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This time of year always brings back fond food memories. Since we celebrate Passover, we would have a whole week of eating Matzoh in various forms. Matzoh and cream cheese. Matzoh Pizza (matzoh microwaved with sauce & cheese). Matzoh with schmaltz (rendered chicken fat – tastes like a rich butter) and salt (very unhealthy but oh-so-good). Matzoh Brei (matzoh soaked in water, drained, mixed with eggs and fried like a pancake). Are you sensing a theme here?

Yes, we eat a lot of Matzoh during Passover. It’s pretty much the only “bread” we can eat during the holiday. No rolls, bread, tortillas, pitas, pasta, cereal, or other bread product. In fact, since we’re Ashkenazi, we have more restrictions. No corn (or corn products), beans or rice (among other things).

As you can guess, cooking for Passover can be tricky. Especially when dealing with little kids used to breaded chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese and the like. In years past, we would buy a lot of pre-packaged, frozen foods at great expense. This year, we decided to prepare more fresh foods. Just today, I baked turkey burgers, wrapped them in romaine lettuce leaves and served it with a broccoli/mushroom stir fry in teryaki sauce. (Well, fake teryaki sauce since the real stuff isn’t kosher for Passover.) All in all a delicious, but not too fattening dinner.

My Aloha Friday question for this week is: What meals does this season remind you of? What do you do to eat healthy during holidays?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #32

Yesterday, I talked about re-evaluating my religious beliefs. Today, I was wondering how common this is for everyone else. Do people take a good long look at their beliefs and practices every year, every five years, or pretty much never?

My Aloha Friday question to you is: How often do you re-evaluate what your religious beliefs are?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #26

NOTE: I wanted to write about our Disney Trip today, but this post was bubbling beneath the surface and demanded to be written. I’ll get back to Disney last week. (Well, get back to blogging about it… I can only dream about going back to Disney World sometimes soon!)

I’ve written before about my “divided self.” Part of me is very scientific and wants to explain everything via the scientific method. Part of me is religious and wants to cling to the traditions that I adopted as I grew up. The two sides often war with each other. My scientific side arguing that there is no need for doing a particular thing due to Scientific facts A, B and C and my religious side arguing that there are valid reasons for doing things such a way due to laws X, Y and Z in the Torah.

As I mentioned in Shackles of Habit, though, the mere fact that you’ve done something a certain way for awhile can lead to you not wanting to change how you do things. Even if your reasoning behind the action becomes moot, is proven wrong, or if circumstances change, it can still be tough to alter your habits from what you have been doing.

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I posted a rant a few weeks ago about how the Christmas season tends to get on my nerves by permeating everything around me, with people acting like it’s odd that I don’t celebrate it. After a few days of Chanukah, though, I’ve mellowed out a bit. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I still hate that every place in America goes Christmas-crazy. I still can’t stand the plethora of Christmas songs played with nary a Chanukah song in sight. I still bristle when my kids are asked what they want from Santa. But, I’ve decided to try to focus on the positive. I’ve decided to focus on why I like celebrating Chanukah instead of Christmas.

1. Chanukah celebrates freedom. Where Christmas celebrates the birth of a religion’s messiah figure (or was it the arrival of a magical fat man bearing toys?), Chanukah celebrates freedom. Back in the day, a Syrian king ruled over the land of Judea. Jews living in that land were told that they could no longer worship their own religion. They couldn’t read the Torah, observe Shabbat, or anything. They had to worship the Greek gods or else. Many went along with this, but not Judah Maccabee. He organized a group that revolted and fought for their freedom of religion. They won against overwhelming odds and drove the Syrians out of Judea. Chanukah commemorates that victory.
2. Chanukah ties in nicely with American history. America was colonized by people fleeing religious persecution. It became a separate country when the people got sick of a king imposing his ways onto them. America has valued religious freedom when other countries would rather force everyone to worship the same god. These themes are echoed in the Chanukah story. Teaching them together reinforces the message that each one sends.
3. Chanukah has a conservation message. After the Syrians were driven out, the Jews tried to rebuild but found their temple defiled. They only had enough oil to light their menorah for one night. (It was supposed to stay lit 24/7 those days.) It would take 8 days to make more. Miraculously, the oil lasted 8 days! Yes, the conservation angle is a modern twist, but it’s not that bad of a fit. If we could make our resources stretch 8 times as long, there would be a lot less pollution/etc in the world.
4. Chanukah is inexpensive. Ok, there’s the whole 8 days of presents thing (which isn’t *really* part of Chanukah but has been ingrained long enough that it might as well be). Of course, those don’t have to be 8 huge presents. We tend to give one or two larger presents and then round it out with smaller ones (books, clothing, etc). Other than that, though, all you really need is a menorah (which you use year after year) and candles for each night. (44. Yes, I did the math.) Alternatively, you could use an oil menorah which is more authentic and possibly less expensive. (We tend to buy our candles on clearance after Chanukah and then put them away for next year.) We don’t need to buy a tree or lighting or ornaments or plastic Santas to sit on our lawn. Oh, and you should have some dreidels but you don’t need to make them out of clay.
5. Chanukah is easy. See the previous point about tree, lighting and ornaments. All we need to do is put the menorah out, light some candles, say some blessings and call it a night. The hardest thing about Chanukah might be frying up latkes, but you could always take the lazy way out (*cough*like I did*cough*) and buy frozen.
6. Chanukah isn’t overcommercialized. This is the flip-side to the “Christmas is everywhere, what about Chanukah” thing. While at times Chanukah might seem to be ignored, it also isn’t overcommercialized. I’m not going to see countless “RANDOM CARTOON CHARACTER Saves Chanukah” specials. I’m not going to be pressured into buying tons of useless junk because it’s got a menorah or dreidel stamped on it. I’m not going to be marketed to like crazy with the insinuation that I either spend a ton of time and money or my Chanukah is somehow less meaningful. Again, there’s the whole 8 nights of gifts thing, but that’s all.

In addition to all of this, my quest to find good Chanukah music was aided by an unlikely source. Normally, I’d be opposed to pretty much everything Orrin Hatch stands for. His political views and mine almost never agree. However, he recently recorded a Chanukah song. And this isn’t just Orrin singing “I Have A Little Dreidel”, it’s a brand new song! You can read the story behind it and hear the song itself at The Atlantic. It’s found a place in my rotation along with the Barenaked Ladies Chanukah songs and Adam Sandler’s originals.

So all in all, I’m happy to celebrate Chanukah! Now, if you’ll excuse me, this dreidel won’t spin itself.

As the holiday season draws near, certain challenges arise. As I ranted talked about before in Tis The Season For Bah Humbug, we don’t celebrate Christmas. Instead, we celebrate Chanukah. This means that we don’t need to put up a Christmas tree, stuff any stockings or tell our kids that Santa is going to come and visit. However, that last item does pose a tricky dilemma. Obviously, we don’t have any personal need for our children to think that Santa Claus is real. However, if we tell them that he isn’t (especially 6 year old NHL), then that story will be repeated to other kids. Kids whose parents have said that Santa would be stopping by soon.

We don’t wish any ill will towards other families’ beliefs and practices so this one has, for now, been relatively easy to circumvent. We haven’t told them about Santa’s reality one way or another. The boys understand that Santa relates to Christmas and we don’t celebrate Christmas. However, I wonder what will happen as they get older. Will they begin to ask for a better reason why Santa won’t visit us or whether we’re on the naughty list for not celebrating Christmas? Perhaps NHL will want to know how Santa gets to every house in the world in one night. Perhaps he will have other, not so easy to answer questions. (If there’s one thing I’ve learned is that kids have a tendancy to find and ask questions that are difficult to answer.)

The more I think about the questions they might ask, the more I wonder where the line is. At what point does our wishes not to burst any bubbles clash with our wishes to raise our children to believe certain things. To expand this past Santa Claus, what happens if NHL tells a classmate in Hebrew school that men evolved from primate ancestors when that child has been taught that mankind was created by God somewhere around 10,000 years ago. That could understandably cause a sticky situation. To go past my own children, what if an athiest couple’s child tells mine that God doesn’t exist?

My Aloha Friday question is: How do you reconcile teaching your child what you would want them to believe while not offending others’ beliefs?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #16

This Monday, Jews around the world will celebrate Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. As part of atoning for our sins, we’ll fast during the entire holiday. For the record, that’s 25 hours without food or water. Not even a sip of water to quench our thirst. (Children, nursing mothers, the elderly, people with medical conditions are excused from the fast. Their health is more important than the fast.) Fasting for that long isn’t as hard as it sounds though. You eat dinner the night before, skip breakfast and lunch, and then eat dinner once the fast is over.

My Aloha Friday question is: What is the longest you have fasted for and for what reason?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #6

Tomorrow begins Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. We’ll be spending the next two days in temple, praying, but also eating. It has been said that the Jewish Holidays tend to revolve around food (either feasting or fasting). To some degree, this is true. Rosh Hashana’s traditional foods include a challah bread (round instead of the usual straight line) with raisins, some form of “new” fruit (pomegranates are a favorite), teiglach (a crunchy dough boiled in honey) and, of course, apples and honey.

My Aloha Friday question is: Do you have any food related traditions?

Bonus Aloha Friday Question: Have you ever eaten apples & honey? If not, try it! If you have, have some more anyway!

Here’s wishing everyone a sweet year!

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #5

The recent Holocaust Museum shooting and the focus on White Supremacist James W. von Brunn has brought up a lot of memories for me.  Being Jewish, I’ve dealt with bigotry a few times in my life.  The first time I encountered it was sitting in the hall in school with a friend of mine.  He introduced me to another friend of his.  This guy, knowing that I was Jewish, starting spouting off some very anti-semetic things such as "Hitler should have finished the job" and such.  Now, I’m not usually a violent person, but my friend had to restrain me from decking this guy right in his hate-filled mouth.  My friend apologized and tried to claim that the guy was a nice guy despite his views.  I didn’t care.  I didn’t want to be associated with anyone like that.

My next experiece dealing with hate came from within.  I was sitting in my high school Biology class talking with some classmates.  We were joking around and I make a joke regarding Jehova’s Witnesses.  Someone else in my class turned to me and said "I’m a Jehova’s Witness."  Now, I don’t know if he was serious or what, but his words hit home.  I suddenly realized that I wouldn’t like it if people were making bad jokes as the expense of Jews.  So why was it alright for me to make bad jokes at the expense of someone else’s religion?  (Of course, the answer is that it wasn’t.)

This led me to "discover" that my father was quite bigoted.  I don’t think I quite noticed it before, but he was.  He’d make comments about "modern" (for the time) music being "whites listening to black music when it should be the other way around."  He’d see a black man walking in our general neighborhood and wonder "what’s he doing here?"  That sort of stuff.  He didn’t hate other groups per se.  He just thought less of them because they weren’t like him.  Growing up with that kind of attitude is infectious.  It takes a conscious effort to break the cycle, but after that Biology class remark, I made that effort.  I won’t say that I’m 100% free of my father’s prejudices, but I recognize them whenever they try to bubble up (a rare event nowadays) and actively push them from my mind.

My third experience came during college.  A friend of mine, who worked for the school paper, leaned over to me during class and told me not to get upset.  Apparently, the paper was approached to run an add and they accepted it.  The ad, actually a 27 page insert called "The Revisionist", was from a man named Bradley R. Smith and detailed how the Holocaust never happened.  He seriously claimed that not a single Jew was gassed to death by the Nazis, but instead Jews made up the Holocaust to gain sympathy.  Needless to say, I was enraged.

The paper’s editors tried to justify the printing of the 27 page "ad" by saying that he has a right to free speech and that they were simply presenting both sides of the argument.  My response was that, while he had a right to free speech, they had no responsibility to promote his speech.  Their decision to do so was their own, not born of any Constitutional necessity.  In addition, there are no "two sides" and there is no argument.  The Holocaust happened, the evidence for it is clear and its historical authenticity was proven long ago.  Would the paper, I asked, run an ad claiming that slavery never happened and blacks were always treated nice by every white guy they encountered because it "would be presenting both sides" and it would be giving the ad’s authors "their right to free speech"?

My college’s Hillel chapter ran a counter-campaign and I, and others, wrote letters to the school newspaper lambasting them for giving a voice to this Holocaust Denier.  Some others also wrote letters.  One, outragously, claimed that those who died during the Holocaust would be happy to see that we are arguing over whether it actually happened.

During my college years, I also had the opportunity to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.  It had many powerful exhibits like having to walk under the "Work Makes One Free" sign that once marked the enterence to a concentration camp or the room filled with shoes.  When I entered one of the cattle cars used to transport Jews to the camps, my mind tried to picture fitting as many people inside of it as the sign indicated the Nazis stuffed in there.  It just couldn’t grasp how they all fit in.  Of course, I realized, that was because I was thinking of fitting *people* inside.  To the Nazis, they were stuffing in beings that were worse than animals so they didn’t care how atrocious conditions were in the car.  My mind was being limited by my own humanity.  (Thank goodness!)

The most powerful exhibit, however, was surprisingly one meant for children.  It was called Daniel’s Story.  In it, you walk into the life of a little Jewish boy named Daniel just as the Nazis came to power.  His life seems pretty normal as first, but as you progress through his life (by moving from room to room), Nazis intrude into his life.  At first, it is just small things like having to wear a yellow star, but you end up staring at the entrance to a concentration camp.  The exhibit masterfully connected you emotionally to Daniel, so when the tragic ending occurred, it hit me hard.  I’m not one to cry in public, but I was extremely near tears.  Only a odd fluke that I found mildly humorous (a letter by a child hanging on the wall who the same name as me) kept me from breaking down completely.

In addition, I found a renewed reason not to hate others different from myself while in the Holocaust Museum.  One section described how Hitler approached a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses.  To simplify matters, he basically told them to keep out of his way while he killed the Jews and they would be left alone.  They, however, didn’t think it was right and opposed him.  For their opposition, they were put in concentration camps and killed.  From this I learned that, despite your differences with someone, you should always try to find the good in them.

Unfortunately, I just can’t find any good in James von Brunn or in people like him who turn their hate-filled views into violence.  I hope he survives his injuries only because he deserves to be tried and convicted of murder and locked away for the rest of his life.  My condolences go out to the family of the slain guard and my thanks to out to him and the other guards who kept this tragedy limited to only one life lost.  Had they not reacted as quickly as they did, more innocent lives could have been lost to this madman.  I think an appropriate response to James von Brunn’s hate is information.  Where there is ignorance, hatred thrives.  We should all strive to learn more, whether it be about a group of people who are different than us or about an event in history that we don’t know all the details about.  The more we learn, the more the light of knowledge shines, driving hatred into the ever decreasing shadows.

On December 17th, Ima on (and off) the Bima posted a Chanukah giveaway.  She was giving away copies of Bruce, Bruce the Chanukah Moose.  I entered twice (once by posting a comment and a second time by tweeting the contest).  The next day, Ima notified me that I had won.  It was my first online giveaway win ever!  A few days later, B informed me that a package had arrived for me.  I ripped it open and inside was a copy of the book (along with a CD with music based on the book), 3 bags of chocolate gelt and a dreidel.

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I’ve already read NHL the book, played the songs for him and played dreidel with him using the gelt.  He begged to be able to rip open his coins and eat them, but I told him that he couldn’t play with them if he did that.  (Empty foil wrappers don’t count!)  I let him eat a couple, but most were saved for future dreidel games.  Thanks to ImaBima for everything!

Last night, we had our traditional Christmas meal: Chinese food.  First, we ate out at a Chinese buffet.  After engorging ourselves on Chinese food (and sushi!  yay!), we stopped by a CVS that we saw was open on the way to the restaurant.  We walked through the aisles casually shopping.  The store’s manager came over and wished us a Merry Christmas.  Normally, this is where B or I reply "Happy Chanukah" to gently inform the person that we don’t celebrate Christmas.  It’s not that we’re highly offended.  It’s more of a reminder that December isn’t solely Christmas territory.  For whatever reason – full bellies or the nice way he said it – we decided not to respond in our usual manner.

NHL, however, replied: "Happy Chanukah.  We don’t celebrate Christmas.  We celebrate Chanukah."  I was so proud of him at that moment.

Then he proceeded to inform the manager that we were heading home now to light the candles ("Have Chanukah" in NHL’s terminology).  Then he decended into "stream of consciousness talk" where anything that popped into his head came out of his mouth without any regard for other people lacking the references NHL was making.  We were leaving by this point and tried to keep NHL quiet on the way out.  The manager was nice and didn’t seem annoyed by NHL’s ramblings.

After we got home, I called my parents to see how they are doing.  When I told him about the CVS event, he told me about something my nephew did.  Apparently, he told my sister to light a fire in the fireplace just in case Santa came down their chimney.  When I was a kid, I’d do the same thing.  I knew Santa wasn’t real, but just in case he was and just in case he mistook our household for one that celebrated Christmas, I wanted to "inform" him that we didn’t.  I guess I wasn’t one for subtly.

We don’t have a chimney/fireplace in our house, so we won’t be carrying on this tradition at home.  I don’t know if my sister told him the story or if he came up with it on his own.  In either case, I’m so proud of my nephew for carrying on a Christmas tradition.