*Sigh*. I’m feeling depleted and defeated as we come up on this last night of the Festival of Lights. We haven’t lit the menorah on time even once, and we were so late to synagogue on Friday night we missed the mass community lighting. Maybe it’s because it snuck up on me this year being so early, but it hasn’t felt so much like a holiday as a stressful obligation where we overindulge the children and eat too much. And that sounds like the complaints I hear from non-Jewish parents about Christmas. I ask you, what’s the point of being a Jew if I have to suffer the same way the goyim do?

Even our lawn decor kinda sucked this year. Half the blue blinky lights I bought last year didn’t work (not so shocking considering I bought them at Wal-Mart) so all we had was a modest spiral up the palm tree in the front yard. But here’s irony for ya: As of today, our Jewish house is the only one with holiday lights on the block. So apparently seasonal apathy is going around all the religions, kinda like one of those viruses that jumps continents.

Fortunately, our rabbi got very into spirit this year and is displaying this 7-foot gem of inflatable Jewishness in his front yard. I’m fairly sure the other rabbis in town would like to box his ears for it, but Reb Belzer’s never been one to follow the crowd (a post to come on how he brought Mickve Israel’s awesome new addition to its museum, an 8-foot scale model of The William and Sarah, the ship the original 41 Sephardic settlers docked in Savannah in 1733.) But I have to say, he’s set the bar rather high for us outlaw Jews – what, I gotta put one of these out next year?

Anyway, I’m going to muster some true warmth and glow for the last night, no fancy food, just a last plate of latkes and friends and family. And everyone’s getting socks, like it or not.

My homegirl at Excruciatingly Normal sent this from
WhatYaGonnaDo?

Only in Savannah, peeps. Betcha anything it came from the Piggly Wiggly on Skidaway.

Update: So this didn’t happen in South after all, folks, but New Yawk Freakin’ City, posted by Nancy Kay Shapiro on her blog. Manhattan, for f*ck’s sake, which if I’m not mistaken is the unofficial land of the Jews, at one of those upscale yuppie markets that sell $12 jars of wasabi peanuts and imported cheeses. Armaggedon could be closer than I thought.

Brought to you by the always hilarious Jewish Robot, who gives lighting the Chanukah candles the usual rabbinic sardonism (yes, there is such a noun, derived from the name of a Sardinian plant that supposedly incited “convulsive laughter ending in death.”)

He produced it for MyJewishLearning.com, which has always been a favorite but unfortunately has recently suffered a tragically boring new homepage makeover. It’s like html Botox over there, seriously. First of all, the Robot’s vid should be on the front page, and what’s with no photos at all except for a stamp-sized Israeli flag? I’m no web designer, but even I know putting everything all in the same size Times New Roman font will cause immediate eye-glazing. Them folks need to hire themselves a smart young hip Jew for some “jooge-ing”.

I have been a bad Yenta, leaving y’all hanging last week. And my excuse stinks worse than the turkey leftovers I just threw out this afternoon: Yes, I’ve been busy; all the editors at skirt! have been commanded to write blogs now, and perhaps you might be interested in mine, if you like Savannah and shopping and well, me. I’ve also been devoting a ridiculous amount of time to procuring a dollhouse for Little Yenta Girl that doesn’t contain lead paint OR challenge El Yenta Man’s assembly skills to the point of irascible swearing. But the real reason I didn’t post last week has to do with how apathetic I’m feeling rather apathetic towards Jewish news.

I mean Annapolis? Yawn. Israel makes an effort, the Saudis act like douchebags, George Bush gets his photo op (oh, I have never longed to punch the smirk off a punim as I have this country’s king of mediocrity and shameless capitalism!) and everyone expects the Jews to give it up. I’m leaving it to bloggers much smarter and better read than me like themiddle at Jewlicious and Schvach to sort out the details. Just let me know when everyone starts playing nice for real.

I’ve been devoting a bit of brain to Abe Foxman’s Turkish ass-kissing about the Armenian genocide thanks to the disturbing piece in American Jewish Life (it’s not online yet; but I’ve got the new issue because I’ve been shlepping copies all over town for those people out of the goodness of my heart.) Foxy Abe‘s doing a schmucky little political dance that I frankly find unattractive, and you know how depressing it can be when you witness your crush acting like a weenie.

But even though the interwebs have held nothing exciting as of late, actual life brims with the buzz of upcoming holidays and jelly donuts. I can’t believe that for the first time in my life on the Jewish fringe – in a small city in the South, for Obadiah’s sake – I have more Chanukah celebratory opportunities – having people over to our home, invitations to others’, synagogue parties, latke luaus (okay I made that up, but doesn’t it sound fun?) – than there are nights. That’s one heckuva blessing.

As a committed supporter of the endangered species known as the friendly neighborhood independent bookstore, you know if I’m stumping for a big chain it must be for an excellent reason:

This season Borders stores around the country have dedicated Chanukah retail real estate (so what if it’s one table among all the Christmas acreage) featuring Yenta holiday favorites The Hanukkah Lounge and Celebrate Hanukkah, both produced by the machers at Craig N Co.

This is tremendous, people. It means that Jewish holiday music that you wouldn’t be embarrassed to play at a party attended by non-Jews is finally permeating the nookies and crannies (and crookies and nannies) of America, where it will dissolve the repetitive nightmares of “I Have a Little Dreidel” and schlocky satire with its clean, snappy beats. Alas, as there is no Borders in Savannah, I cannot run there and stand next to the pretty Chanukah table (which, in my mind, can be seen from anywhere in the store due to the 20-foot towering menorah) and proclaim in a loud voice (the one El Yenta Man calls my “Jewish mother siren”) how fabulous it is that Borders has finally caught on to the smokin’ hot trends in holiday music and that there should be three tables next year, or better yet, all year round. But there’s nothing stopping you, is there?

I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandmother this last week, and my mom wrote her such a beautiful her obituary in the Miami Herald. People even entered lovely notes in the online guest book, though she hadn’t lived in Florida for years and the notes were from people who hadn’t seen her in decades. It makes me wonder if I should start reading the obituaries in Arizona and California more regularly in case I miss someone.

Anyway, I realized I left out my favorite anecdote about her in my first memorial post:

One time on a road trip sometime in late 70’s, the family was driving through the middle of the desert with nothing on the horizon but saguaro cacti and tumbleweeds. I was squeezed in the backseat with my brother and Bubbe Reggie, grooving to Fleetwood Mac. Suddenly she turned to me and croaked “I’m taking a nap.” She blinked. “Watch my purse.”

One helluva woman, I tell ya.

A couple of times this week the similarities between Sukkot and Thanksgiving have come up, and it turns out, that first feast between the Pilgrims and the Indians was very likely rooted in Jewish practice. Now that paints a different picture than a bunch of WASPy Pilgrims in their stiff clothes and nerdy buckled shoes formally sitting down with a tribe of mohawked red people with superior hunting and agricultural skills: If the first folks in America to hang out with the locals actually had been Jews, you know everyone would have been mingling and cooking and tasting and arguing and singing (but probably wearing some kind of footwear, maybe a nice suede ankle boot, because every Jewish mother knows you can get ringworm by going barefoot in a strange place.) We Jews know how to have a good time, don’t we?

Linda Morel’s 2004 JTA essay has more on the subject, and Lisa Katz nails it for all of us in her thoughtful entry at About.com:

In the long history of the Diaspora, Jews have never been as prosperous, organized, influential and accepted as they are today in America.

I am deeply grateful for my life, my family, my children, my home, my work, my heritage, my health and YOU! yes you, dear reader! Thank you for holding a place in the Jewish blog world over three and half years. That makes me, like, a really old blogger, especially since all the cool kids just do Facebook now.

I’m off on a date with El Yenta Man and to gather with the other fun young Jews of Savannah at the Sweet Potato Schmooze. Then tomorrow we’re going to cook for six hours, wolf it down in 20 min. and sleep for three days. I’ll be back sometime before Chanukah!

May you all experience warm bellies and bliss…

Bet Osyp Firishchak thought he was going to get away with it after all this time, or at least someone would have mercy on a “sweet” old man. His Jewish neighbors say he’s a “victim of an overzealous government,” but the evidence is clear that he participated in horrendous activities as a member of the Ukranian Auxiliary Police. Let God decide after he’s done sucking dust for the rest of his sorry life in Ukraine.

The good news is that there can’t be that many more Nazis to hunt, and the ones still alive can’t run fast.

Smart Jewish mama/professor Sari Gilbert commanded her students to create a “viral video” (one that is so clever and funny that lots and lots of people pass it around and post it on their blogs.) She decided to try her own hand with After Effects software and ended up turning out the best one in the class.

Watch and join us: Just say NO to plastic chozzerai for Chanukah!

My bubbe, Regina Blumenthal, passed away Tuesday night at the age of 85. The lovely Romanians who run the small Scottsdale residential facility where she’s been living for the past few years say she ate her dinner, let out a big sigh and gently left the dimension. May we all pass so easily.

She was born Regina Dines in Warsaw and came to New York as a child after my great grandfather sniffed something ugly in the Polish air during the mid-1930’s. She married my piano-playing grandfather, George Blumenthal, towards the end (?) of WWII and lead a bohemian life in Coconut Grove near Miami. She had my mother in 1945; she had a son a few years later who died of cystic fibrosis at four years old. She never mentioned my mother’s brother to me; I only know because my mother told me.

I don’t know when she began to paint, but I have several giant, abstract canvases in dark, complex colors that I never get tired of looking at. She contracted rheumatoid arthritis at some point before I was born and never painted again, but she always talked about art. She and my grandfather knew more about classical music that anyone I’ve ever met to this day.

I don’t remember her as being anything other than old, but these last five years she reached a zenith of cronedom, sitting like a Buddha on her couch, her big dark eyes blinking. I wish I could post a photo of her when she was young, ’cause Here she is the summer before my mother was born – (muchas gracias, Pepe Pringos!!) she was a real knockout. My mother, her only child, and my father devoted so much time and energy to her care – they’ve set a very high bar for honoring one’s parents. When it became necessary to move Bubbe and my grandfather to Scottsdale from the Miami home that they’d lived in for over 50 years, my parents spent weeks sorting through piles of junk Bubbe insisted were treasures. When my grandfather became ill and couldn’t care for himself anymore, my mom and dad bore the brunt of Bubbe’s hysteria with much grace.

Bubbe could be difficult and dramatic, especially as my grandfather was dying. She also had a great sense of humor and deeply appreciated beauty in all forms. She truly loved my grandfather; when El Yenta Man and I went to visit with our then-2 month-old son, she showed us recent photos of them skinny-dipping in the pool. What kind of 70-somethings are still hot for each other?

She was not religious at all. Her father was hyperobservant and mean, mean, mean, so I think she associated Judaism with her negative upbringing. She didn’t attend my mother’s bat mitzvah a few years ago, and she wouldn’t come to the synagogue for my grandfather’s memorial service. She requested to be cremated, and we’re planning to spread her ashes in Miami’s Biscayne Bay, the same place my mother spread my grandfathers’. I guess this isn’t necessarily kosher, but it’s what that side of the family has always done. I told this to a frum woman I know and she was horrified. But what difference does it make to God if a body breaks down in a gust of flames versus decomposing slowly in a box? Doesn’t it all end up as dust on the shelves of heaven?

Even though I can picture her shaking her gnarled index finger at me, I’m going to say the Mourners’ Kaddish for her anyway. I’ve always learned that we say it for ourselves, the living, because the dead have already returned to the loving arms of our Creator, so she can just ignore me. In fact, I hope she’s too enthralled to be sitting at my grandfather’s heavenly piano once again.

Rest in peace, Bubbe Reggie.