Choose me: A Hanukkah memory

Editors note: This column contains some holiday material that appeared in a prior column.

While much of what we hold dear in the world seems suddenly crumbling around us – you know, that mouthy Middle Eastern leader some wag dubbed "Almond Joy" doubting the Holocaust, deploring the state of Israel, and casting a skeptical eye on the Jewish people's paradoxical status as the perpetual victims who nevertheless somehow manage to become clandestine world rulers – instead, I'd like to celebrate ... reclamation of the word "Jew." I mean, removing it from pathetic insult or ethnic slur – as in "You Jew, you!" – to the empowering realm of glorious affirmation!

What I've noticed recently is an explosion, you should pardon the expression, of positive cultural pride, smashing outmoded "meek and mild" Jewish stereotypes.

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Pro-Semitic, if you will:

• VH1's "So Jewtastic"

• "Heeb" Magazine

• A cabaret act named "Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad"

• A hilarious musical duo called "Good for the Jews"

• "Jewtopia" – "the Chosen Book for the Chosen People"

Where was this during my New Jersey growing-up so removed from my roots?

Lately, no one I know in my current downtown Philly neighborhood even celebrates Hanukkah – Festival of Lights, commemorating the ancient miracle of the oil lamp never extinguished. Oh, the fabulous "Arcadia" family, not their real names, did, but, alas, we've lost touch.

I'd like to honor them with this abridged retelling:

One year I walked around the corner, on an unseasonably balmy December morning, to their big red brick house. Inside, surprise of surprises, "Anne Arcadia" is stirring a large steaming aluminum kettle, and I couldn't imagine why.

Ordinarily, "Anne," marital convert to Judaism, never came near preparing food, except her annual epic excursion into "turkey coma," the gigantic Thanksgiving dinner she and husband "Arnie" would throw for friends and family. That's it for her cooking. When Anne wasn't busy working in community politics, she was even busier as a corporate wife. So she always ordered out. We joked she's a princess-by-injection.

But there she was with this huge pot on the stove. And a gorgeous stud standing upon her sink, painting the ceiling, like some wannabe Michelangelo. Well, "Anne" said, if you think he's gorgeous, you should see the plumber, he will truly take your breath away. But the plumber's late, so we'll just have to imagine him. Then she picks up this metal THING and plunks it into the steaming kettle and stirs. And stirs. And stirs.

Soon she holds up for my inspection the most beautiful menorah I have ever seen, a gray spray of flowers, looking like something from one of our Czechoslovakian grandmothers. But no, "Anne" said, it was from Israel and I was privileged, she declared, to see her doing ordinary household things, a sight no one was permitted to witness, particularly since she was rumored never to do anything like that. But here she was, "cooking" the menorah to remove years and years of embedded paraffin, which had dulled its sheen and robbed its majesty.

I think back to those winter holidays of my family in New Jersey as a little girl, with our Christmas trees, because my mother thought it a pretty season, until my brother came running home from Sunday School bursting with the information we were entitled by religion to eight nights of gifts, not one! While he always played the angles, I preferred a pretty story, and indeed the legend of the Festival of Lights was a lovely one: light out of darkness. I'm still a sucker for miracles.

Clearly, in Anne's kitchen, I was in the presence of a menorah to be reckoned with. Unlike those thrift-shop castoffs, mostly tacky tourist menorahs, brassy uninspired souvenirs from Israel, enameled with the colors of the rainbow, or, even worse, fake verdigris, Anne's was a revelation. ...

Meanwhile, the rising cloud of steam from the kettle flushes our faces. Cheered, I start to say something, but Anne shushes me. As we watch, streams of tiny dark blue bubbles seem to emerge from the very pores of the Menorah. I start to say something again, but Anne shushes me once more. And so we stand there, transfixed, peering into the battered aluminum kettle. Oblivious to the impossible parade of muscles surrounding us, we give our full attention instead to the bubbles' joyous dance – how their watery horah around the menorah so suddenly sets something free, and the silvery surface becomes translucent, finally luminous.

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