Ron­na Wineberg is the author of On Bit­ter­sweet Place, her first nov­el, and a debut col­lec­tion, Sec­ond Lan­guage, which won the New Rivers Press Many Voic­es Project Lit­er­ary Com­pe­ti­tion, and was the run­ner-up for the 2006 Reform Judaism Prize for Jew­ish Fic­tion. She will be blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series.

Chanukah is here again. The holiday’s arrival reminds me of the sweet­ness of cel­e­bra­tions when I was a child and when my chil­dren were young. Chanukah is also a reminder that anoth­er year has passed, a mark­er of time, and a reminder of the win­ter dark­ness that lies ahead. The glow­ing can­dles seem like hope­ful bea­cons in the harsh­ness of winter.

When I was a child, we cel­e­brat­ed the hol­i­day with our large extend­ed fam­i­ly. My mother’s par­ents, old­er sib­lings, aunts, and uncles were born in Rus­sia. The sounds of our cel­e­bra­tion were a mix of Eng­lish spo­ken with­out an accent, with an accent, and Yid­dish. The chil­dren were giv­en gifts, usu­al­ly what we need­ed: a new win­ter coat, a wool sweater and socks, some­times a dec­o­ra­tive piece of cloth­ing like a blouse or col­or­ful scarf. The presents were util­i­tar­i­an, but the cel­e­bra­tion was joy­ous with scents of latkes fill­ing the house. 

In school, of course, Christ­mas was the dom­i­nant hol­i­day. A few pro­gres­sive teach­ers spoke about Chanukah and dis­played a meno­rah. We didn’t know about Kwan­zaa then. My chil­dren cel­e­brat­ed all three hol­i­days in school; each hol­i­day was giv­en equal weight. 

For the char­ac­ters in On Bit­ter­sweet Place, who live in Chica­go in the 1920s, Chanukah has a sim­i­lar mean­ing but is also a stark reminder of their oth­er­ness. They are immi­grants, strangers in their new land. Today’s immi­grants are strangers, too, and still need to over­come the same obsta­cles the Czer­nit­s­ki fam­i­ly faced: learn­ing a new lan­guage, find­ing work and hous­ing, under­stand­ing a new cul­ture, and deal­ing with prej­u­dice. No amount of desire for assim­i­la­tion can help immi­grants feel com­fort­able with cer­tain customs.

Lena feels her oth­er­ness even more strong­ly dur­ing the hol­i­days, feels the pre­car­i­ous bal­ance between her two worlds. Her teacher leads the class in Christ­mas car­ols and reads aloud Christ­mas stories. 

Here is a scene that did not fit into the book. Although I liked this scene, I felt it didn’t move the nar­ra­tive for­ward in the way I’d hoped, and so I didn’t include it in the nov­el. Lena hur­ries home after singing Christ­mas car­ols at school and walk­ing past the Christ­mas tree dis­played in the school hall­way. She feels deject­ed. She didn’t know the words to the car­ols sung at school; her oth­er­ness has been exposed. The small apart­ment on Bit­ter­sweet Place is filled with the famil­iar smells of latkes. This is the same smell that lin­gered in the house when I was a child and when my chil­dren were young. The sim­ple cop­per meno­rah sits on the ledge of the Czer­nit­s­ki kitchen win­dow. Bless­ings are sung; can­dles are lit, flick­er and glow. Small presents are giv­en. Lena’s moth­er Reesa dis­trib­utes the gifts, which are not wrapped. She wears a yel­low apron over her blue cot­ton dress; she has been cook­ing. Lena’s broth­er Simon receives a red wool hat, Lena a pair of black wool gloves, thick to with­stand the win­ter cold. Reesa gives noth­ing to her hus­band Chaim. She prefers to save mon­ey and use it for what the chil­dren need. But she pre­pares a favorite sweet for him, egg kichels. He brings her a sin­gle yel­low rose, bought from a flower shop, an extrav­a­gance and unchar­ac­ter­is­tic ges­ture of tenderness. 

The hol­i­day is a repos­i­to­ry of mem­o­ry for the Czer­nit­s­ki fam­i­ly and, per­haps, for every fam­i­ly, espe­cial­ly immi­grants. Year after year we cel­e­brate with the same foods, melodies, and prayers. Those with whom we cel­e­brate, changes. Chil­dren grow up and move away, peo­ple we love become ill and die, we may move from one coun­try to anoth­er, but the tra­di­tions remain. While Chaim reads the Chica­go Tri­bune at the kitchen table, wait­ing for the aunts and uncles to arrive, Reesa sits in the liv­ing room with Lena and Simon, telling sto­ries about fam­i­ly mem­bers who were killed in Rus­sia. Year after year, the same sto­ries, the same names. 

For Lena, there is relief when the sto­ries, songs, Christ­mas car­ols, Christ­mas tree, and the pull of the past ends. Reesa sets the meno­rah on a high kitchen shelf. The hol­i­day is over. Lena can dive into life again and con­tin­ue on her jour­ney to find her ​“true nature” and the sense of safe­ty and belong­ing she hopes for in her new home. 

Ron­na Wineberg is the recip­i­ent of a schol­ar­ship from the Bread Loaf Writ­ers Con­fer­ence and fel­low­ships from the New York Foun­da­tion for the Arts and else­where. She is the found­ing fic­tion edi­tor of Belle­vue Lit­er­ary Review, and lives in New York.

Relat­ed Content:

• Read­ing List: Hanukkah Reads
• What’s New About Hanukkah? by Dianne Ashton
• Hap­py Mer­ry Christ­mas, Ma’am! On Being Jew­ish in a Strange Land by Jen­ny Feldon