Alef: The NEXT Conversation
The Importance of Lights in Winter
By Ian Epstein
Connecticut winters are reliably mild. When the mercury drops into the teens, it’s an event. The single digits retain a certain exotic quality due to an infrequency you can count on two hands using single digits. Not so in Chicago, where I feel like a Connecticut emigrant living in a foreign country. Here, December is reliably gray and sometimes the sky is too cold to let clouds float at all. December in Chicago marks color’s departure as everything turns white or black or gray or gets covered in dust.
On one of these colorless days, I saw a family of three on a mission somewhere. The dad was carrying the baby in a backpack and mom was leading everyone down the street. They were on their way back from one of those urban forests that sprout every year in the weeks before Christmas, selling firs and spruces that have been bundled up and made available for the season, and forming small oases of evergreen along densely packed corridors full of concrete and brick. This mom and dad with the baby on his back were swaying slowly as they walked home with a fir tree held up between them. It was a bushy, sweet smelling blob of green, about the length of a person suspended in mid-air. The baby in the backpack greeted the color and smell with outstretched arms.
This is a trip I never made. Hanukkah, the holiday celebrated in my family, is about assimilation and resistance to it. It’s about the Maccabean rejection of Greek influence. Hannukah is literally a holiday about dedication – that’s even what the word means. And there’s an undercurrent that runs beneath the frying of latkes, twirling of dreidles, and the lighting of candles that says faith and dedication yield great rewards from what might seem like just a little oil and dim light.
But as a kid, Christmas was a holiday with bright lights and lots of gifts and those are powerful enticements. That’s the perfect recipe for young kids, who are drawn to that combination of things-you-want and shiny objects, like moths to the flame. Maybe it was the influence of these ideas that inspired me to snap a hemlock twig off a tree in our backyard. I stuck it in a block of wood with a drilled out hole and I crossed my eight year old arms. My holiday jealousy cobbled together a cliché and I had a Hanukkah bush, which I dedicated to my single digit perception of the holiday. I dressed the hemlock twig in lights that twinkled with the colors of my envy.
But then there on the street watching this family brave the gray and the cold, I suddenly understood something about this indoor tree in winter that had nothing to do with the things-I-wanted-but-didn’t-have – it was a seedling and a reminder that spring was on its way from very little green, not unlike light that miraculously lasts longer and longer. From that vantage, it was suddenly a lot easier to see the similarity between lighting candles night after night in your living room and pulling a living tree out of the cold to wrap it with light.
Photo by Ralph Hockens, licensed under Creative Commons.
A Decade's Send-Off
By Ruvym Gilman
2009 becoming 2010 was just going to be another December 31 journey towards January 1st. There would be a house party somewhere, red plastic cups with cheap alcohol, and a flat-screen-LCD tuned to video of a ball-o-lights gently gliding down a shaky pole in some far off place in TV land. But then I came across a recent article in New York Magazine that reminded me that we weren’t just approaching the end of a year, but the end of a decade. This, I thought, was a big deal, and an opportune time for introspection. So with 2010 looming, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on that disaster-less day of January 1, 2000 when the world didn’t collapse because of the Y2K bug and I could never have imagined what December 31, 2009 would look like.
By now I can barely remember a thing about the 90s other than that I was living in the suburbs, that I played a lot of videogames, and that I tried, hopelessly, to combat my acne and look a little less awkward. It was in May of 1999 that I finally asked out the girl I had a crush on for the entire seven years I spent in the Jericho School District. I invited her to the Senior Prom knowing that she’d probably say “no,” but also realizing that if I didn’t do it at that moment, I would regret it forever. I ended up – unsurprisingly – going to that prom dateless, with a few of my equally dateless friends. Then 2000 came and I suddenly found myself in college, living in New York (Fucking) City with no idea about who I was or what I wanted to do or what the heck was going on. And now, somehow, ten random years later, I’m here.
“Here” is me at 27.9, on the cusp of being well into my “late 20s.” To a 17 year-old at NYU, this would have been ancient, close to the dreaded oldness of 30. The 17 year-old thought he would be married by now, maybe even have a few kids packed into a cool SUV (no minivans please). Forget the fact that he didn’t understand anything of love or relationships or what it really means to commit yourself to one person for your entire life. He also expected that by 27 he would have already made an unprecedented and unforgettable impact on the entire world in some area of power or expertise that, at the time, he had yet to discover. That too has not come to pass, even while he has learned to savor the positive impact he can have on his family and his closest friends. At 17 he would never have been satisfied with such a pittance.
At some point he managed to graduate college, go to law school, become an attorney, and to the chagrin of his entire family, leave a good-paying job in a corporate law firm to work for a Jewish non-profit organization. A Jewish non-profit? The 17 year old didn’t even like thinking of himself as Jewish. Beyond his bar mitzvah, the encyclopedic set of Kabbalah books his parents were swindled into buying when he was 8, and a failed attempt to go on Birthright just as the Second Intifada started, he had no Jewish connection at all. The last thing he ever imagined was that, a decade on, he would be wearing the identity on his business card.
In the last ten years he also had the good fortune of meeting some incredible individuals. There were the friends who fixed themselves so prominently into his existence that he could foresee the days when they were all old men sitting in some backyard somewhere drinking beers and talking of the world. Then there were the ones who had the patience to teach him – the kid – about love. They were also the ones who, inadvertently, also taught him about loss. Together all of them proved, in the words of one of those old men in the backyard, that “good or bad, it’s all good.”
So now what? One of the things we (the 17 year old kid and I both) have learned in the last decade is that regardless of what I think, I have absolutely no freaking idea. But there’s something beautiful in the not knowing, and it makes me feel kinda grown-up to be able to say that.
Photo by Joe Lanman, licensed under Creative Commons.
New Years Resolutions
By Emily Comisar
Only hours remain until the clock strikes midnight on the year 2009 and, just like everyone else, I am left to reflect on what the year has brought and all that I wish to accomplish in 2010. For me, this year in particular brought with it many changes: the separation from a beloved significant other, a new job, and an apartment of my own. When the time comes to decide upon my New Years resolution, I have to wonder what else I could (and should) ask of myself in the coming months. Could I stand to lose five pounds? Sure. Keep my house cleaner? Definitely. Call my widowed grandmother more often? Don’t get my father started.
I’ve always made it a point to never make resolutions about my weight, and cleaning my house from top to bottom sounds exhausting. I should really call my grandmother more often, but I’m not sure that’s enough to justify the weight of the “New Years Resolution,” something that, as a Jewish person, I have the joy and burden of doing twice a year. Yes, Rosh Hashanah is already months past and our hearts and minds have moved on to cheerier, less spiritually-taxing holidays, but after all the ups and downs of the last twelve months, I am determined to make both 5770 and 2010 years to remember.
My quest for the perfect resolution has led me, naturally, to my immediate family–the people who know me best and love me despite all my flaws that need correcting. Unfortunately my brothers, both of whom pulled all-nighters the Friday after Thanksgiving, are drowning in final papers and exams at University and have started screening my calls. My mother–to her credit–is a newly born small-business owner. So, although she takes my calls, she has more important things to think about. My father always provides a listening ear, but his only advice to me for the last six years has been “out nice ‘em.” I’m not so sure that this applies here.
My friends, on the other hand, are extremely opinionated individuals. For that I take pride in their presence in my life, but I wonder if certain decisions at this point are better left to me and me alone. I reflect and refract, think of everything that has happened right-side-up and up-side-down, and wonder where have I been and where am I going. What do I keep and what do I throw out the window?
Suddenly it occurs to me: Rosh Hashanah, the other white meat. The timing of the Jewish New Year this September brought me to an unexpected decision mid-calendar year. After resting on my creative laurels for too many months while pursuing a paycheck with health insurance, I told myself that I was going to step up and really, truly make the effort to bring my writerly aspirations to fruition. “Is that still important to me, a few months later?” I wonder, and the answer is yes, it absolutely is. Suddenly the burden of the second New Years Resolution is lifted. It is not burdensome that I must think like this twice a year as a person whose faith and culture revolve around a second calendar; it is a gift. I have been given the opportunity to renew my resolution from 90 days ago and enter 2010 reinvigorated and certain of what I want to get out of the coming months. Who knows, maybe I’ll lose five pounds, clean my apartment, and call my grandmother as well.
Photo by Robbert van der Steeg, licensed under Creative Commons.
The New Years Tree
By Rita Kreynin
I love a New Years Tree. No, not the Christmas fir tree. The New Years fir tree.
What is a New Years Tree you may be wondering? One of my favorite memories from my childhood is that every year, around the middle of December, my parents would get our family a yolka that would be in our living room, adorned with festive lights, decorations, and presents underneath to be opened by my family on the morning of the New Year.
WAIT A SECOND! My family is Jewish, why on earth are we celebrating a holiday that sounds identical to Christmas?
I should clarify. When I was four years old, my family emigrated to the U.S from the former Soviet Union. When I was in the first grade, in an effort to illustrate religious diversity, our teacher split the class up according to which religion was celebrated in the home. Trying to determine where I fit, I explained to the class that my parents were Jewish but that we put up a decorated tree for the holidays. My fellow first graders assured me I must be half Jewish and half Christian because a tree in my house must have meant that I celebrated Christmas.
That day I came home very confused – were my parents keeping something from me? Not according to my mother.  She explained to me that because religious observance was discouraged under communism in the Soviet Union, people didn’t celebrate Hanukkah or Christmas. The New Year was the holiday celebrated by all Soviets and at the heart of the celebration was the decorated yolka, which was introduced to imperial Russia by Peter the Great in the late 17th century. To offer a little history — in 1916 the yolka was first banned by the state church council and thereafter by the Soviet officials, but in 1935 the ban was lifted and New Years became an official state-recognized holiday. From 1935 until 1991, when the Soviet Union crumbled, New Years was one of the most beloved holidays in the land.
My parents stopped putting up a real New Years tree in our house around the time I was eight, when they figured out that, in America, Jews don’t have fir trees in their homes. When I begged really hard, I managed to convince them to assemble a fake tree, but only succeeded in that a few times. These days, the aroma of pine needles coming off of a Christmas tree makes me nostalgic and giddy. If my apartment were big enough, I would probably get a New Years tree this holiday season. It would be lovely right next to my menorah.
Photo by Ed Bierman, licensed under Creative Commons.
Italian-Jewish for the Holidays
By Jake W-M
The beauty of having an Italian father is being born into a giant, very localized, Roman-Catholic family in the New Haven area of Connecticut. Most people think the big fight in New Haven is over which pizza is better – Sally’s or Pepe’s – but local guidos like us know there are a dozen other places to go. Growing up, I spent more time with my father’s side of the family than my mother’s; the fact of the matter is, the Italian side was always larger than the Jewish side, so much so that they easily outnumbered my mother’s family at the bnei-mitzvot of my sister and me.
Having an appreciation for religion, my father’s family has been very supportive of my Jewish observance and background, though perhaps occasionally confused or frustrated by my inconsistent practices and the subsequent complications. To this day, when I visit for Christmas celebrations, they greet me with a “Happy Hanukkah!” even though it is not usually the reason I’m there (and in spite of my insistence that, in the holiday rankings, Christmas is really a few steps higher). My aunt has even taken to making a vegetarian lasagna just for my sister and I (the traditional version is loaded with delicious treif). I kvell every time! And I’ll never forget the Christmas dinner, when after saying grace–in Latin AND English–my Nonni (Grandmother) turned to me and excitedly told me to “Do it in Jewish!” After the initial confusion over what I was being asked to do, I had the presence of mind to say hamotzi in English as best as I could. Perhaps not in the moment, but in retrospect, I realized that it was such a heartfelt gesture that my grandmother, in her own way, wanted to include my Jewish practices in the family celebration.
For years I had made up reasons in my head for why I should play down the Jewish thing, but it just wasn’t necessary. Sure there were bumps in the road, and maybe some baggage that predated my own existence, but really I feel blessed to have a family that accepts and supports me the way they do, especially having heard stories where that’s not the case. Just like mishpocha is mishpocha, famiglia is famiglia, and I wouldn’t trade mine for anything.
Chag Hanukkah Sameach and Buon Natale!
Photo by Maggie Hoffman, licensed under Creative Commons.
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