We asked j. readers if they had ever spent a Chanukah away from home. How did they observe the holiday? Here’s what the world travelers among us have to say about
celebrating the Festival of Lights far from the comforts of home, in all its improvised glory and frustration:
Fire on the commune
I was living in a commune in rural New York that was so rural that the closest indoor plumbing and electricity were one and a half miles down the dirt road. The town was another eight miles.
Chanukah came early that year, right after a busy time when we had to get the crops in and, literally, make hay when the sun shone. With the time ripe for celebration, we spent the day preparing food, cleaning up the house and ourselves.
We lit the candles and started stuffing ourselves with latkes made from our homegrown potatoes. It couldn’t get better … and it didn’t. A moment later, someone screamed, “Smoke!”
The Chanukah candle had ignited a batik-cotton wall hanging and smoke started to billow. We grabbed our coats on the way out the door and headed for the well — but there were no buckets. When the fire engine arrived 20 minutes later, all that was left was a monolithic chimney — a lonely, unlit shamash.
Had we not left the buckets in the bathhouse after our mikvah, things might have been different. But then we wouldn’t have appreciated the great miracle that happened there — we all got out alive and well.
Darryl Forman | San Francisco
Menorah made to order
In 1987, on a yearlong trip around the world with our 9-year-old daughter, Chanukah approached as we settled into Bali.
We needed a menorah. Villages specialized in particular crafts and Mas, near Ubud, was a woodcarvers’ haven.
Searching back streets strewn with the offerings of observant Agama Hindu, we found a modest workshop with an ancient master carver and his teen apprentices.
We sketched a nine-branch candelabra on the back of a matchbook, gesturing to communicate a desirable size. One critical detail needed attention. The Hindus are fond of the Sanskrit holy symbol, the swastika.
We conveyed our strong objection to this decoration on our menorah. The master grasped the goal. We settled on a price and promised to return a week later in time for the first night’s lighting.
That Chanukah, in swiftly descending equatorial dusk, across space and time, we were carried to a place beyond locale as we lit a lovingly crafted mahogany masterpiece with lotus leaf
candleholders, fish and birds in bas relief, and roots that bespoke the tree of life.
Marty Perlmutter and Miki Raver | Oakland
At war in Korea
As an Army chaplain in Korea during the war, I had a particularly moving experience at Chanukah time in 1952.
The Jewish GIs of the 2nd Infantry Division were gathered in a dingy tent for our Chanukah service. They had just come off the front line, and their faces were grim and drawn. As we began to kindle the lights, the booming guns from the fierce fighting on the hill “Old Baldy” seemed to defy our act of dedication.
After the candles were lit, I invited everyone to join in singing “Rock of Ages.” At first, I was the only one singing. But slowly, one by one, they began to join in. Before long, our voices rose to a loud crescendo, as everyone felt the inspiration of the moment. Soon our singing became an obvious attempt to drown out the noise of the guns, as all of us drew courage from the words of hope and of faith:
“Yours the message cheering
That the time is nearing
Which will see all men free
Tyrants disappearing.”
Rabbi H. David Teitelbaum | Redwood City
Makeshift Mexican holiday
Thirty-three years ago, my husband and I were visiting Taxco, Mexico in December with our 11-year-old son, Seth.
It was Chanukah time and we had neglected to bring along a menorah. Each room in the hotel had a candle in a pottery dish in case the electricity went off (a common problem at that time in parts of Mexico).
We gathered five candles from our rooms and other rooms (it was the fourth day of Chanukah) and put them on the deep windowsill of the open window (no screens). My husband, Berny, and Seth began singing the blessings.
Suddenly faces appeared at several other windows and other guests joined in the singing. Since a yarmulke was not available, sombreros were handy.
It was a Chanukah lighting that was very dramatic and one that we have never forgotten.
Francis Barrish | Petaluma
Candles in Kathmandu
My husband and I have kindled the chanukiah in such diverse places as Hong Kong, Barbados and India. But my strangest and most memorable Chanukah was the one I spent in Kathmandu, Nepal in 1983.
I was in Nepal working on U.S.-funded grant. No one in Nepal seemed interested in lighting a menorah with me. I was living in the Sheraton Hotel (it sounds better than it was) where spraying for bugs and enduring power outages were nightly events.
Because of the latter, every room was supplied a candle. (I couldn’t always get toilet paper or towels, but I always had a candle.) I did not have a menorah with me. I had a difficult enough time entering the country with a nine-month supply of pantyhose so I decided to use my candle as a stand-in.
Each day I asked the front desk for new candles so that I could light the appropriate number. The hotel attendants’ English was poor and my Nepalese was poorer so there was no way they could ever know why for eight days I requested a new candle.
They did look at me strangely each day so I can only imagine what they were thinking!
Jan Scheer | Redwood Shores