choosing what to light

As the sun sets on the last day of Chanukah, I want to talk a bit about our Chanukiyot.  I have mentioned earlier that when I take photos of our lit  Chanukiyot each night of the holiday that it feels almost like a portrait of the person who owns that particular Chanukiya.

Today, as I cleaned up all of the built up wax and polished each Chanukiya before I put it away, I thought about each one and the deep connection we each have to our particular Chanukiya.

 My late mother-in-law used to say often that she was terrible at choosing gifts for people. She usually managed this by giving cash as a gift. When my kids were little and money meant very little to them they found this choice baffling. 

But once when my older son was at the height of his train love,  my in-laws called me. Their synagogue gift shop was selling a train shaped menorah, did I think it would be a good gift for my son? My son was deep into his passion for all things train. He ardently watched "Thomas the Train". He owned a set of wooden trains that gave him so much joy that he would wake up in the middle of the night to play with them quietly in the living room.

The train Chanukiya was a great gift.

It was a perfect gift. My son is no longer passionate about trains and hasn't been for a long time.

 But this Chanukiya represents a moment where my in-laws were able to really see my son and what he loved.

Behind the train Chanukiya, you can see s simple chrome mid-century Chanukiya.  My husband's family used to light it when my husband was growing up.  The custom in my husband's family was to just light one Chanukiya for the whole family.

In the years since my in-laws died, my husband has been lighting the Chanukiya of his childhood, as he says it he lights "the real one".


Our youngest received this Chanukiya which disassembles into a dreidle as a bar-mitzvah gift.

It's clever and beautiful. but in the middle of the holiday my son switched to using this oil Chanukiya that came from my in-law's home.

They probably purchased it in Israel, or it may have been a gift. The text in the flame back reads, "A great miracle happened there". 

It has a design flaw though. Normally you use the shamash, or the candle off to the side to light the other candles. That isn't possible with this design, so my son shared my shamash with me.

I received

this Chanukiya as a birthday gift from my parents on my 7th or 8th birthday.  One one of those birthdays I was given a tanach with my name inscribed on the cover on the other I got to graduate from a Chanukiya that used birthday candles to a grown up one that used regulation sized Chanukah candles. I used this one from childhood until after my mother died.


Since then I have been using this one.

My parents had found it in an antique store in Quincy. It's an old Eastern European piece, clearly all hand made. It weights a ton. My parents displayed it prominently in our living room. I remember how giddy with joy they were when they brought it home.


Unlike my husband, I grew up in a family where each of us lit our own Chanukiya.  As someone who makes ritual objects I am aware of how the particular ritual object you use can change your relationship to the ritual. For each of us in our family our choices of what we choose to light are connected not just to this moment of lighting this year, this night, but to memories and connections long ago.