“Hanukkah isn’t really ‘happy,’” she said to me. “That’s just something the goyim say. Because Hanukkah is around Christmas, and so since they have ‘Merry Christmas,’ they think we should be in ‘Happy Hanukkah.’ But we don’t really have happy, here in the Jews. For one thing, it’s dangerous. History shows that as soon as we get happy, what happens? Cossacks ride over the hill, and there’s a pogrom. So we try to keep the happy to a minimum. Otherwise some goyim will say: ‘Hey, look over there. Some Jews being happy! We need to put a stop to that! Let’s go!’”

She’s a big fan of an exchange on The Newsroom, penned by Aaron Sorkin. There a couple of TV reporter/producers are trapped on a plane not moving on the runway at LaGuardia Airport. It’s May 1, 2011, and they’re working to confirm the then-unannounced news that Osama bin Laden had been killed. But they can’t receive permission to exit the plane, and so are cabined only to their phones.

And one of them says:

“I’m the guy who wins the lottery and loses the ticket. Biggest story in a generation, and I’m a spectator.”

And the other says: “You are not a spectator. We are locked on a plane, and we still helped put it together. That’s pretty good.”

The first then says: “What is this compulsion you have to look on the bright side? I can never count on you to be Jewish.”

The other replies: “If it helps, we should probably be concerned about violent retaliation.”

“That does help, man,” says the first. “Thanks.”

The Hanukkah story begins with the Antiochus IV dude greeking in to trash the temple in Jerusalem. This was like 167 BCE or so. He erected an altar to Zeus in there, and then sacrificed pigs.

Well, the Hebrews, they went wild. They went to the weapons, and retook the temple. When they got back in there, the place was a mess. There was only one jar of pure oil remaining, for the lighting of the temple, enough for but a single day.

But somehow the oil stretched to light for eight days, until the Hebrews could produce new oil. This was, like, a miracle. Because you are allowed to have miracles. There in the Jews.

So in Hanukkah, everybody who is a Jew lights candles for eight nights. To remember that time things went well for them.

For a while, anyway. Because eventually the temple was again overrun, and this time wholly destroyed. And it remains so to this day. As it would be difficult, to bring it back. Because the Muslims meanwhile erected the Al Aqsa Mosque atop it.

That sort of shit happens all the time. Like Notre-Dame de Paris stands where once was a Druid sacred grove. And so on.

There are various things that go on, there in the Hanukkahing, “but I like the part where we eat cheese,” she told me. “That’s to commemorate Judith feeding cheese to Holofernes. The cheese made him thirsty. So then she fed him wine. Until he got drunk, and fell asleep. Then she cut off his head.

“They say you’re supposed to put the menorah in a window, where everybody passing by can see,” she said. “But I’m with the Hasid, who place it near an inside doorway. I don’t think every passing Tom, Dick, and Goy needs to know where there are Jews. Because what if they go to a pogrom? No thanks.”

.ברוך אתה יי, אלוהינו מלך העולם, אשר קידשנו במצוותיו, וציוונו להדליק נר של חנוכה

[video:https://youtu.be/8ssfrRsoaEY]