Today is Christmas. It’s been a holiday week.
The first night of Chanukah, we went to Peter’s Armenian family Christmas, their
ninety ninth year of celebrating their family’s arrival to this country from Armenian
genocide in Turkey.
Their journey here was difficult – the genocide took many of their relatives, and all
these years later, that history is very much part of the present. We all take turns
hosting. This year the party was held in New Jersey, at the home of a young couple
with two small children. Usually around fifty people appear. Now there are about 15
young children, cousins, happy to meet once a year. Peter’s relatives are a large mix of
politics and professions. From left to right. From a pianist doctor to a laundromat
owner. They work hard to get along, in spite of their very
different lifestyles, in spite of their different politics. Their central activities are
eating and talking. Food is often elaborate, especially the hors d’oevres: stuffed grape
leaves, filo dough filled with cheese, delicious Armenian meats. This year the full bar
included a 20 year old brandy from Yerevan. Many of us drank it happily. I ordered a
bottle online when we came home.
The second night of Chanukah we made latkes and an Iraqi Jewish leek dish and
invited the kids here and a few of their friends, and cousins of Peter’s, a couple from
Richmond who’d come up for the party the day before. They’re serious Christians,
religious, conservative, the parents of three young daughters. They’d never been to a
Chanukah before.
Our 22 year old non-binary African grandchild brought two Chanukah guests – two
othernon-binary Mellon fellows from Hunter. All three are in their senior year full of
radical politics, gender ideas, and hope.. Ariana, a Bengali pre-law student, and
Daniel, an Uzbeki Jew from Forest Hills whose parents moved to Queens when he was
young. He says they are communists still, although the father is a New York City
policeman now.
We all said the Chanukah baracha, lit the Menorah, ate latkes, and had a long
conversationabout where light comes from (more or less everywhere), what Truth
means, and whether or not latkes should have any other vegetables besides potatoes
(ours had carrots and leeks).
In my childhood home we would celebrate Chanukah with our family’s closest friends
wholived in a nearby town. They were Jewish too, and we would light candles, and eat
a lot. My family loved brisket, and in my childhood memory (which may or may not be
true) brisket played a role in more or less every holiday. We had a butcher who
actually came to his house –Ike Katzman, a thin single man who my mother constantly
set up on dates. Eventually IkeKatzman married Inez but he never said much about
her when he dropped off our brisket.
Today, on Christmas Day, in a very cold New York City, we’ll light the eighth
candle, then go to a Christmas meal with the kids and take Ahava to the Big Apple
Circus.
This is not meant to be a recitation of activities, the way some people’s holiday letters
can be: we did this and we did that. Just a gentle exploration, maybe only a beginning,
of holidays and how they’ve evolved in my own lifetime – changed, if you like that
word better. What changes, and what stays the same. Whenever we gain something,
we lose something else. A hard lesson to understand, even now.
Many of us enjoy celebrating. Sometimes, who and how is more the story. Happy All
Holidays to All Altes. Love Esther
Send me your email. I’ll send to you
Thank you, Esther. This was beautiful and meant a lot.