Nine Nights of Hanukkah

After our fabulous Christmas celebrations we were, well, very full. We also knew that we had to begin planning for our Hanukah celebrations!
Sufganiyot appeared in stores 2 whole months ago (I suppose this is the Jewish equivalent to putting out Christmas decorations after Thanksgiving, as they were put out after all the major fall holidays). These are fried donuts filled with deliciousness. The most basic, and my favorites, are filled with strawberry jam. They can also be filled with halva, dulce de leche, chocolate or really anything else. They can be covered in frosting, sprinkles, chocolate. There are also savory sufganiyot which I have heard are fabulous. Huge hanukiahs/hanukiot have appeared all over town. However, hanukah really isn't a big holiday. It is enough to get us a few days off from school, to garner some hanukah-lights around town and the smell of fried food in the air. But, life does not stop for hanukah.
Of course we had to celebrate it though! We had been lighting the hanukiahs every night and singing the prayers. Yet, the only available night to actually celebrate was the day after Hanukah had ended. Oh well!

The day before we celebrated, a group of us wandered around one of the Haredi neighborhoods to see the beauty of the hanukiahs. This is one of those magical things about Jerusalem. When you are riding by on the train, so many windows are lit up by the glowing flames. Walking around the neighborhoods, whole streets were lit up. There were hanukiahs in boxes on the street, in every window of a huge synagogue, in store fronts and in homes. We watched a small group light their hanukiot on their balcony. They began to sing and dance joyfully, the music emanating from their apartment accompanied by the cheerful light.
The story of Hanukah is not one of my favorites. It is ultimately a story of violence and glorifies war. However, Hanukkah is something that my family has always celebrated. Like much of my religious (if you can call them that) practices, I love Hanukkah not for why it is celebrated, but for what I, my family and my friends have made it. For me, Hanukkah has always been another reason to enjoy people I love, with the added delight of greasy, salty food, dreidle and some pyromania. Lighting the candles every night with my friends was a joy and the celebration was just an expansion of that happiness!
My roommate and her friend began making homemade mini-sufganiyot. They exploded in the process of frying but were nonetheless fantastic. I grated at least 10 potatoes, an onion, added a pinch of this and a dash of that and started frying up some latkes. Another friend walked in and started ordering people around, making key lime pie with some limes that were given to me a week ago and thumbprint cookies (we had forgotten to make them for Christmas). I had a pot of applesauce bubbling on the stove and a few friends threw together an improptu charoseth with the extra apples (yeah, OK, so that is Passover food. Oh well!). The whole place smelled...well, oily!
We decided it was an evening for Bedouin-style seating. This required pulling two of our mattresses out and dismantling the couch so that we had a circle of comfy seating. The table was covered in gelt, hanukkiahs, dreidles (did you know that in the states, the dreidles say gimmel, hay, nun, SHIN (a great miracle happened THERE) but in Israel they say gimmel, hay, nun, PEH (a great miracle happened HERE). Pretty cool.) A friend walked in and began attempting to light the real hanukiah that he purchased when we were walking around the Haredi neighborhoods. He experimented with oils and wicks in order to get it to burn properly. Someone else pulled out tons of candles and lit them, and the whole apartment was glowing. We listened to Ella Fitzgerald's rich voice as the room began to fill with more and more people.
Food was served! A friend, the storyteller of the group, told us the tale of the Maccabees and of Hanukah. Even though I had made a HUGE stack of delicious latkes, there were only a few for each person. Luckily, we had tons of dessert. Everything was scarfed down, accompanied by happy sounds and I decided to use up the rest of my potatoes/onions/every vegetable in the fridge in order to make some veggie patty type things (bubble and squeak, if you will). More grating commenced as a game of dreidle was started. Into the pan the vegetable patty mix went and my friend, who was head chef in that moment, attempted to flip it, consequently dropping all of it on the floor (he actually proved to me later how good he is at flipping anything in a pan without a spatula). I laughed and laughed, having spent half an hour cleaning the floor before people came over. Earlier I had spilled a whole plate of potato juice onto the floor! Ah, well, it is impossible to keep the floor clean when so many people come over. Regardless, we ate what was left, fried up and DELICIOUS (onions, yams, carrots, potatoes, salt, eggs).
As tends to happen, everybody collapsed on the mattresses, legs over arms, heads on shoulders, telling stories, talking about literature and films and life philosophies. And so the ninth night of Hanukah was celebrated in the best form. Food, friends, fun. And more food.