Hanukkah season is here and what a joyful celebration it is! Lighting the menorah is a fundamental element of the holiday that commemorates the Maccabees victory over oppression and the miracle of how a single day’s supply of oil lasted for eight.
In honor of the holiday, I wanted to share a story I read about how one man declared his faith at work and celebrated Hanukkah, all without a flame.
This story — which the author kindly gave permission for me to share — is about a man named Alan. Alan worked as a high-level proofreader in the corporate world in the 1980s. He had a beautiful office, a decent paycheck and enjoyed his work. When he originally moved to New York, he was a non-religious Jew and focused on his interest in playwriting. Through an acquaintance, however, he started attending a reform synagogue in his neighborhood and began discovering his own personal Jewish identity.Here is his story.
On December tenth, a sign on the company bulletin board invited us all to the staff holiday party. Stockings filled with striped candy canes decorated the walls. Mixed in with these symbols, overwhelmed, was a small, flat cardboard menorah, with a base on the bottom. A few days later, the traditionally decorated tree appeared, with a smiling Santa beaming at it from a nearby wall.
One morning on my way to work, someone from Chabad handed a bag to me. “Hanukkah candles in here,” he said, “with a menorah and transliterated blessings. The holiday begins tomorrow night.” I thanked him, although what to do with them was a mystery. The next morning, I left the candles home but took the blessings with me. Today would be the Christmas party and it somehow seemed important to bring that piece of paper with the Hebrew words I didn’t understand.
When the call to party was announced, I took a yellow sticky and placed it where I was up to in my work. Two hours and two strong drinks later – and I indulged theleastof my co-workers – I barely remembered that I was a proofreader.
I ate too much and basically moped through the festivities. Joy reigned supreme in that meeting room, but I was not happy. My supervisor came up to me. “Some party, huh?”
“Yeah,” I responded unenthusiastically, and shocked myself by asking, “But are we doing anything for Hanukkah here?”
She was obviously relieved at being called away just then.
Alone amidst a hundred ecstatic revelers, I walked out of the room, not feeling the holiday spirit. I strode up to my desk, reached into my briefcase, and took out the piece of paper with the Hanukkah blessings. Although I did not know what the words meant, they had somehow become very important to me. I read the instructions above the transliteration. “After sunset during Hanukkah, light the candles, one for the first night to the far right, the shames in the middle, and an additional one each succeeding night.”
Tipsy and fully aware that I had no candles and no menorah, I said a silent prayer that I could do something to acknowledgemyholiday.
I suddenly spotted the small cardboard menorah and immediately knew what I wanted to do. Opening it, I stood it upon its base. From a blank yellow sticky paper, I cut two small ovals. Following the directions on the Chabad sheet, I read the transliterated blessings for the first night. After reciting them, I took the first oval and put it on the ‘candle’ top to the far right and a second on the ‘shames.’ It may not have been correct according to Jewish law, but it was vital for me at that moment. Far from the hubbub, I felt content.
A moment later, however, I wasn’t alone. Another worker had come to get something from her desk. “What are you doing?” she asked.
I smiled. “Lighting the menorah in the best way I know how for the first night of Hanukkah.”
The next night, a few minutes after sunset, I stood at my desk over the cardboard menorah, said the blessings, and placed two yellow ovals plus one for theshamesin their places. Last night’s visitor came to watch, along with others in my department. Impressed, they even asked questions about it.
And that’s the way the rest of Hanukkah went. Every evening, after sunset, I stopped work, said the blessings, and put more yellow oval stickies on the menorah. With each night, more and more people came to watch. For the eighth night, in front of an overflow, enthusiastic crowd, I said the blessings and ‘lit’ all of the candles. My supervisor was by now a regular attendee. “Alan,” she said, “next year we’re going to get a large, beautiful menorah suitable for the occasion!”
In retrospect, I could have complained that my religious rights were not being respected. Although there is a time for open rebellion, as the Maccabees so courageously and poignantly demonstrated, this experience taught me that there is also a time for quietly, and with conviction, doing what you believe is right. And good things can come from that.
Many years have passed and today I am religiously observant. I say the blessings for my wife and myself before lighting real candles. We singMaoz Tzur, recounting the miracles of years gone by, and bless the Almighty, ‘Who wrought miracles for our forefathers, in those days at this season.’
I think back fondly to that time when yellow sticky paper and a cardboard menorah made such a difference to me and so many others.
Expressing our religious beliefs and being true to our personal identities doesn’t always require grand gestures. Who we are, and what we believe, can manifest in small quiet ways and still make an impact on those around us. Wishing you a happy, illuminated Hanukkuh!