Spot the environmental storytelling.
Ninalyn of the DailyKOS community presents a songfilk:
I have a new menorah, I got it just this year
I’ll put it in my window to spread Chanukkah cheer!
Menorah, my menorah, I got it just this year
I’ll put it in my window to spread Chanukkah cheer!
I loved my old menorah, alas! My cats did, too
So I can still display it, but—to light it just won’t do.
Menorah, my menorah! Ceramic you can glue
But heat dissolves adhesive, so lighting it won’t do.
I love my new menorah, it’s blue, red, gold, and white
To symbolize the fire that burned for eight whole nights!
Menorah, my menorah, it’s blue, red, gold, and white
Menorah, my menorah, it burns for eight whole nights!
It’s not really a menorah if nine branches is the plan
It’s called a chanukkiyah, but that word just won’t scan.
Menorah, chanukkiyah, call it what you will
Just remember when you light it, it goes upon the sill!
Thank you! I’ll be here all week, and don’t forget to tip your waitress!
Now I have that earworm firmly stuck in your head, I present the following question: why are all Jewish holidays blue and white?
I first encountered this question on Tumblr, and immediately went “…hey.” Because the original asker (whose username I failed to note because I’m a schmuck sometimes) is right: Christian holidays have all different colors. Christmas is red and green (in America), Easter is pastel, St. Valentine’s Day is red and pink, St. Patrick’s Day is green and gold. But if you want a card for any Jewish holiday, and you’re just trying to race into Target at the last minute….too bad. Blue and white for you. Rosh Hashbluenah. Yom Kipblue. Blueandwhiteover. And, of course, Chanukkwhite.
Goyim got the idea from the Israeli flag, obviously. And I can’t entirely fault them, especially as the Israeli flag in its turn took its colors from the tallit. There is a certain logic in “blue and white are important colors to Jews, let’s use those.”
But there’s another set of colors deeply important to Jews. It’s called “the whole rainbow” and it was set in the sky as a covenant between us and G-d. Surely there’s something else in there that’s appropriate. I wouldn’t color every single Chinese holiday Lunar-New-Year-red just because it’s considered an auspicious color in several Asian cultures. That’d be kinda, I dunno…racist? Ignorant? Reductive?
So let me share why my Chanukkah is mostly red and gold—and why I think that should be standard.
The central part of Chanukkah is the fire. Yes? The miraculous fire, its flames red and yellow and white, that burned from golden olive oil poured into a lamp made of pure gold. But as it burned ever lower, ever slower, its flames, yes…would have guttered, slowly going blue as the heat faded.
But the miracle did not fade. We know this because there’s a Chanukkah story at all. So why relegate it to the cool colors of a dying flame?
My Chanukkah colors are red and gold: colors of hope.
And come Pesach and the celebration of a new nation, then we can talk about blue and white.
Welcome to A Song Of Zion, our weekly check-in and virtual minyan for Jews on DailyKOS. Share your joys, your sorrows, and tonight, perhaps share your own chanukkiyah.
Goyim are not unwelcome in the Song of Zion posts, but this is a Jewish space for Jews, not a space for the story about how you’re not a Jew but met one this one time. Please take this opportunity to listen, rather than speak, and refrain from I’m-not-Jewish-but comments.
![Trilingual peace graphic (Hebrew Shalom שלום [in blue], - Arabic Salam/Salaam السلام [in green]). -- public domain gift by the file author.](png/shalomsalampeaceisraelispalestinians6abc.png "Trilingual peace graphic (Hebrew Shalom שלום [in blue], - Arabic Salam/Salaam السلام [in green]). -- public domain gift by the file author.")
