Mercy's Hanukkah Visit

A story for children 9 to 12 years old

Why did I, Mercy Hansen, member of Faith and Grace Fellowship in Chicago, Illinois, spend most of December with our neighbors, the Steins, who are actually Orthodox Jews?

This strange saga actually began when I was a toddler when I almost died from an allergic reaction to a vaccine. Dr. Bailey, who saved my life, told my parents then that under absolutely no circumstances should I get more vaccines. When the Covid-19 vaccine came out, he wrote a really strong letter saying I would probably die if I got the shots, so I didn’t.

But that made life difficult. Dad was in Korea on business, Grandma was in the hospital with Covid-19 in Des Moines, and Granddad was in his wheelchair at home in River View, Iowa. The grands lived in one of those senior life communities. As long as this virus was making people sick, unvaccinated people were not permitted. At all. Under any circumstances.

This meant half of their staff couldn’t work, and Granddad couldn’t be alone. Granddad couldn’t come to us; we live in the upstairs of an old two-family house. We couldn’t get him upstairs, and anyway his wheelchair wouldn’t fit through the narrow doorways. Taking care of him meant Mom had to go to Iowa, leaving me behind.

This is where the Steins, who live downstairs, came in. Mom ran into Mrs. S. on the steps and asked if she knew anyone who could host me for a couple of weeks, and she volunteered. She and Mr. Stein were sick at the beginning of this pandemic, so they weren’t afraid to have me stay with them.

Actually, I was nervous at the idea. I had heard some bad things about Jews, and I worried that they might be true. At the same time, I thought, it would be interesting. I’d find out what Hanukkah was really like. I’d heard it was the Jewish Christmas.

Different customs are fun. When St. Lucia’s Day, a pre-Christmas holy day celebrated by Norwegians like us, falls on a weekend, my family always drives down to Iowa to watch the St. Lucia procession and eat delicious saffron buns with all the cousins. My friend Analu’s family and friends from Brazil get together for a kind of “secret Santa” gift exchange. What did the Jews do to celebrate our Savior’s birth? At last I’d find out.

Well, it was a real surprise.

You know about the menorah, the 9-branch candle holder, and lighting one candle each night, right? Did you figure, like me, it was an Advent custom, leading up to Christmas? And that they celebrated Christmas on a different day, the way some people celebrate Easter on a different day?

Nope. Not one of their customs is about Christmas. Jews don’t believe Jesus is the savior, so they don’t celebrate His birth. But that doesn’t mean (like I heard someone in Target say) that they worship the devil, or that they don’t have a god. They certainly believe in God, and their religion is the one Jesus followed.

Here’s what I learned: the Jews believe in one God with one true name that they never, ever say. That’s why if you talk about Jehovah they look at you like you’re crazy; they don’t call Him that. They use lots of nicknames, like Lord and The Creator and even HaShem, which means The Name in their religious language, Hebrew. They believe if they do their best to follow His commandments, after they die they will go to the Next World. But first their souls spend most of a year learning what they did wrong when they were alive and repenting.  After they finish that, they’ll enter what they call the World of Truth. That’s like our Heaven, but without harps and feathery angel wings.

Mrs. Stein told me that there are different denominations of Jews, and that some don’t keep the traditional laws the way the Steins do. She explained that Judaism is more than a religion. It even shows up in DNA in the body the way Norwegian does, because Jews started thousands of years ago as one family. When I went to their synagogue’s Hanukkah party I saw that Jews come in all races and colors. Besides living all over the world for a couple of thousand years and intermarrying, other people have chosen to become Jews through something called conversion.

But I was telling you about Hanukkah, and what Jews celebrate in December.

The Steins explained that Hanukkah is a Hebrew word meaning rededication, to make something very special again, after it stopped being special. They had one big place for worship in their capital city, Jerusalem, a Temple.

Syrians who were part of the Greek empire tried to make all the Jews give up their customs and religion and become like them. They captured the Temple and turned part into a temple to the many Greek gods and part into a barn. But the Jews raised an army and threw out the Syrian-Greeks, like the Americans who fought for freedom from the British in the American War for Independence. Then they had to clean out their Temple. When it was clean, they wanted to have a special prayer service and start using it as their worship place again.

One thing about that Temple: it was always supposed to have a light in it, to show that God was in His home-on-earth. For light they burned special olive oil, but the Syrian-Greeks destroyed all this special oil. All but a tiny bottle of it, enough for one day. But that tiny bit burned for eight days, the length of time it took to make more of the special oil.

So the holiday celebrates two miracles: first, that a small, rag-tag army of Jews could beat the strong Syrian-Greek army, and second, that the tiny bit of oil burned much longer than it should have.

So Hanukkah is not the Jewish Christmas. It’s an important holiday about how the Jews got to rule their own country again after the Syrian-Greeks invaded and tried to turn it into a colony of Greece.

During the three interesting weeks I spent with the Steins, I learned that some Jewish beliefs are very different from ours. They say blessings for all kinds of things we take for granted, like seeing a rainbow or eating a fruit they haven’t eaten in a long time. Mrs. Stein was really firm about not gossiping or sharing bad things about other people. And on their Sabbath they don’t do all kinds of things. They say that since God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th, and since people are supposed to try to be like God, they don’t create anything on the Sabbath. They don’t turn electricity on or off, so they have lights on timers. They don’t cook, so Mrs. Stein cooks like crazy Thursday evening and Friday, then heats the cooked food on a hotplate.  There are lots and lots more Sabbath laws.

You might ask, So what do they do on the Sabbath? Well, first they go to synagogue for prayer services. Then they eat. They have a big, fancy meal Friday night and again at lunch on Saturday. They have lots of guests, or they go to other people’s homes for the meals, and they sing Sabbath songs, like hymns, at the table. They talk about Bible lessons, play games together, and visit. Their Sabbath is a real family day.

They have laws about clothing, too. Mrs. Stein said that our souls are ours for all eternity, but our bodies are loaned to us by God for the years we are alive. We have to return them to God when we die, so we have to treat them with respect when we’re alive. Mrs. Stein said that includes using our bodies only in ways that God would approve of, such as keeping private parts very private, and not showing off our bodies in super-tight or skimpy clothes.

Mrs. Stein always covers her hair with a wig when she goes out and a hat when she’s at home, but she said many women wear a hat or scarf instead of a wig. Mr. Stein wears a kind of undershirt that has fringes at the corners and a little hat. Sometimes he wears a ball cap over the little hat.

One of the strangest things is the way Mr. Stein prays. He ties a black box onto his forehead and another one on his arm. He says these boxes, called tefillin, are an ancient tool that connects him to God, kind of how a cellphone connects us to relatives.

And of course, how they eat is strange. They never eat milk and meat at the same meal, so no cheese on spaghetti and meatballs. They never eat pork, ham, or bacon, and they never eat shellfish. Mr. Stein showed me in the Bible where it says that, but he said it’s okay for non-Jews like me to eat them.

In fact, he said that since I wasn’t Jewish I didn’t have to do any of the special things, the mitzvahs, that they do. He said what was important for non-Jews was to behave well to other people: follow the Ten Commandments. That means to not say nasty things about God or call Him names, to treat your parents with respect, to never steal, not to murder, and not to be jealous of what others have.

Interesting as it was at the Steins, I was really glad when Grandma was able to go home from the hospital. Mom found a good person to help so she was able to come home a few days before Christmas. When she came to get me and thank Mrs. Stein, I thanked Mrs. Stein and told her I’d learned a lot, especially that just because people had different beliefs didn’t mean they were bad.

But then Mrs. Stein said something that felt like a punch to my chest. She said, “Be careful, Mercy. Different beliefs don’t mean people are bad, but don’t go thinking all cultures are good. Judaism and Christianity value life and living. They teach us to live the very best lives we can, and to help other people live good lives too. But there are faiths and cultures that put death first. They think God wants them to die and to kill other people for their god. Killing people for god is called human sacrifice, and the Bible is very clear that it’s bad. God didn’t create people so that other people would kill them. Sometimes it's necessary to kill someone to protect yourself or someone else. But not to kill for God, never for God.”

I hope I don’t ever meet one of those people who believes in a false god like that. But I know there are lots of kinds of people in the world, and that I’ll probably meet a lot of types as I get older. So I’m thankful for that lesson.

Another important thing I learned: to never just believe bad stories about Jews—or people from other cultures—again. Bad stories need to be checked out carefully, Mom told me later. She said even when one side sounds like they’re really bad, you have to check that you are hearing things from both sides of the argument, not just one side. She said I’d understand this when I got a little older.

But the most important thing I learned from staying with the Steins? I think that was to ask questions when I don’t understand something, and to think about the answers. I think that’s a lesson that will be helpful for my whole life.

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For Parents, Teachers and Others

I drafted this story in the summer of 2022 but never finished it because it does not fit the pattern of fiction: child has problem, child tries 3 times to solve the problem, the third time she succeeds. It also doesn’t fit the pattern of narrative nonfiction or of straight nonfiction.

But since the Hamas War began on October 7 2023, antisemitism has exploded around the globe. The ignorance about Jews and Judaism is appalling: how can anyone call for extermination of a people when they know absolutely nothing true about that people?

They can if no one ever tried to explain in simple words and simple concepts. So I rewrote this story, doubling it in size, to answer many of the questions that are not being asked.

I hope that this story is not boring to children or adults, and that it educates people about the most-maligned group on the planet at this time.