Kathryn Blume - Hanukkah 2

Another Damn Hanukkah Story

When Mark asked me to write another Hanukkah story for this year’s Winter Tales, my first thought was, “Oh, crap.” Really, I hate Hanukkah. I think it’s a totally stupid holiday. Well, not stupid, exactly, but a commemorative event which started out minorly significant and slightly sweet, and which got artificially pumped up by soulless advertising executives for the sake of Christmas gifting parity and fourth quarter earnings statements. It’s like the holiday version of a third tier boy band. December’s N Synch. Bleh.

Plus, I really liked the Hanukkah story I wrote last year, and quite frankly, I didn’t feel like I had anything more to say on the subject.

But then, I thought, “Really, Kathy, when have you ever not had anything to say about anything? I mean, if opinions were inches, I’d be a very tall woman indeed.

So, I commence to mulling. Ok, Hanukkah...Hmmm. There’s got to be something I like about Hanukkah. What do I like about Hanukkah? And the phrase “Next year in Jerusalem” pops into my head. And I start ruminating on that, about the metaphors of holy land and coming home and cultural, almost cellular longing for place and community and faith in divine promise and eternal covenants… And then I remember that “next year in Jerusalem” is from Passover, not Hanukkah, thereby revealing The Horrible Truth that I am a Totally Bad Jew. It’s a good thing we don’t have membership cards because mine would certainly be revoked.

You know, there might be some other Bad Jews in here. In fact, I shouldn’t make the assumption that any of you know what Hanukkah is about. So, as a public service for the Hebraically Challenged, here’s a Quickie Summary: 165 BC, the land of Israel was controlled by Antiochus IV, the Seleucid King of Syria. Antiochus wanted the Jews to abandon their faith and worship Zeus, the Hugh Hefner of Olympus. The Jews refused. Antiochus responded with a shock and awe campaign in which the temple in Jerusalem was looted, the Jews massacred, and Judaism outlawed.

So, a Jewish priest (they didn’t start calling them Rabbis until later) named Mattathias and his sons led a rebellion. And one of the sons, Judah, won the day. He became known as Judah Maccabee, which means Judah the Hammer (insert outdated Tom DeLay joke here). The Temple was rededicated and a new altar built. Part of Temple Custom was to always have an olive oil lamp burning, but they only had enough oil left to last one night. However, to their great surprise, the oil burned for eight nights until they could make some more. Ta-da! The Miracle of Hanukkah – a word which means, by the way, “dedication,” and which can be spelled with any number of Hs, Ns, Cs, and/or Ks.

You know the other problem with writing this story was that at the time Mark placed his request, it was late July and I was at an artists’ residency in Hungary trying to work on my one woman show about fighting global warming and totally failing because it was so freaking HOT there that I couldn’t even think, much less write a coherent sentence. The heat totally handed me my head on a platter. I spent most of my time at the residency hiding in an old wine cellar and staring blankly at my computer. Global warming: 1. Kathy: 0.

And so there I am, absolutely failing to be a creative force for good and healing in the world. I’m sweating it out midsummer in a dark Hungarian basement, and I’m supposed to think about writing a story which takes place in December? In Vermont? Commemorating a festival of lights? I mean, my creative juices – not to mention all higher cognitive functions – have been sucked completely and utterly dry, I’m spiritually and inspirationally desiccated, and I’m supposed to write about the miracle of oil lasting for eight nights instead of one?

“Mark,” I said, “I love you. But bite me.”

No, that’s not what I said. I said, “Oh. Ok.” Because, for those of you who don’t know, Mark, while being a totally kicky and visionary Artistic Director, is also my husband. And not only that, but he’s probably the best husband in the history of husbandom, and he doesn’t ask for much.

Well, no, that’s not true either. He asks for a lot. But the requests are hardly frivolous. He never asks me to iron his shirts or clean up the cat yurk or refrain from going off to Hungary for a month when I could just as easily not get any writing done at home.

The stuff Mark actually asks me for…well, he mostly asks for miracles. For example, he’ll come to me and say, “I have this play that I’ve put in the season, and to be honest, I didn’t actually read it first and while it sounded like a good idea at the time, I don’t know how to stage it in the round in FlynnSpace, much less know what the play is really about, and I don’t think we have the actors for it anyway, and by the way I have a production meeting in half an hour and so could you please tell me what to do? Please?”

And I say, “Oh. Ok.” And I tell him what to do. Sometimes I give him a few different options (maybe eight options, since we’re on the whole Hanukkah theme here), options which I usually pull blind from the dark, abandoned wine cellars of my brain.

And I can do this, not because I’m a genius – well, maybe because I’m a genius – but really, I can tell him what to do because he has placed his faith in my ability to provide an answer no matter what, and it’s my job to provide that answer. That’s our covenant. Our miracle. Or one of them.

I tell you this, not to lord my fabulous marriage over you or anything – I mean, Mark may not ask me to clean up the cat yurk, but it’s not like he makes any big moves to clean it up either – but I tell you this because of what I believe a miracle is – an unexpected and unlikely moment of success – and how desperately we need them these days, and to remind you that anyone can step up to the miracle plate and hit a homer. It just takes an act of faith and a covenant of love.

Just. Not like it’s as easy as it sounds. The easy thing is to stop ourselves. No matter how much we care about any given problem at hand, we often just poop out in a moment of despair disguised as realism: You know, maybe we shouldn’t light that oil at all because we only have enough for one night, and maybe it’s going to get even darker and colder and maybe we should wait until we’re really, really desperate. Or if we’re Jewish we figure no matter, don’t mind us, we’ll just sit here in the dark.

Or sometimes we fall victim to what I call the “This Little Light Syndrome.” And it goes something like this. Feel free to join in.

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine

Let it shine, shine, shine…

(Long Pause)

Ok. Now what?

Or we fall prey to my personal favorite:

Wow. Look at that problem!

I bet I could fix it.

I’ll just get out my little lamp here, fire it up, shine a little light…

But you know…This really is an impossible situation.

And don’t the bad guys always win in the end anyway?

Screw the oil, screw the light.

Gimme some chocolate, I’m going back to bed.

Of course, the whole point here is that it’s not about the oil, or the light. It’s about the miracle, which, like I said, comes from an act of faith and a covenant of love. So, here’s a story of a miracle:

On my way to Hungary, I stopped off in London, a place I’d always dreamed about, but never visited. I was so excited to be there, to wander around, see the sights, stumble onto the unexpected in ancient corners of the city. Problem was, it was hot. Freakishly hot. One might say global warmingly hot.

And I might mention at this point that heat is my Achilles’ Heel. I hate it. I basically turn into morose primordial ooze. I’m trying to fight global warming partly because I love the planet, and partly because if it gets any warmer, I’m just not going to have a very good time.

It was so hot in London that I abandoned my plans to explore the city and went into the Tate Modern instead. Now, honestly, I don’t much like modern art, but the Tate was the closest building with free admission and aggressive air conditioning. Air conditioning in London. Almost a miracle in itself.

And somewhere in there, I stumbled across a little documentary film about Tirana, Albania. After the departure of Albania’s super-insane Communist regime, Tirana was destroyed in civil unrest, the people ruined financially in pyramid schemes. The place was a bombed-out disaster zone. Barely habitable. And the mayor of Tirana, Edi Rama, who happened also to be a painter, took a look at his dusty, broken, hopeless, beloved metropolis, and what did he do?

He started painting blocks of color on the sides of buildings. Primary colors. Like creating a city-sized Mondrian. And it started to change things. He said that the colors weren’t dress, they were organs. And they changed the conversations in the street and at the cafes. Changed the level of responsibility people felt about their home. Changed them from victims into…something else.

He said, “To go from a city of destiny to a city of choice is, in itself, a kind of utopia.” Edi Rama, in an act of faith, bound by a covenant of love for his city, hit a home run miracle with color. Really, of course, with light.

Now, I know the holidays are a lovely, beautiful time. In fact, we should do them every year. But I also know that’s not the whole story. It can also be a season of tremendous struggle. I don’t know what personal challenges – what desecrated temples and oil-less lamps and overbearing, Zeus-worshipping monarchs – you’re facing. Maybe it’s crazy-making family dynamics. Maybe it’s financial pressure. Maybe it’s the loss of someone dear and beloved. Maybe it’s just the difficulty of wishing for peace on earth and goodwill to all when, as my man Bono sings: Hear it every Christmas time / But hope and history won’t rhyme.

Still, I think the miracle to remember, the thought to keep your flame alive, is not the story of the oil, no matter how many miles per gallon it gets. It’s the story of Judah the Hammer and Edi the Painter and Joshua the Carpenter, for that matter, not to mention Mark the Artistic Director and...oh, let’s see, we need some women in here…how about Wangaari the tree-planter and Theresa the nun and Rosa the seamstress, and all those people who inspire us because they woke up one morning, took a look at the overwhelming, impossible, no-way-on-earth-they-could-win task facing them, and said, “Oh. Ok.”

And even though they were just like you and just like me, they pulled from their hearts a very tiny flame and placed it to an infinitely large wick, and it caught. Maybe not enough to set the whole world ablaze – or even win their personal battle. But enough to kindle another heart. And another. And another. To change things a little. Make the world a little better. It doesn’t even really take a whole act of faith or a big formal covenant of love. Just a moment of faith. A whisper of love. And two words. “Oh. Ok.”