I bought my first chanukiah when I was a graduate student. My roommate Pat was the first non-Jew with whom I’d ever shared a kitchen and my celebration was predictably tentative. The menorah was disposable, made of a cheap paperlike tin, and unstable, needing to be set on a glass plate. I fried latkes for Pat, who never understood why we ate them with both applesauce and sour cream. After the eight days of candle burning, every nook and cranny of the foil cups were coated with wax and the get-up was easily tossed.
My other chanukiot have not been so easily disposed of. There’s the regulation brass menorah I bought when I first got married, still crusted with blue and red tallow despite more than two decades in and out of the dishwasher.
What a testimony to how styles of worship have changed. My “married menorah” is functional; it stands 9 inches tall, with the semi-circular upswept arms known to Jewish homes since time immemorial. Its three-tiered base is stamped with ersatz menorot, as “creative” and inspiring as the jelly glasses embossed with Disney characters my family used for juice when I was a child.
Chanukah in the 1970s was an also-ran holiday, second best to Christmas. My husband and I were acting “natural” in those days, trying out sweet potato latkes with friends, some of whom had living pine trees next to the fireplace. It was the days of Dansk salad bowls, of hand-made coffee mugs bought at local art fairs, of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. It was a time when not caring about style was a style all its own.
Then came the child-blazing years. Samantha made a new menorah each winter, first at preschool, then at Hebrew school. At age 3 she decorated an untreated 2-inch high slab of oak with six ice cream sticks formed into a Star of David; metal washers served as candle holders. At 4, she painted the wood slab a deep chocolate brown and pasted a tall wood spindle as the shamash. About 5 she got festive, sprinkling blue glitter on a thin white wood strip, and painting the metal washers pink! We were gourmets by then, eating Caesar salad and homemade cheesecake, filled with cheer.
Soon, it was the age of Renewal. Our friends caught fire with the holiday spirit, which came to symbolize both tolerance and the triumph of individuality over repression. We took literally the Midrash, explaining that while there had to be at least one menorah per household, there could be one menorah per person. My dining room was aflame with candles, and it was no longer a burden to use up the entire box of 44 multicolored tapers. We were busy families. I learned the concept of making latkes a few days ahead of time, freezing them for later!
As the years went by, without quite realizing it, I’d been stylistically left behind. My poor brass menorah was outclassed by the exquisite hand-made silver set made in Hungary, or even the Agam knock-off (himself inspired by the commentator Rambam) with the diagonal arms now available at places like Bed, Bath and Beyond. My mother bought us a “Happy Chanukah” hanging quilt, in which multicolored Velcro tapers and detachable yellow-and-red flames are placed each night in shiny golden lamé pockets. No heat, but a decorative delight.
How fast the candles were burning, and not just because Chanukah flames last only about three minutes. I didn’t see it happening, for love of the glow. One year we burned our candles with Hillel, adding one each night until there are nine. The next we tried Shammai, decreasing the flares until there were just two. In the end, Edna St. Vincent Millay was right: Burning candles at both ends gives a lovely light.
Where does this leave me, now that my daughter has grown up and the days of the metal-washer candleholder are gone? It leaves me on fire, that’s what, to finally get the menorah that I deserve.
So I did what any Jewish shopper does seeker ritual solace: I went online to anymenorah.com — really! — for a journey into the might-have-been and the what-will-be.
I wonder how our lives might have changed if we had, at our family table, not our Home Depot creations but the Curious George menorah, featuring not just the beloved monkey but the Man in the Tall Hat. Could I have resisted Pooh’s Latke Party, in which the adored bear joins Rabbit, Tiger, Roo and Eeyore for a party of scrumptious latkes? What about the “ball and bat” menorah, available in both aluminum and “polyresin,” for the Little League years?
As for hip adult fantasy, I could choose (but won’t) the “Golf menorah” (club and ball), the “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Lower East Side,” or “Dreidel at the Western Wall” varieties, the Starbucks-inspired “Coffee Time!” with crystal mugs or the Mah Jongg menorahs in clear or fake ivory.
Instead, I am drawn to an expensive menorah that commemorates lost Jewish communities of Eastern Europe and to a silver-plated number called the Tree of Life. I’ve got eight on my wish list, and time to choose, choice being the first step of personal freedom.