Some Chanukah Photos to Share


The last day of Chanukah was this past Shabbat. I have a lot of trouble transitioning from a chag* to a regular week; I never want to let go of the holiday: it is my connection with ha-olam ha-ruchani*, and I keep wanting to hang on. . .so it was just today that I uploaded my Chanukah pictures and am posting some of them here (and will share them on Me-ander, too).

This year, unlike last year, I took plenty of pics, as we had a full chag (Baruch Hashem), including a friend's annual open-house, a Chabad family dinner and a party of our own on the 6th night, complete with home-made latkes, or levivot* in Hebrew (a joint venture) and home-made sufganiyot* (the Head Chef did it all by himself). It all culminated with a shared family-and-friends-Shabbat-dinner on the last night of Chanukah, at our home. Here are some of the highlights:

The two photos above are of our card table which annually morphs into a chanukiya table.

Our dining room table transformed into a Chanukah Party Table, presto, chango!

Just before lighting Shabbat candles (you can see the chanukiyot lit in the background) I snapped a pic of our Shabbat table set for our last-night Shabbat-Chanukah get-together, with one of my pull-apart challahs on the challah board.

. . .And, acharon, acharon chaviv*--for a special Chanukah treat, here is a video showing just a portion of our friends' children's "Chanukah Choir" (-because I didn't think of videotaping it until towards the end-silly me) which they created for our party, singing Hanerot Halalu*, Chabad style (kids, you are now famous!)




So how to exit gracefully from Chanukah? Why, look forward to our next upcoming holiday, Tu b'Shvat*!

But I've got one even better--our older son, Mister Arnold Mayergi and his lovely wife Hardally are (b'ezrat Hashem) actually coming to visit for the holiday of. . . Pesach*!! And guess what they're gonna get a couple of days before that holiday begins? You got it--leftover spinach latkes that we are freezing, because we made so many. Now, that's the way to hang on to a holiday, eh?!

*chag: holiday (Hebrew)
*ha-olam ha-ruchani: the spiritual world
*latkes: potato pancakes (Yiddish)
*levivot: potato pancakes (Hebrew)
*sufganiyot: jelly doughnuts, very popular in Israel during Chanukah
*acharon, acharon haviv: Hebrew for "last but not least." Literally means, "(the) last, (the) last (is most) loved."
*Hanerot Halalu: a prayer we say right after lighting the candles, explaining why we light them and thanking G-d for his miracles.
*Tu b'Shvat: the 15th of the Hebrew month of Shvat, commemorating the flowering of the trees, a harbinger for spring.
*Pesach: the holiday of Passover

Comments

Batya said…
How lovely, thanks. Great news about Pesach!!
7:44 PM
Lady-Light said…
Batya: thanks; yes, great news, but wait 'til he hears he's gonna be eating those frozen levivot from four months ago, heheh...
9:33 PM
Lady-Light said…
Leora: Thanks, posted a comment on your blog.
4:08 PM
Bobbi Morton said…
I enjoyed reading this
2:59 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Great Debate: Is it Itsy Bitsy, or Inky Dinky, of Spider Fame?

Image
For the better part of a year, I've had an on-again, off-again debate with my D.H. as to the "correct" adjective in the children's finger-play nursery rhyme, "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" (now you know which one I favor). My D. H. insists that the correct descriptive is "inky dinky," whereas I demur.  I vaguely recollect from my own childhood, either hearing " itsy-bitsy spider ," or even more familiar to me, the description "eency-weency," referring to said spider's miniscule size, yet plucky persistance, and how he (she?) braved the violent rainstorm which "washed it out" after the arduous climb up the water spout, yet doggedly climbed the spout again, after the sun came out and 'dried up all the rain.' Many, if not most of our American nursery rhymes originated on the other side of the pond, in England, for obvious reasons: the American colonists were British in origin, and brought with them the culture an...
Read more

The End. Is there a Beginning...?

This is my first post back on Tikkun Olam since April 23rd, 2015. It does not feel real. Why is it that we never think we will ever have a JOLT in our lives that will change the entire life course we have been traveling? We continue on, day by day, complacent, even in the face of serious illness--believing that what we are living is the only reality; that it is immutable, that it is PHYSICAL: you can touch it, feel it, and it will continue to be there for you tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow... But it isn't. And it won't.  Because the unthinkable can, and does, happen, in time. To everybody. As it happened to me, almost a year ago, on August 10, 2015, when my DH - Dear Husband, of 46 years, died. I am living in an Alternate Universe. Because the universe in which I was living all my life until now, is gone. I still want to slap myself in the face and wake myself up. It's a dream. A terrible nightmare.  It's a horror movie with a frightening ending, but I will...
Read more

Hijab for Jewish Women?

Image
Someone used this phrase in a comment on a post about the hijab wearing Jewish women in Ramat Bet Shemesh Alef: "modern Hareidi community;" this is an oxymoron. Just for the record, I rarely agree with a Hareidi interpretation of anything. This mode of dress is just a bad interpretation of a good concept ( tzniyut ) taken to extremes. Personally, I cover my hair because I feel it increases my humility by remembering that there is a G-d above me ( not because of the reason of less attraction to men). I chose many years ago to do so; but I have come to believe a woman can be Orthodox without covering her hair all the time; just while in shul, and where it shows respect for the Torah, such as at shiurim, or where it is the preferred mode of dress, such as at yeshiva dinners and the like. But to go to the grocery? Not necessarily . I think the whole message of tzniyut is lost in those hijab cases: where will they go next? Hiding in the home and not going out? Sitting behind a cur...
Read more