Dreidels on the Brain by Joel ben Izzy Read Free Book Online Page B

about purple mountain majesties! I’d never seen anything so beautiful. And you know what was at the top of the biggest mountain, which is called Mount Baldy? Snow. Crisp and white, like you could reach across the sky and touch it.
    That’s when I started praying for it to snow
here,
in Temple City. I don’t know where you are. You may live somewhere where it snows all the time, like Cleveland. Or Chicago. Or Buffalo. Maybe you’ve been slogging through a long, hard winter, filled with sleet and slush and rain and all that stuff that won’t stop the postman but makes everyone else miserable. But that’s not the kind of snow I’m talking about. I’m talking about the kind of snow that falls silently at night, so you awake to a world transformed. The kind you look back upon years later with a warm glow, recalling how wondrous your childhood was. Like the snow I read about in a poem by Dylan Thomas,
A Child’s Christmas in Wales,
where he couldn’t remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when he was twelve, or for twelve days and twelve nights when he was six.
That’s
what I mean: magical snow.
    Of course, that’s Christmas snow, which is goyisha, but what’s wrong with that? Dylan Thomas wasn’t Jewish, but Robert Zimmerman liked his poetry so much, heborrowed his name. That’s how he became Bob Dylan. And do you know who came up with the idea of a “White Christmas” in the first place? I’ll tell you who. Irving Berlin, the songwriter. Yep, Jewish. In fact, I looked him up in the
Encyclopedia Britannica,
and his real name was Israel Isidore Beilin. You can’t get more Jewish than that.
    So I got to thinking, why not Khanuyakah snow? Like the kind that falls in Chelm. That’s one of my favorite places in the world, even though it doesn’t exist. It’s the mythical Jewish town of fools in Poland. My mother told me about it. She said that she used to hear stories about it from her father—my grandpa Izzy. He died five years ago of cancer and I only ever met him a couple of times, but he was sweet, and funny. When I was younger I used to ask her to tell me the stories, but she never quite did. Instead she told me about Grandpa Izzy, and what a great storyteller
he
was.
    Then one day, Mrs. Molatsky, the librarian at our temple, told me about a book called
Zlateh the Goat
filled with stories about Chelm. I know Zlateh sounds like a weird name, and it is, even for a goat, but it’s my favorite book. It’s by this author named Isaac Bashevis Singer, with drawings by this other guy named Maurice Sendak, and it’s great. One of the stories is called “The Snow in Chelm.” It’s about how one Hahnukkah the elders are sitting around stroking their beards—as near as I can tell, everyone in Chelmhas beards—wondering what to do about the fact that they don’t have any money. Then they look out the window and see that, while they’ve been talking, snow has fallen, and it shines and sparkles in the sun. They decide it’s not just snow, but actually silver and pearls and diamonds—the answer to all their woes! They’ll be rich!
    But there’s a problem. If the people of Chelm walk in the snow, they’ll trample the diamonds and jewels. So they decide to send a messenger to tell the Chelmites not to walk on the snow. They all agree, but then there’s another problem: The
messenger
will trample the snow. Oy! They think some more and come up with a brilliant plan: The messenger should be carried on a table by four strong men, so his feet won’t touch the snow.
    In the kitchen they find Gimpel the errand boy, and have the four cooks carry him all over town, knocking on everyone’s windows, telling them not to walk on the snow. They visit every single house to deliver the message. Then the sun rises, and what do they see?
    A trampled mess.
    That’s when they realize