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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/40876/full/40876/oh-chanukah-turns-into-woe-chanukah-when-youre-all-alone/ <br /><br /> <b>‘Oh Chanukah’ turns into ‘Woe Chanukah’ when you’re all alone</b> <br /> Thursday, December 17, 2009 | by stacey palevsky <br /><br /><p>Chanukah 2005 is not a time I like to relive. But when my friend Anna asked me if I’d like to be interviewed for her recent Northwest Public Radio story about loneliness during the Festival of Lights, I didn’t have the heart to turn down her request.</p> <p><img alt="stacey palevsky" class="left" height="200" src="/images/uploads/column_pics/column/stacey palevsky.jpg" title="stacey palevsky" width="126" />You see, in 2005, I was living in the eastern part of Washington state. When the first night of Chanukah rolled around, I set my menorah in the window. My apartment was quiet and dark. Then my phone rang. It was my parents and sister calling to wish me a happy Chanukah — and to light the candles via speakerphone.</p> <p>It was a bittersweet call. Of course I was thrilled to hear from my family, but the call only served to remind me that I was alone, on Chanukah, lighting candles and singing prayers with people who were not in the room with me, but thousands of miles away.</p> <p>This was not the Chanukah I grew up with. My parents, sister and I always lit candles together, two of us on each side of the kitchen island. With the lights turned off, my dad recited the long version of the Chanukah prayers after my sister and I each lit our shamash.</p> <p>Once the candles were burning and the prayers sung, we concluded with “Ma’oz Tzur.” Our faces glowed in the flicker of the flames. Later, when I was old enough to recognize the beauty of this tradition — when I was in college and came home for winter break — I would sometimes be moved to tears.</p> <p>But in my Kennewick, Wash., apartment in 2005, my eyes welled up for an entirely different reason. I was celebrating Chanukah alone. You can hear my story, and those of other isolated Jews living in small eastern Washington towns, in the public radio story at tinyurl.com/radiochanukah.</p> <p>Four years later I couldn’t be in a more different place.</p> <p>I celebrated the first two nights of Chanukah this year with 75 high school students from around the East Bay during a Midrasha retreat held at Camp Newman in Santa Rosa.</p> <p>On the first night, we lit the menorah while sitting in one big circle with the menorah on a table in the center. Then we lit the Shabbat candles — 75 tea lights, one for each student.</p> <p>The next night, after a spirited Havdallah, song leader Eric Schoen got the students going with “Oh Dreidel,” and then we sang the very song I once recited with my family on the telephone — “Ma’oz Tzur,” or “Rock of Ages.” Students danced and bopped around and the scene filled me with joy. Finally, I was celebrating Chanukah with a community, one that had eluded me four years prior.</p> <p>Following the song session, we began our Chanukah party, where 75 menorahs were lit — again, one for each student. Soon, 225 candles (two candles plus a shamash for each person) bathed the room in candlelight, mingling with the black lights and strobe lights to illuminate what the kids called their “Chanukah rave,” where they danced to Israeli techno music, hula-hooped and noshed on sufganiot.</p> <p>Chanukah is a joyous holiday, one that reminds us of hope and miracles. But for Jews who are alone during the holiday, as I was in 2005, it can be eight days of darkness.</p> <p>Yet it is not only isolated Jews who feel alone during Chanukah. As I was writing this column, Anna forwarded to me an e-mail she received from a Seattle woman in response to her story. It read:</p> <p>“My husband and I were just talking last night about how it’s a shame that our kids don’t get to hear their holiday music on the radio. I was dropping my 2-year-old off at preschool when your story came on. He got excited when he heard the word ‘Chanukah’ mentioned and let out a squeal of delight when he heard the young woman singing [the first stanza of] ‘Rock of Ages’ on the radio! I’m so thankful that he got to hear part of his culture celebrated like the other kids.”</p> <p>That “young woman” was me. I never expected that my retelling of my darkest Chanukah would collide with my brightest — and that the story would bring light into someone else’s home.</p> <p><strong><br />Stacey Palevsky</strong> is a writer at j. She can be reached at <a href="mailto:stacey@jweekly.com">stacey@jweekly.com</a>.</p>

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