A Hanukkah Miracle for Modern Times
*Editor’s Note: Even though the holiday has passed this story has a timeless lesson for us all. Happy Holidays.
By Raven West
Jewish holidays are relatively stress free. We don’t have on “eve” or one “morning”, we have an entire week. 8 days of Passover, 8 nights of Hanukkah, ya miss one, you’ve got 7 more.
But, in our home, when my daughters were little, the first night of Hanukkah was always special. It was one of the few nights of the year when mom cooked! It was an exciting event.
I first wore this shirt in 1987. The first night of Hanukkah was on a Sunday which meant I had plenty of time to get everything ready before the sun went down. Around noon, I took out my traditional Hanukkah items – Holiday table cloth and centerpiece, four menorahs, one for each of my daughters and one for me and placed them on the fireplace mantle with a box of candles alongside. Then I got my traditional Hanukkah lake ingredients ( fried potato pancake) 5 pounds of potatoes, onions, assorted spices and of course the traditional cooking appliances – the electric potato peeler, my electric food processor and electric frying pan and cassette tape of traditional Hanukkah songs to entertain the kids while I cooked.
At the time I was also a member of the National Council of Jewish Girl scouts and the leader of a Jewish Girl Scout troop. Our meeting was on Monday after school, so since I had time, I turned on my computer and started to type the meeting topic which was, of course about Hanukkah – The Hebrew word Chanukah means “dedication,” and is thus named because it celebrates the rededication of the Holy Temple after the Maccabees defeated the Syrian army and reclaim the temple, when they sought to light the Temple’s Menorah (the seven-branched candelabrum), they found only a single cruse of olive oil that had escaped contamination by the Greeks. Miraculously, they lit the menorah and the one-day supply of oil lasted for eight days, until new oil could be prepared under conditions of ritual purity. And the dreidel, a little spinng top with Hebrew letters that spell out “a great miracle happened there”, ending with the question for the meeting discussion:
“What would a house be like without television or electricity? Are these gifts from God?
As soon as I hit SAVE key, the power went out.
My first reaction – did my husband forget to pay the electric bill? Then I looked outside and noticed that the street lights and the Christmas tree lights in my neighbor’s windows were also off.
I really didn’t it was any big deal. In our city of Thousand Oaks, California high winds and electric outages happened all the time but they never lasted very long, besides it was still light out, so I wasn’t really concerned when I left to pick up the kids from Hebrew school.
By the time we got home, it was starting to get dark and still no power. Fortunately, the phones were working, so I called the electric company.
Major transformer exploded. Power won’t be restored for 8 to 12 hours. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Thanks
I told the girls to gather up all the flashlights and bring them into the kitchen. I put away the electric potato peeler, electric food processor, and electric frying pan. I dug through a stack of pots and under the oven and found a large skillet. Rummaging through my junk drawer, I found two very dusty, but still sharp potato peelers and one hand-held grater. For the next half hour, my children and I peeled and grated five pounds of potatoes and onions by hand, by candlelight.
We mixed the eggs and other ingredients and got everything ready to cook. But when I went to the cupboard to get the new bottle of oil I’d just bought and gone! My 7 year old very guilty – Jews are famous for their guilt – and brought me the nearly empty bottle of oil and told me she’d taken it to Hebrew School for their Hanukkah party so all that was left was about a cup.
No electricity and no oil. I was beginning to feel like the Jews of ancient times. The miracle of the 8 nights was because after the Jews rebuilt the temple after they beat the Syrian army, there was only enough oil to sanctify the temple for one night. It would take a week to more and by some miracle that tiny bit of oil lasted 8 nights.
With only a small amount of oil to fry the latkes, I was definitely praying for a miracle!
A little bit of oil, a large amount of batter and we managed to cook each the entire batch!
With my 7 year old holding a flashlight over the frying pan, I somehow managed to fry all the latke batter over our gas (thank God) range using the small amount of oil we had.
We took the Hanukkah menorahs off the fireplace mantle and put them on the dining room table. After reciting the blessing, we lit the candles for the first night. The tallest shamas lit the one candle to the far right. Their tiny flames lit up the dining room and the hall and even illuminated a small section of the front lawn. The glow was made more intense by the fact that it was totally dark outside as well as inside. Not a single bulb on a single house on our entire street was lit.
Our home was full of the aroma of potato latkes and candle wax. We read the story of Hanukkah, exchanged gifts and played the Dreidel game – spin the little top and when it lands you win – by candlelight.
My husband played guitar, my daughter joined on the clarinet and we sang the holiday songs without the tape recorded accompaniment and laughed at the irony of singing Peter Paul and Mary’s classic “Don’t Let the Light Go Out” in the darkness of the power outage.
Flash forward about 15 years. My now married daughter called me from her home in northern California where she lives with her husband and my 2 grandkids- little boy and a little girl. It was the first night of Hanukkah; she said she was watching a YouTube video on how to make lakes and the power went out. The kids were going crazy with no electricity, no computer and NO INTERNET! What am I going to do?
Calm down, I said. Do you have a potato peeler? You have a gas stove? Yes Do you have a frying pan? Do you have oil? Do you remember…
YES, I DO! She said. I remember this is what the first night of Hanukkah was like when I was a kid – Thank you for reminding me.
We stayed on the phone a little longer and I could hear the kids in the background – no longer screaming and crying, but singing songs and helping mom mix the ingredients by hand in the kitchen…in the dark by candlelight.
Of course she called her sisters the next day to share her Hanukkah experience with me, and of course they called me to let me know that they also remembered that one powerless first night of Hanukkah when they were little and it was the very best Hanukkah night AND they were upset that they weren’t included in the “power out” experience the night before with their sister.
and SO… A new family tradition was born.
For the past five years, on the first night of Hanukkah, my daughters turn off all the lights in their homes, grate and chop potatoes by hand, They play the dreidel game and sing songs … in the dark..by candlelight.
This past December the first night of Hanukkah fell on the 2nd. Because of recent tragic events in Pittsburgh and our hometown of Thousand Oaks, the first night of Hanukkah held a very special meaning for our family as well as many others
We all connected on Google Hang-out, turned out the lights in our homes and lit the candles together. My middle daughter in Northern California, our home in Southern California, my oldest married daughter in Texas and my youngest daughter in New Jersey.
In the darkness of my empty living room, the computer screen glowed with candlelight from four homes in three different states in three different time zones as we celebrated the first night of the Festival of Lights across the country simultaneously bringing hope, light, love and peace from sea to shining sea!
It really is amazing what you can see when the lights go out.
Raven West is a free-lance writer and published author who has lived in Ventura County for more than twenty years. She has an extensive knowledge of local wineries from Thousand Oaks to Ojai and will be covering special events which take place at the tasting rooms throughout the year.Named in the TOP 50 Authors by Authorsdb.com
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