celebration
So last night was the first night of Hanukkah, and my family made it very festive. Flowers and candles on the table, dreidels and Hanukah gelt in evidence, dinner that included chicken soup with matzo balls and a ton of potato latkes, lots of sweets for dessert. We were all together for the first night of the holiday, even Becca took the train from the city to come home for dinner. (I had to run out and buy her an electric menorah for the apartment, the one I bought her in college seems to have gotten broken somewhere along the way.)
It was important to make this a festive holiday, more so than usual. We never had a Rosh Hashanah this year, my father was in the hospital through the High Holy Days. So Hanukkah, coming on the heels of Thanksgiving...
I knew it would be a difficult day.
Al day long, the voice in my head wasn't my own...it was my father, singing the blessings that are made as the menorah is lit. Even last year, when he was no longer able to read the Hebrew letters, he knew how to sing the blessings.
And another voice, my grandmother, who died 20 years ago...I heard her voice, singing in Yiddish:
Oy Chanukah, Oy Chanukah
a yontif a sheiner,
A lustiger; a freilicher
nito noch a zeyner.
The people we love are never really gone, are they?
It was important to make this a festive holiday, more so than usual. We never had a Rosh Hashanah this year, my father was in the hospital through the High Holy Days. So Hanukkah, coming on the heels of Thanksgiving...
I knew it would be a difficult day.
Al day long, the voice in my head wasn't my own...it was my father, singing the blessings that are made as the menorah is lit. Even last year, when he was no longer able to read the Hebrew letters, he knew how to sing the blessings.
And another voice, my grandmother, who died 20 years ago...I heard her voice, singing in Yiddish:
Oy Chanukah, Oy Chanukah
a yontif a sheiner,
A lustiger; a freilicher
nito noch a zeyner.
The people we love are never really gone, are they?
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