It speaks volumes that the same neighbor has never commented on our holiday decorations. A city in which a neighbor said, “Oh, I’m going to like you,” when he saw us hanging our American flag before we even unpacked our moving boxes. We moved from a building on the Lower East Side, complete with a Shabbos elevator, to a city in the news, just days before we arrived, for its antisemitic sidewalk graffiti. ‘Please stop telling me how I should celebrate Christmas.’ĭo you know someone who could benefit from this? SHARE this story on Facebook with family and friends.The year I turned 40, we left our New York City life behind us, trading it in for the picturesque Midwestern suburb where my husband grew up. But it wasn’t so simple.’: Mom of 3 says ‘holidays can be special, but they can also be A LOT’ ‘Isn’t this picture sweet? We lit our candles, opened presents and had fun together. ‘I wondered why on EARTH I thought it was a good idea to have a child.’: Woman opens up about postpartum depression, anxiety, ‘Mamas, please know you aren’t alone’ ‘I’ve been SUCKED DRY of any energy to keep up the facade of being a happy-go-lucky, I’ve-got-this pandemic parent.’: Mom opens up about the stress of Covid parenting, ‘Calling yourself names isn’t going to help’
LIGHT MY MENORAH MAMA FREE
Submit your own story here, and be sure to subscribe to our free email newsletter for our best stories, and YouTube for our best videos. You can follow her journey on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and her blog. This story was submitted to Love What Matters by Karen Szabo from Toronto, Canada. May you make new and wonderful memories each year, no matter where you are.” Courtesy of Karen Szabo It’s not so much the holiday, for me, but more so what this piece represents. Since the baton has been passed to me, I make a point of lighting them in this exact menorah, trying my best not to skip a day. Before anyone said that you could no longer light the eight candles that represent the Jewish people’s fight. Before my family was stripped from their homes simply because they were Jewish.
It was when I flipped it over to polish the underside that I saw the date 1919 engraved into the silver.īefore the war. I had removed the nine small oil cups that were tightly tucked into their respective branches and prepped them to shine brightly once again. It wasn’t until I was getting it ready to light my first candles in my new home that I realized where it came from. I never thought to look under the stem to see the century-old, engraved date. I didn’t know it was as old as it is until I took it home with me. I took pleasure in standing on a chair and reaching over the table to light the colorful candles each year.
I knew my grandmother was in the worst death camp there was.īut until I became an adult, this piece of silver never meant that much to me other than it was what my grandparents used to light the candles every year on Hanukkah. I knew my family both perished in and survived the Holocaust. I never understood its extreme value either. I never fully understood the implications of this menorah when I was a child. Since the rest of her family remained safe in their home in Sibu, Romania, this menorah survived the war.Īnd her family returned it to her when she made her way back home after liberation. It was left behind when she was taken from the Hungarian-Romanian border in 1944 to travel many sleepless days on an overpacked cattle cart carrying Jews to the Auschwitz Concentration camp in Poland. This menorah was gifted to my grandmother in 1919, the year she was born. Part of its intrigue comes from it being 102 years old. This silver yet beautifully tarnished menorah has been lit with love every Hanukkah for as long as I remember.īut it’s not just because it belongs to my grandmother that makes it special.
This is a menorah I inherited from my grandmother a few years before she died at the age of 96. “They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I believe I could come up with that or more about this one.