat at his preschool.
    “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Cookie had the seat next to me!” Dad said. “I often sit next to rats who snore. Or worse, rats who wake me up to tell me
I
snore.” My dad thinks he’s hilarious.
    “Daddy’s just kidding,” Mom said, shooting Dad one of her looks.
    So my dad told Ned that it’s called a red-eye flight because you get so tired being on an airplane all night that you get red eyes.
    “You’ll see,” he said, “when I get home.”
    When we got up this morning, my dad was gone.
    *    *    *
    Anyway, it was the first night of Hanukkah, so my mom got out the menorah (that’s the Hanukkah candle holder). I lit the shammes (that’s the candle that you light all the other candles with). Then I handed the shammes to Ned, who nearly roasted himself and dripped wax everywhere while somehow managing to get his candle lit.
    My mom and I sang the song we always sing when we light the candles, and Ned barked along.
    Oh Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah, come light the menorah!
    Let’s have a party, we’ll all dance the hora.
    Gather ’round the table, we’ll give you a treat.
    A dreidel to play with, and latkes to eat.
    And while we are playing, the candles are burning low.
    One for each night, they shed a sweet light
,
    To remind us of days long ago.
    One for each night, they shed a sweet light
,
    To remind us of days long ago.
    “We don’t dance the hora,” I said. “Why does the song say we dance the hora?”
    “Because it rhymes with ‘MENORAH’!” my mom said. “Should it say we’ll go to the store-ah? Sit on the floor-ah? Invite cousin Laura? What if some Jew somewhere doesn’t have a cousin Laura?”
    I knew that the fastest way to get through the whole stupid thing was to not ask any more questions, but one slipped out. “So which ‘days long ago’ are we supposed to be reminded of anyway?”
    “It’s that war between King Whatshisname and the Maccabees,” my mom said, shoving her slippery brown hair behind her ears, like she does.
    Ned and I didn’t know what she was talking about, so she told us the Hanukkah story. Mom’s version:
    “Two thousand years ago the Jews were minding their own business, going to Temple to worship their one God. Everyone else at the time was into multiple gods and idols and whatnot.
    “Anyway, the bad guy, King . . . Antiochus, came along and said, ‘From now on it is against the law to be Jewish, and anyone who observes any Jewish tradition will be punished as a criminal, taken as a slave, beatenup, and killed. And if you don’t put Christmas lights on your Temple, then I am going to huff and puff and blow it down!’”
    “MOM!” I said. “There were no Christmas lights two thousand years ago. They didn’t even have electricity!”
    “Well, if you want to get picky about it,” my mom said, “there were no Christians or Christmas yet either. But that’s not the point.
    “A Jewish family called the Maccabees,” my mom went on, “said, ‘Not by the hair of our chinny-chin-chins!’ So the king’s soldiers blew the Temple down. Then they did the rest of the usual rotten war stuff.”
    Ned started making machine-guns sounds.
    “Guns hadn’t been invented yet, sorry,” my mom told him. “Maybe swords or slingshots or something.”
    Ned’s gun noises made me think of my dad. If he were here, he would probably put in antiaircraft missiles and sound effects like explosions and dying groans. That’s what he does with the Civil War.
    Ned thinks that stuff is a hoot. I think both my parents are bizarre.
    My mom pushed her hair back and said, “TheMaccabees fought using sticks and stones and stuff. They were just a tiny band of Jews against the king’s powerful army. Miracle number one: The Jews won.
    “Then they fixed up the Temple. They wanted to relight their lamp to