Hanukkah

Hanukkah? The Friday after Thanksgiving? After stuffing the turkey and topping the sweet potatoes with marshmallows, I'll certainly not be ready to grate all those potatoes for my latkes. Faced with this dilemma, I asked a cantor friend why Hanukkah was so early this year. "Because the Jewish calendar is lunar, each month has 29 or 30 days," explained Maurice Singer of Adas Israel Congregation in Washington. "The solar, or Gregorian, calendar has 30 or 31 days." So, in order to catch up, the cantor continued, instead of a leap year with one extra day, we have a leap month every few years.

I WENT caroling the other night with a group of families in our downtown Baltimore neighborhood. We had just finished a rousing rendition of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" when a fellow stuck his head out of a window in a house in the 1400 block of Bolton St. and asked: "Got anything for Hanukkah?" Tough crowd. I mounted a feeble attempt to sing a few lines from comedian Adam Sandler's "Hanukkah Song": "Put on your yarmulke, here comes Hanukkah. It's so much fun-akkah to celebrate Hanukkah," but I couldn't remember many lyrics.

The face and eyes illuminated by a torch and menorah candle were those of a 17-year-old Israeli girl, Leraz Weiss, who had journeyed to Baltimore to celebrate the beginning of Hanukkah yesterday at the Rosenbloom Owings Mills Jewish Community Center. The significance of her presence tapped into both the past and future. More than 2,100 years ago, the Maccabees wrested control of Jerusalem from Syrian-Greek soldiers. After the Jews reclaimed the Temple, the lighting of lamps gave rise to the festive celebration of Hanukkah.

JUST FOR PARENTS Advice and strategies to help your children read Holiday Hanukkah is a festival of lights Exploring the ways everyone has of celebrating together at this time of the year helps people feel connected to each other during the holiday season. Tonight Jews around the world will celebrate the first night of Hanukkah, The Festival of Lights. This holiday commemorates events that took place over 2,300 years ago in the land of Judea, which is now Israel. Long ago the Syrian King, Antiochus, ordered the Jewish people to reject their God, their religion and their customs.

Lost in the Hanukkah holiday, as tales are told of the triumph of the valiant Maccabee men over Syrian-Greek invaders in Jerusalem, is the role played by courageous women. Women such as Judith, who enticed and beheaded an enemy general, and Hannah, who urged her seven sons to accept martyrdom rather than deny their faith, gave rise to a privileged role for women during the eight-day holiday, a role that has become obscured. Like a spiritual archaeologist, a Baltimore rabbi is unearthing some of those rituals and trying to recover traditions.

In Bet Yeladim's colorful preschool classrooms, Wendy Scherer sang Hanukkah songs led by Miss Debbie and Miss Harriet, and learned to make oil-free potato pancakes called latkes and chocolate-dipped spoons. "It was very fun," Scherer said. "I brought the spoon home and ate ice cream with it." But Scherer is not a pupil at the Columbia Jewish preschool and kindergarten. A business researcher and mother of three, Scherer was one of a dozen participants at a child-rearing workshop sponsored by Bet Yeladim at Beth Shalom Synagogue.

Carroll County Arts Council's annual Festival of Wreaths sale raised more than $12,000 this year, organizers said yesterday. The halls of Winchester Exchange Building in downtown Westminster were decked with 155 wreaths, decorated in traditional, whimsical and patriotic themes, for five days last week. Residents bid for each wreath, with proceeds going to the arts council, and voted on the best wreath in several categories. "The bidding was really spirited Saturday," said Sandy Oxx, the arts council's executive director.

In a holiday season that traditionally begins with gratitude at Thanksgiving and ends with gift-giving at Christmas and Hanukkah, religious communities in Howard County are sponsoring outreach projects that demonstrate both impulses. "Especially this year, I think it's time to be thankful for everything we have and to help others," said John Fiorello of Ellicott City, whose family is among the 350 from Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church in Ellicott City who assembled food baskets delivered last week to families in Howard County and Baltimore.

The only Jewish day school in Columbia celebrated the eight-day holiday of Hanukkah by operating a "menorah factory" and pressing oil. Children who attend Columbia's Lubavitch Center for Jewish Education and from the community gathered Sunday to make oil-burning menorahs and press their own olive oil to remember the struggles of ancient Israel. Hanukkah, which ends today, is the eight-day celebration of Israel's victory over Greek invaders in 161 B.C., and its rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.