Last night was the synagogue’s Chanukah dinner.  The food, as usual, was not the real reason to go to the dinner.  I understand why the synagogue stopped relying on potlucks, but I miss the potluck days.  We still retain the lukewarm chicken breasts and the latkes.  It’s a good thing that I mainly go for the sense of community.

We had what we refer to as a “family service,” with the youth choir singing and a moralistic story rather than a sermon (although the stories often are better than the usual sermons.  The stories always have a beginning, a middle, and an end and generally have a clear point.)  Our congregation is aging and there are not nearly as many children around as there used to be but I love watching the kids.  Mostly, I loved standing next to Kat and harmonizing with her.  It’s not that the harmonizing is a tradition because it’s not.  It’s only been a few years where she was too old for the youth choir and came and sang with me.

The oneg (or dessert and coffee afterwards)was fun.  I have been so good about sweets that I restricted myself to one small decorated cookie but that was not particularly hard.  The other option was sufganot, the jelly-filled and oily doughnut, which is a treat for Chanukah.  Unfortunately, the jelly is always red and it’s rarely clear if is it strawberry or cherry.  I’m allergic to strawberry so I left it alone.

I looked around and there was Kat with her “kittens,” the group of younger children who would follow her just about anywhere.  The kittens used to be mainly under the age of eight but they are growing up.  Some of the girls are young ladies now, or very close to it, and sit next to her with dignity.

But it was even more fun watching FogieKnight.  I like watching him with a group of boys.  We have only daughters and so he has had to seek out groups of boys.  I think it’s part of why he enjoyed heading up the middle school stagecrew for many years.  But there he was surrounded by boys who were soaking up the really important male information.  FogieKnight, you see, was doing what all boys I have known seem to need to learn.  He had a dreidl and he was spinning it upside down.  From my earliest days in Hebrew school, I remember seeing older boys teach younger boys how to spin the dreidls upside down.

It’s not exactly that girls can’t spin dreidls upside down.  I can--sometimes.  Kat can.  I know a few other girls who can.  The difference seems to be that girls either learn or don’t learn.  Spinning a dreidl upside down seems to become an obsession with the boys.  It’s not religious.  There’s no religious significance to spinning it upside down.  It’s more of a “because you can” thing.  It’s like….well…skipping stones on a pond.

And there was FogieKnight, who came late to Judaism but not to boyhood, crouched down by the floor, with his little plastic dreidl, giving upside-down dreidl spinning lessons with several boys around him, each working very hard on learning how to do it.

From generation to generation……