I light my chanukiah Hillel style, starting with one candles and adding a candle each night. Ren lights their chanukiah Shammai style, starting with eight candles and subtracting a candle each night. I say melech in the blessings, and Ren says ruach.
Recently, we have begun pronouncing the Hebrew closer to an old world Ashkenazi accent, although we’re all starting from the strange Americanized Israeli accent that is now taught to American Jews in order to erase diasporic differences and move diaspora Jewish identity towards Israel. So we have to try and teach ourselves to say “b’mitzvosav” instead of “b’mitzvotav.” There are multiple different Ashkenazi accents for Hebrew. There is no way to say which specific one any of us would have learned had it not been erased by Zionists, given everyone has heritage to all sorts of different regions in our generation. Who can say if Northern or Southern Yiddish would have had more influence or if perhaps it would have merged and evolved and changed. Instead we have a homogenized accent that’s not-quite Sephardic not-quite Ashkenazi. We start at least with small things we know we can do: like bringing back the difference between tav and sav.
I still always say melech, but I also love the beauty of the meaning ruach. This year we are making latkes. And we also had someone make Sephardic sufganiyot. Tomorrow I am going to a Chanukah party where we are making funnel cakes. At my shul we sing both Ashkenazi and Sephardic piyyutim and have rabbis who are Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and both. I love all the differences. I love the diversity. I love the diaspora. Isn’t it beautiful that wherever you go, you will find Jews? We are not rootless and without a home, we are cosmopolitan and at home anywhere and everywhere. Learning local customs and bringing our own. Learning languages and bringing along every language we’ve learned. We are cross-pollinators of culture—bringing shakshouka to Minsk and bagels to Barcelona. In Korea, you will find Talmud. In ancient Buddhist caves in China you will find the Torah.
For centuries there were Palestinian Jews spoke a dialect of Yiddish infused with Arabic. It was banned by Zionists in Israel. I love our differences and diversity, and yet they want to create one unified “New Jew.”
Theodor Herzl has nothing but contempt for other Jews in Der Judenstaadt. Henry Kissinger said were he not himself a Jew he would be an anti-Semite. Zionism destroys us and the people who have worked to advance it have no love for our people. They have only contempt for difference. Contempt for our Palestinian cousins. Contempt for Jews from minority lineages like Ethiopian Jews and Indian Jews. Herzl saw Jews as a tool. A population who could be shaped into what he needed: a loyal exploitable workforce. It is not about who we are but who they want us to be.
We watched the Rugrats Chanukah special featuring an interfaith family like mine. In my Jewish suburb of Boston I was bullied for being half Irish. I had friends in the same community who were half German Jewish and half Chinese and for that they were the subject of racist jokes. When we were old enough to host our own Chanukah parties without parents around, we made sufganiyot with our South African Sephardic friend, whose mother spoke French. We also made sweet potato latkes (tip: use a 50|50 mix of sweet and russet potatoes). The Ashkenazim sang the blessings and the Sephardim spoke them quickly. We brought with us five languages, four continents, and six countries. Is it not so much more beautiful that we were all of mixed heritage and full of our differences, yet still could come together as friends in the same community mixing our minhagim and enjoying our time together? Of that group, one has moved to Japan and another to England. The diaspora adventures further around the globe, visiting new places, further cross pollinating.
Why murder tens of thousands for a tiny strip of land in only one part of the planet when we have an entire world to live in. There is enough room for everyone, if we only allow it. Borders are imaginary lines on a map. Human lives are real.
