Family & Education
Chanukah...with changes
Yes again we're celebrating a festival in less than ideal circumstances. Claire Cantor has some suggestions
December 3, 2020 12:04
Yes again we're celebrating a festival in less than ideal circumstances. Claire Cantor has some suggestions
December 3, 2020 12:04Which festival celebration is the most important to your family? Is it Rosh Hashanah lunch perhaps? Or the first seder night?
Well, in my family, nothing is more sacred or more discussed than the blessed Chanukah family tea. Winter holidays are organised around it, snow storms braved to get to it, video links established for overseas/out-of-town family members. There are no exemptions to attendance, and even committed dieters are expected to eat a doughnut or two, a plate of bridge rolls and several latkes without complaining.
As the country readies for a far-from-normal Christmas, how are we feeling about everyone’s favourite family-friendly, light-on-religion festival being a Zoom-ukah this year? Not happy I am sure. It feels especially harsh that the chag ends just a few days before the Christmas relaxation, allowing three households to gather, will begin.
But more than ever we need our festival of light and Maccabi miracles to remind us of the glimmer of hope (let’s call it the vaccine) at the end of the tunnel. So how can we make Chanukah happen?
To start, I shall have no shame in going full sparkle on the home decorations, wantonly stringing up fairy lights in an attempt to enter into a more festive mood. I’ll be silencing the inner critic telling me it’s not Yiddishe.
These days, the stock answer to every staging problem — meetings, birthdays, weddings, barmitzvahs — is “do it on Zoom” and many communities are planning virtual candle lightings and entertainment throughout Chanukah week. There’s at least one drive-in candle lighting service, and Chabad is planning car menorah parades worldwide. Other options include quiz nights, latke fry-offs, doughnut competitions, menorah making and decorating competitions and the like. There have never been so many ways of connecting online around a festival — and I like the idea that Chanukah is a time for creativity.
You don’t have to be Jewish to share in the hopeful message of the chanukiah and in my street, where we have a fair smattering of Jewish neighbours, we will be holding a distanced candle lighting and inviting all our neighbours to come out to their doorsteps and raise a glass for a better year ahead.
Rabbi Miriam Berger of Finchley Reform Synagogue feels Chanukah is no time to be shy about the Jewish religion. “The custom of putting the menorah in the window at Chanukah is a public statement of our Judaism. Lockdown has encouraged a community spirit and, like clapping the NHS, Chanukah can be an opportunity to share with the neighbours.”
As for my family, we will be celebrating Romeo and Juliet style and keeping our distance from my parents who will be poised on their second-floor apartment balcony with us below in the front garden lighting our non-blow-out candles.
If you can’t meet in person — I’m so sad for families stuck in Tier Three — and Zoom doesn’t do it for you, you could send your loved ones a “family-in-a-box”— mini wooden versions of your family, guaranteed to bring a smile to their faces. (Available from https://betsybenn.com/products/our-family-in-a-box-letterbox-gift).
Chanukah certainly won’t be the same this year, but it will be truly unique.
