Keep it moving
Also, news from HanukkahLand: You must leave HanukkahLand immediately
IN WHICH:
I reiterate, you must leave HanukkahLand immediately.
1.
The stars aligned this year to give us the first night of Hanukkah on Christmas and the last night on New Year’s. I thought it would feel special, yet it feels like just another year.
Nothing is special anymore. I think I’m tired of meaning.
2.
Jessi wants to buy me a menorah. “We’ll get you something fun,” she said. “Maybe in the shape of a banana.” I don’t like to own things I don’t use, a reaction to my mother’s hoarder tendencies probably. My apartment is the messiest it’s been all winter because I’m fostering a kitten and I keep buying books and I’ve committed to writing one micro-essay a day for my entire winter break. I need another break to clear it all out.
3.
Hersh Hyman, ad executive from the legendary Hyman, Hickman, and Scotch, promised he would buy me a ruben sandwich if we were able to sell my New Hanukkah characters by now. But no dice. We sit at the diner having just ordered egg creams. It’s nice to have a dream anyway.
“And some money would be nice,” says Hersh. I’m paying for the egg creams.
4.
My whole life I wanted to be special. Being a Jew is special enough, but did you know that most Jews have a special secret name? Because names are sacred in the Jewish culture, every Jewish parent bestows upon their Jewish children the name that he gets called by other normal boring people (Rachel, Rebecca, Shmuel) and then they give him a secret Jewish name (usually something beautiful and filled with meaning).
And they’ll get real annoying about it too. On the invitation to the bris, they leave out the secret Jewish name to make you want it more. You won’t find it anywhere in the Paperless Post. If you want to hear this new child’s secret name aloud for the first time, you have to go to the special ceremony when they unveil it like a new bridge.
I went to my friend’s daughter’s bat mitzvah over the summer. They used all of her names, secret and public, during the ceremony. On the way back from the ceremony, Jessi, who is not Jewish, asked me why I don’t have a secret Jewish name.
Yeah! Why not?
I called my dad on speaker and asked him how come I didn’t get a secret Jewish name. And his exact words were, “When you came, we were just trying to keep it moving.”
5.
The first day of the year is the least special. January 1st might as well be January 6th, and even that date has lost all of its meaning.
6.
Hersh is fielding calls now with self publishing companies, thinking that our story would work great as an audiobook, when I start to have second thoughts. “Sabrina Carpenter wants to put us on Wattpad,” he says to me.
“You know what Hersh? I think I’m good.”
I finish my egg cream. It’s only 4 o’clock.
7.
“We were just trying to keep it moving.” I realize this has been the theme of my entire life. When I got my first nature wedgie and didn’t tell anybody. When I went to my first sleepover and threw up in the sleeping bag. When my father locked me out of his house one night because he was really angry at my mother. When I lost my job because I couldn’t correct my mistakes. I was just trying to keep it moving.
And it hits me, my resistance against a menorah has nothing to do with my stance against meaning. I’m trying to get to Passover and I don’t need more Judaica junk weighing me down.
8.
When I was young, I could spin a tale. Put me up in front of the class and give me a prompt, I was happy to make it up:
At the end of the Jewish tunnel, in the depths of Prospect Park, there lies a secluded borough known as HanukkahLand. It is a place of peace and understanding, where all people can coexist and celebrate Hanukkah exactly the way it was meant to be. Down Menorah Plaza, you’ll see the mayor’s house. Mayor Brisketface has led HanukkahLand for years and years and years. He makes all of his decisions by dreidel roll and, recently, switched to a chocolate-based economy.
In the depths of downtown, in a cluttered warehouse apartment, JellyNut the monorail mechanic sits in his evening chair (a first-class seat from a decommissioned aircraft) and thinks about eating his own doughnut face.
On the outskirts of town, over the rolling hills, lives AppleSue the Hanukkangaroo, who lives and works with the WhackaBees to pollinate this season’s apple crop, providing HanukkahLand with the finest applesauce imaginable.
And you may not have even noticed the person driving the MenoRail taking you from place to place. It’s Johnny Hanukkah, who everyone knows as the champion of their favorite holiday. Johnny Hanukkah is just his public name though. His secret name he’ll never tell you.
HanukkahLand is where people come to live and work and feel and eat. For them, Hanukkah is more than eight days a year, and it can be for you too, if you roll the dreidel right.
Now that you know about HanukkahLand, who aren’t you going to tell?
This is the final part of an eight-part series called HanukkahLand. To start from the beginning:
Night 1:
Night 2:
Night 3:
Night 4:
Night 5:
Night 6:
Night 7:
