"The Unbearable Light-ness of Being"

My daughter and I find a certain degree of pleasure in this time of year if we take care to avoid malls and shopping outlets to a significant extent. We both often comment on the tasteful Christmas decorations in our neighborhood and beyond and feel the anticipation and excitement of our Christian friends and acquaintances as the days of December rumble toward the 25th. At the same time, I appreciate my daughter's impulse to rummage around the house re-discovering the accoutrements associated with our very own Festival of Lights or Chanukah! Over the years we have accumulated a small collection of Chanukiot (Chanukah menorahs) and dreidels mostly as gifts; we even love the very inexpensive ones we purchased in Jerusalem during our sabbatical several years ago.


Purchased in a Jerusalem drugstore (~$5)

One image from that period has remained lightly perched in my mind’s eye.  It plays a bit like a cinematic moment, the camera strolling along Emek Rifa'im (the main boulevard in the neighborhood where we lived) at night capturing the gloriously illuminated window fronts and then stopping abruptly at a decadently laden bakery front with layers and layers of soufganiyot (jelly donuts in Hebrew). A waitress is lifting one tray and easing away from the window to the interior of the dining area as my family stands on the other side of the window agog at the spectacle before us!  I cannot recall that we went in to purchase any of those wonderful sweets but I am filled with a child’s delight at the memory of that miraculous site!!

Note:  In Israel and in some communities in North America, soufganiyot, like potato latkes, are eaten as a symbolically oily food.  In this way we remember the miracle of the oil associated with the Chanukah story.