How I Saved Hanukkah by Amy Goldman Koss Read Free Book Online Page A

Hanukkah.”
    “Daddy’s home?” Ned asked, looking scared.
    “Yup. He’s home,” my mom said, taking her hand off the steering wheel to pat Ned’s foot in the car-seat.
    *    *    *
    She unpacked the groceries from our second trip to the market, then called her friend Sue to pick up sour cream on her way over.
    “Good thing it’s not a long donkey ride to the store,” I said.
    Ned and I made Hanukkah decorations for the windows as best we could without making my mom totally hysterical about the mess. Ned isn’t much of an artist. He called one scribble a dreidel and one a latke, but they looked pretty much the same to me. I cut out a menorah and carefully colored each candle in a differentpattern. It wasn’t as nice as Lucy would have made it, but it was pretty darn good.
    About an hour before the party my dad came shuffling out of his bedroom with droopy shoulders and a saggy face. But when he saw our art taped up on the windows, he lit up like a menorah.
    *    *    *
    People started coming around 4:30. I heard our neighbor Doreen say that she had a hard time convincing her son Sean that it was okay to come. He didn’t think they should because it wasn’t their holiday.
    Then Lucy and her entire family, even Grandma, were at the door. Lucy and I were both wearing the outfits my mom had given us. Hers looked just as goofy on her as mine did on me.
    Lucy had brought the blue-and-white decoration that she’d made at school the day we had that sub. I taped her sky with animal clouds up on the window with my menorah art and Ned’s dreidel and latke squiggles.
    I heard Lucy’s mom telling my dad that they had all watched his sextuplet Christmas show in their hotel room in Texas, and that they’d loved it. Lucy’s momasked all the usual questions about how the parents cope with so many toddlers. And my dad gave his usual answers about how they do their best and find joy where they can.
    Everyone just ran around for a while. Ned’s friends were especially nutso—but not Ned. He spent the entire Hanukkah party either riding on my dad’s shoulders or practically Velcroed to his leg.
    We lit the full menorah. My dad turned out the lights and everybody got quiet because it was so pretty. Joe from the deli said the blessing of the Hanukkah candles in Hebrew.
    Then everyone who knew the words sang “Oh Hanukkah,” and it sounded great. There was me and my mom and my dad with his big voice, and Ned sort of sang, and Lucy and Joe and Joe’s Wife, whose name turned out to be Rose. But boy, was I surprised when I noticed Lucy’s sister Yaz singing along too! Lucy must have taught it to her that very day.
    Next my mom asked me if I would like to tell the story of Hanukkah to everyone—“Marla’s version,” she said—and I did.
    “Long ago and far away,” I began, “a king named Antiochus declared it a crime to be Jewish. It was against the law to pray to just one God. Lots of Jewish people started bowing and praying to the king’s Greek gods and acting just like everyone else.

    “But some Jews disobeyed the king and secretly kept to their old ways and beliefs. The king hated that. He sent some soldiers to put up an idol in the Temple and make a Jew sacrifice a pig to it. A few Jews revolted and fought the soldiers.
    “Then the king was really mad, so he sent more soldiers. A man named Mattathias led his sons and a small band of Jews to live in caves in the hills, where he taught them to fight. After a year Mattathias died and his son Judah took over. His nickname was Maccabee, and the whole band of warrior Jews was soon called the Maccabees. They were way outnumbered by the bigger and bigger armies that the king sent to kill them, but the Maccabees kept winning.
    “The king was furious. For the last battle he sent fighting elephants and his very best soldiers. But the Maccabees fought so fiercely that, against all odds, the king’s soldiers retreated and the war was over.
    “The