Chanuka through the years

Last night we lit the first Chanuka candle, so this seems like a good opportunity to exercise my memory by trying to remember Chanuka through the years.

I know that we lit Chanuka candles all the years when I was at school and I know that we never had a Christmas tree, but apart from that, my mind comes up as a complete blank for those years regarding the festival. As opposed to other festivals, not much happens except lighting the candles, eating doughnuts (sufganiyot) and saying certain prayers, so it's not unreasonable to assume that this is all that we did.

In 1973, I was in Israel during Chanuka, but again my mind is completely blank as to what happened then. Considering that this would have been one or two months after the end of the Yom Kippur war, the entire country would have been in a very sad state of mind, and celebrations were kept to a minimum.

My first specific memories about Chanuka would be from 1975. As I recall, that year I (along with others) 'performed' every night of the festival, singing the special festival songs and bringing cheer. One day would have been at the Friern Barnet Old Age Home (or something similar) where the local Habonim group sang for the residents. Another night, we were outside the Russian Embassy, singing the songs and protesting about the Russian government's emigration policy (as if we would have made a difference). Quite possibly we also appeared at other rallies during the week.

In 1976, I decided to start a tradition by inviting about twenty people to a party at the communal house where I lived and cooking for them. I remember cooking pineapple chicken (which was fine) and fried banana (which was ridiculously ambitious for me to cook for so many people). Apart from the cooking, I don't remember anything else, but we must have had a fine time.

I repeated the tradition the following year, although fewer people attended. I don't remember what I cooked but I do remember that I invited a girl from outside our circle to attend. I had met her at university; she was in the first year intake of my course whilst I was in the final year. She was Jewish and lived not too far away (in London terms - near Swiss Cottage, whereas I lived across the road from the Hendon Way). The following day I phoned her to ask how she was, and whether she had enjoyed herself the previous night; we proceeded to have a conversation for about twenty minutes with a much warmer tone that I had expected. I mentioned this to one of my fellow flatmates with a note of surprise; about five minutes afterwards, the girl phoned me - it turns out that she thought that I was someone else whom she knew better, hence the tone. Although we did hang out for a while, this relationship (if it might be called that) didn't go anywhere. [Mind you, I felt that year as if I was living on borrowed time as I knew that I would be emigrating in the summer of 1978. Typically, after a few years of drought, I met some nice Jewish girls that year but was unable to do very much in the romantic direction.]

In 1978, I was living permanently in Israel. I remember going to Tel Aviv one day before Chanuka and buying a chanukia - my first and only. I doubt very much that buying the chanukia was the reason for my trip but nothing else comes to mind. That year, a few of my fellow immigrants and I performed for the kibbutz, singing some chanuka songs in two, three and even four part harmonies which I had arranged. Every now and then, I pull out my recording of that event and marvel at our ability - and again at my ambition for such vocal writing.

The next few years are again a blank, although I can almost picture them. The kibbutz would have held a Chanuka party at which I probably would have performed, but towards the end of the period of my first kibbutz, these affairs almost certainly would have become chillier and less enjoyable.

In 1989, we moved to a different kibbutz. The Chanuka party that year was one of the most enjoyable in my life, and I remember being moved to tears. This was the kind of party of which I had dreamed when I was still in the youth movement, and finally it was happening in front of my eyes. Many people participated in the music (including myself), every family brought their chanukia, and basically it was the Chanuka party to end all Chanuka parties.

The same pattern continued for the next few years, although naturally my enjoyment decreased. There were also Chanuka parties held in the kindergarten in which our children participated; one year I was asked to say the blessings for lighting the candles and to my eternal embarrassment I became confused in the middle and forgot the words.

Once the children entered school, our active participation decreased and decreased. One year I remember well, for the music was provided by the local school big band and my daughter appeared in a dance troupe. The dancing was fine but the writing was on the wall: we don't need you to play the guitar any more.

Since then, I don't think that we've been to a kibbutz Chanuka party. Should my children get married, have children and still live on the kibbutz, then we will attend again, but that's not going to be for some time - and who says that the parties will be in the same format?

So here we are, alone -
our children have grown up and moved away.
living their own lives, they say...
it all seems very strange to me.
         
I don't understand their ways:
our children amaze me all the time
and I often wonder why they make me feel
so sad and suddenly old.
         
Now we're left with an empty home,
from our nest all the birds have flown for foreign skies.
We're discarded, of no further use,
though we gave our kids all our youth and all our lives -
we really tried.
         
Now there's only my wife and me;
we used to have a family - now that's gone
and only memories linger on...
it all seems very wrong to me.

(Peter Hammill, "Autumn") 

It's not quite as bad as that; whilst our children have their own rooms on the kibbutz, they visit us most days to eat, watch television, use the computers and get clean laundry. But last night our daughter was working off the kibbutz and our son was at the Kibbutz party with his friends - and my wife and I were alone. So we phoned our families and blessed them.