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In This Issue

• Club Cash, with Catches
• When Friends "Go Greek"
• Father Christmas Found Dead
• Czech Patriot-Citizen Shot
• Promised Floor, Chosen People
• Best of Times, Worst of Times in Manhattanville
• Borat Movie’s Frat Boys Got Love for Hos
• The New Holy "Trinity"
• Interspecies Tension Outside Low Fuels Vicious War
• Vampire Christ
• Tales of the Inexpressible
• Jew Ruins Christmas, Ramadan Up Next, Kwanzaa Left Alone
• Seas Trek: The Next Generation
• SEAS: Survivor
• Thanksgiving: The Last Supper of the Wampanoags
• CAVA Saves Christmas?
• The Evolution of Ashlee Simpson's Face
• THEY Watch

Sarah Levin

The year is 165 B.C.E.  Judas Maccabee stands at the facade of the Temple of Jerusalem and proclaims with the strength of a noble fighter and brave leader, "Get these motherfuckin' goyim off this motherfuckin' temple."  And thusly, Hannukah is born.  

More than 21 centuries later, the candles still burn for eight nights a year to commemorate the lessons of that day long ago.  To learn those lessons, I went undercover to explore the Hasidic Jews' floor of Carman, where Hanukkah is celebrated like it's some sort of big deal-seriously, it's like Christmas to those people.  

It is dark on the mono-lettered floor, which is named after Judy Dench's character in the James Bond films. The single letter stands for the MI6 headmistress' first and only name:  Mezzanine.  The air is thick with hookah smoke and what smells like a very sweet wine containing one percent less alcohol by volume than the wine to which gentiles are accustomed. The clock on the wall reads half past sundown.  As I slip on a slice of salted meat and a chunk of stale challah, a cry-"spin you wooden asshole!"-reverberates off the cinderblock.  And then, as if appearing from thin air, a group of well-dressed, skull-capped freshmen emerges from the smoke.  

Earlocked and loaded, they sit or stand, in round, passing around the four-sided spinning top with which all the world's Bergs, Steins, and Ovitzes replace Santa Claus.  In the center of their circle is a pile of the famous Jew-chocolate that Semitic children eat because they have no peppermint.  The game goes on for hours, punctuated at turns by guttural cries heralding triumph or catastrophe, as the golden chocolate pieces circulate in and out of the pile.  The language sounds like a combination of throat-clearing and what cab drivers speak to each other.  And in this dialect, which I understand only by the accompanying hand motions, I am beckoned into the circle.

One Yiddish Studies major named Mordechai ben Mordechai explains to me the rules of the game.  Chanting children make the clay top spin while they are forced to sing its eponymous song.  The ready dreidel is then spun in turn, each player contributing to or taking from the communal chocolate after interpreting the holy symbols written on the top's four faces.  

The four symbols, when put together abbreviate the old Hebrew proverb, "Nes gadol haya sham," which translates loosely as "Quick, Martha! With the kids distracted for eight days, we can finally use prophylactics like we've always wanted to."  

Suddenly, I hear "Hey shiksa!" and turn to see a recently showered, towel-topped third-floorite hesitantly poking her head into the Israeli airspace. "Umm," she declares, "it's kind of late."  Satisfied, she turns a blind ear towards the whistles and "They don't make ‘em like that in the Holy Land!"s as she shuffles towards the stairs, tiptoeing carefully around the sparkles in the carpet.  

 Spin after spin, my spinner yields the sides I rememeber as "Quick, Martha!" and "prophylactics," which my Hebrew friends translate, "You're losing."

And finally, as if Yahweh himself has blessed my dreidel, the top falls with "with the kids distracted for eight days" facing up.  I rake in all of the surprisingly cold chocolate pieces with both arms and move to put one of them in my mouth.  

But the taste is not of chocolate.  Rather, the top note is the salt of my own blood as my teeth break against the impossibly dense morsel.  The Jews had tricked me by replacing my chocolate with hard metal.  Mordechai ben Mordechai looks at me, grinning behind his beard. "Shekels."

In a well-practiced motion, each bar-mitzva'd gambler puts a funny metal coin in his mouth and bites it, showing me that every piece of chocolate had been transformed by their sorcery into money.

And finally it makes sense.  

I understand why Abraham has no shoes and Chaim has two pairs. I understand why Israel's face sags with the sorrow of a thousand lost souls... though maybe that was just being Jewish.  I understand why Yehudi sits near a growing pile of phylacteries.

Squinting my eyes, through the smoke I see foreign coins, pink slips, mezuzot, and various jars of Manischewitz products strewn about.

This was no game for chocolate.  No, chocolate is not legal tender in Israel. It is not the deed to your automobile.  It is not a parchment inscribed with religious texts and attached in a case to the door of a Jewish house as a sign of faith. It is not a dish of baked, stuffed fish nor one of fish cakes boiled in a fish or vegetable broth and usually served chilled.

And then it happens. With nothing left in his pile, Abraham reverently lifts off his yarmulke and places it gently atop the pile.  The very next spin, Solomon lands a "like we've always wanted to" and wins half the pile.  But instead of choosing the jar of world-famous gefilte fish, he winks at no one in particular and takes Abraham's skull cap.

Before I know it, the two are standing.  Abraham whips out a switchblade.  The mouthpiece of the floor hookah drops from Chaim's lips.  

But as quickly as it had started, the confrontation comes to an end.  The Hebrews turn towards the suite with an open door, where the black-and-white TV announces a three-hour Streisand sing-along.  

As they file excitedly into the suite, I call the elevator and seize the opportunity to escape.

That day, I learned a lot about the Jewish people and their undocumented history.  I learned a game, made some friends, learned to schmooze, and somehow managed to escape and with both my wallet and foreskin intact.