Free How to Spell Chanukah...And Other Holiday Dilemmas by Emily Franklin

had expected stuff like that from hicks in the sticks hours away, but not in the cozy resort town I loved and certainly not from a leader of that generally kind community. I was so incensed I haven’t gone into a church since, and while obviously not all churches are Our Lady of the Snow, I started having the sneaking feeling that that kind of sermon occurred often and in far more incendiary decibels than I’d experienced. That was seven years ago. I’ve since adored returning every year and relish that time away, but I must admit I never pass that church without remembering the experience. The current me would have stormed up to the priest after and blasted him, but I was in a vulnerable post-breakup state then, exhausted and in shock. Yet going through that strengthened me. See, I wasn’t always Super-Jew.
    My brother, who has blond hair and blue eyes, has often been mistaken for a gentile, and more than a few times he’s overheard various slurs against Jews, spoken by people never suspecting he was Jewish. I, on the other hand, look more stereotypically like a Jewess, so I never heard any weird remarks of that nature. And while I was dragged kicking and screaming to Sunday school, my brother excitedly went and flourished — he even wore a star of David, which at the time I found a tad excessive. But things slowly changed after the whole midnight Mass thing — and a failed relationship with a gentile guy whose mom, in trying to bond with me, said, “Guess what?! We went and rented Schindler’s List last night!”
    Through the years, I got stronger and stronger with respect to the importance of my Jewish identity, and after dating scores of reversible-names Mayflower people (example: Rutherford Wellington could be Wellington Rutherford. Doesn’t quite work with Abramowitz Ari, does it?), I met and married an NJB, a nice Jewish boy. He loves our time in Idaho and loves spending Chanukah there every year.
    And now that we have children of our own, I realize the importance of these traditions as building blocks for who they are. My daughter Sadie, who somehow flukishly got my brother’s recessive coloring, which blends in more with homogenized Pacific Northwest than melting-pot Manhattan, will in all likelihood be exposed to the same subtle riffing my brother endured. And I need to make sure she is strong enough to deal with it. A good start is by creating firm touchstones like my parents did — patterned experiences that will always help her return to her family and, ultimately, to herself: yearly moments filled with songs and light and love, like our family made in Sun Valley, a place with firm traditions that honed and strengthened our identity even further than our New York roots by taking them and transplanting them far away in our little family nest perched in nowheresville. So what if our little blue and white candles feel rare — we make our own temple in our closeness and warmth, our teeny snow-kissed congregation of seven, and that nearness means more than any yarmulke head count.

JONATHAN TROPPER
    Rock of Ages
    E VERY C HANUKAH, THE CHOIR AT MY J EWISH DAY SCHOOL PERFORMED TWICE: ONCE AT THE SCHOOL’S ANNUAL C HANUKAH C ELEBRATION, AND THEN THE NEXT DAY AT THE NEIGHBORHOOD’S LOCAL PUBLIC SCHOOL, TO BRING A LITTLE C HANUKAH SPIRIT TO “LOST” J EWISH KIDS WHO WERE INUNDATED WITH C HRISTMAS MARKETING AND KNEW NOTHING about the miracle of Chanukah but were more than happy to tolerate our singing if it meant missing some class. Our choir was composed of about thirty girls and twelve boys from the sixth through eighth grades.
    Fact: Most kids possessed of a functioning set of testicles did not join the choir.
    B UT I DID, for the same reason that boys and men have always done stupid things: because of a girl. There were eleven other boys in the choir, and while I never confirmed it, it’s a safe bet that they were all similarly motivated. Except