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Miracle of the Dreidels
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17171 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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12 / 1990 |
1,183 Words |
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Stephen Richman
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Being Jewish during the holidays made me the envy of many of my Gentile friends when I was growing up in Arizona. How wonderful it was to have eight days of gift giving during Hanukkah rather than the one day of Christmas. Each year I joined my Christian friends as they opened presents played with the train under the tree, and listened to stories about Santa and Rudolph. My playmates were mystified by the candles my family lit for eight nights; their eyes rolled each time another gift was given after a lighting.
Each year my parents would tell us about Hanukkah and two miracles that happened so long ago. The most important miracle was the independence won by the Jewish guerrilla fighters; the other, more mystifying, was the vessel of olive oil that had only enough fuel for one day of light but kept the eternal flame burning for eight full days and nights.
The stories of miracles from thousands of years ago were exciting, but something was always missing. My school friends wished that they could have my eight days of gift giving; I wanted to see a modern-day miracle. At school there was talk of Christmas in the air, good deeds being done, holiday wishes that were fulfilled by nameless, good-hearted individuals who left baskets on your doorstep. I wanted to have miracle story of my own to tell.
The holiday season of 1989 was to be a season of new happening for me. Many years had passed. I was thirty-nine and had only been in the Washington, D.C., area for about a year. Snow had fallen, more than I had seen in a lifetime in Phoenix. I watched children trying their sleds on hills and skating near the Mall. My wishes for a holiday miracle had been long forgotten. This was a season of new experiences for this boy from the desert - my first overcoat, overshoes, low temperatures, and slipping on ice.
Gift giving was right around the corner, and I, like so many others, had been shopping for weeks. In the office, colleagues and I had swapped stories about the holidays, and I had told them of the dreidel, a toy top that Jewish children play with during Hanukkah to "gamble" for chocolate coins, raisins, and gelt (holiday money). In ancient times Jews taken captive by Hellenistic Syrians were not allowed to pray freely. The prisoners took to playing with a top. Their jailers, not speaking the Hebrew tongue, thought the prisoners were playing a game to pass the time away, but in fact they were offering prayers to God.
Before the holidays, I had stopped at the temple and purchased a supply of wooden and plastic dreidels for my friends. I had passed them all out in the last few weeks before the holidays. Hanukkah and Christmas came at just about the same time that year. There was one week of shopping left, and I had two gifts that I still needed to purchase.
The Warmth of the Bookstore
The night was cold, and the television news forecast a heavy snow within the next twelve hours. The lines at the supermarkets wrapped around the aisles.
People were stocking up for what looked like a "long winter's nap." Rather than brave the lines, I found myself wandering through the neighborhood bookstore. Though nights were fiercely cold now, the past few
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