City unites in love and light
HANUKKAH. An eight-day celebration marking the Jewish people’s rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after it was destroyed in 168 BC by the Syrians. Lighting the menorah or candles commemorates how back then a single day’s worth of oil fueled them for eight days.
Kelly Gordon, my Irish Catholic editor, suggested I report on Hanukkah. And Donald Trump’s Kennedy Center Board member Mindy Levine explained that “never again” means never forgetting the Holocaust, never again standing in lines to enter gas chambers. “It means we hear you, both the hate and the love. And we will prevail.”
I was given a photo of a Labrador named Zion wearing a yarmulke plus a Star of David kerchief on his neck. The sender wrote: “Jewish pride by way of our pups!”
In France, there’s double-decker holiday menorahs. In Cuba, it’s fried plantains. Morocco does bonfires. In America, it’s someone inviting you for great, free food. This time of fasting and mourning dictates that women refrain from work like sewing and laundering. Foods are fried to commemorate the oil.
One thousand years after Moses wrote the Torah, the miracle of lights occurred. In memoriam, we now light a Hanukkah candle for eight nights. “Repair the world” is its theme, urging Jews to focus on charitable giving and community service.
One problem? Hungry animals. Since all foods are cooked in oil, and there’s often house Yorkies or skinny Labs lurking under the table. Eager hounds may end up with Doug Palma, top doc at East 60s Schwarzman Animal Medical Center.
Understand, Hanukkah is a celebration of light over darkness, hope and perseverance over despair.
Some of our country’s most podunk chunks are displaying menorahs to bring communities together for interfaith celebrations. And may they start in Washington.
In 1931 in Kiel, Germany, a rabbi’s wife displayed their menorah defiantly across from Nazi headquarters with its swastika. She took a photo of the scene and wrote on its back, “Judah will live forever.” That brass menorah now gets lit yearly at Israel’s Yad Vashem in a powerful act of continuity and hope.
In the words of a believer: “We hear you, both the hate and the love. And we will prevail.”
‘Taxi’ to 1975
WANT movies and not shops? The 1970s were not so good for the US but good for movies. After Watergate, we got “Taxi Driver,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” remember “Network”? In the Netflix doc “Breakdown: 1975,” out tomorrow, Ellen Burstyn, Josh Brolin, Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and narrator Jodie Foster talk about it. Seth Rogen already talked about it. He said: “People used to really like good movies.”
Chew on this
To introduce my Yorkie Jellybean to the world, I once schlepped him for an outing. I planned to introduce him to squirrels, birds, anything but me. Later, while waiting for the vet’s bill, I asked myself, “Why is everything fried at Hanukkah?” Answer: It’s to remind ourselves and everyone else clutching their Pepto bottles that oil symbolizes what kept the menorah lit for eight days instead of one — allowing the people to reclaim their synagogue from the occupiers. And the world’s largest menorah? At 59th and 5th. Only in New York, kids Only in New York.
THIS is a thank you from me. Taking the holiday off. I’m back right after New Year’s. I’m appreciative for all who read me, still talk to me and send items. I am proud to be a New Yorker. I am grateful to have been born in the US. I am intensely appreciative of the man upstairs. And right now, in advance, I’m going to rest my bones just so I can holler and scream at you another year.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
