13/12/96

Same Old Hanukka

Recalling the Maccabees has been a decades-long family tradition, unchanged except for the snow.

    My children are more likely to believe tales of talking dinosaurs than recollections of my childhood. For kids of the mid-'90s, the early '60s occurred long before the creation of the universe.
    But there is one link between their childhood, and mine, and even my mother's. (Yipes! The '40s!) And I'm sure it'll carry on, unchanged, to my grandchildren.
    The Hanukka Party.
    It's one of those generational sagas they make TV serials of in Hollywood.
    Tuesday evening, my mother sang the same songs together with her grandchildren that my great-great grandmother sang with her great-grandchildren. It is, you will agree, a great, grand tradition.
    My mother's side of the family is more populous than several independent South Pacific nations. She has 25 first-degree uncles and aunts, not to mention prolific secondary branches of the family tree, with untold hundreds of offspring. I grew up under the impression that if you're Jewish, we're related.
    The Richler Family Hanukka Party is a small affair, limited to just my great-grandmother's -- Bubbie's -- 14 children and their multitudes. (Everyone's allowed to bring one spouse too.) The elements of the party are absolutely unchanged over the years: gossip, food, song, davening, kvelling and the distribution of Hanukka gelt. And every year, a batch of bewildered new spouses is introduced all around.

ONE ASPECT my kids don't experience is Montreal's winter weather, which seemed to be the same year after year on the night of the party: c-c-c-cold and dry when we arrived; about the time we lit the candles, someone would peek through the curtains and shout, "Hey! It's snowing!"; and a couple of hours later we'd all leave together to push each other's cars out of the snowdrifts.
    Stepping into Bubbie's house, our senses churned at once. The party atmosphere started right there in the vestibule: the wafting aroma of her famous kichelach, the murmur of lots of people with lots to say, and something only the kids could hear: the muffled jangle of Hanukka gelt in purses and Steinberg's shopping bags.
    We'd go directly to the bedroom and add our coats, hats and scarves to the immense pile on the bed, I'd dive-bomb into it a couple of times and then go off in search of cousins Stu and Hertzie and Mark.
    How we played I'm certain our sisters did not, because the next time our parents saw us we were untucked, unkempt, uncombed, shvitzing and out of breath and generally acting "like a bunch of shkotzim." Even our more sedate play included such reproachable activities as tag-team goosing and burping contests. (Hey, that's a long time ago, and we did grow out of it; some of those kids are now rabbis.)
    After the menfolk said the evening prayers, and the candles were lit, we sang: "Maoz Tzur," and a spirited melody called "Hanukka Hayom" that seems to be unknown anywhere else. By "sing," I don't mean a few of us mumbled the words in self-conscious undertones: everyone in that packed room let rip lustily, like a vocal volcano. (Somehow, despite the harmonious pandemonium, we could always hear Uncle Mike's voice rising above it all.)
    And then, every child held his breath. This was it. All eyes turned to Uncle David, who grinned, paused for effect, took a deep breath and, like a circus barker, hollered: "Hanukka gelt!"
    The adults assembled in a crooked U around the room, each couple cradling a pile of envelopes containing a quarter, or 50 cents, or from the richest few, a silver dollar. The young 'uns wended through, for every meek "Thank you" our collection bags getting weightier.
    While the uncles and aunties sipped Red Rose tea from Bubbie's fine china, we skittered off to count up the loot, not bothering to read the "Happy Hanukka! From Phil and Libby," not caring who gave how much. Only the bottom line mattered.
    "Thirteen dollars and twenty-five cents! How much did you get?"
    "Sixteen bucks. Hah!"
    "Sure, ya probably stole from yer little sister."
    (It would take me weeks to contemplate how to spend my $13.25 -- which was more than I made in allowance for a whole year -- because I had to go through hundreds of pages of toys in the Christmas catalogues from three major department stores, and narrow down my initial short list of maybe $1,000-worth to $13.25.)
    One year, we were coerced into donating part of our bonanza to a charity in Israel, though no one quite recalls what. If there's any poetic justice, the recipient was a small library (which bears a Richler plaque) a block from my present home: my children have borrowed many a book from it.
    Sometime during the party I, like all the children, would make my pilgrimage to Bubbie. "Shaindel's yingele," somebody would whisper to her. She'd stroke my cheek, chuckle softly, and say the only Yiddish words I then comprehended: "Du viltz a keey'chel?" Well of course I wanted a kichel! I loved Bubbie: she understood that one was never enough.
    (Pastry chefs would die for her kichel recipe. Some of my aunties, realizing this was a priceless heirloom, got together one morning with Bubbie in her kitchen, to write down the recipe. This was a problem, because Bubbie never used measuring utensils: if the batter felt right on her hands, she stopped adding. The aunties documented exactly how much she used of what, but they could not quantify her magic. When Bubbie's hands died, so did the kichelach.)

IN THOSE days, when the universe was young and Quebec separatism was as dead as the dodo, the gantze mishpucheh lived in Montreal. My nuclear family was considered practically out-of-town, because we had moved to the suburbs. The only ones more distant were an aunt in the Quebec town of Shawinigan Falls, a cousin in the States, Mordecai in London -- and from 1960, Benjie in Israel.
    Benjie, our pioneer, got a parcel of shiny Canadian gelt every year for his young children. 
    Quebec nationalism and Richler Zionism developed concurrently. By the late '70s, Hanukka party gossip included the latest shenanigans of the francoizen (French), and whose son or daughter was studying in Israel.
    Imperceptibly, the party was thinning out.
    Inevitably, someone here came up with an idea: a Richler Hanukka party in Israel. We were a hardy dozen or so -- it was 1981, my first Hanukka after making aliya -- and we gossiped, ate, sang, davened, kvelled and somebody did a passable imitation of Uncle David's cry of "Hanukka gelt!" before the distribution of what the aunties and uncles had sent us.
    Last year, cousin Samuel moved his family from Montreal to Beit Shemesh, and a few days later attended our 15th expatriate party at his sister Adina's house on Moshav Sdei Ya'acov.
    Those who haven't yet fled the benevolent fascism of Quebec still get together this time of year, and the tradition has started up among our refugees in Toronto. But Samuel's arrival is the denouement of the saga: remarkably, there are now more of us in Israel than Montreal.
    Before long, we'll be sending Hanukka gelt to our poor relatives still there.