Hanukkah, H-A-N-A…U? K?

…no one can spell it in English.

Adam Sandler called it Marijuanikkah
My friends at the Jewish fraternity call it Chronikkah
They made a menorah into a bong with eight bowls
’cause they’re Boulder kids and think their Jew-fros make them Rastas,
But let me tell you what the right to celebrate has cost us…

In the death camps, they didn’t eat
They used potato rations to form crude candelabras
and hid them when the guards came, because they would have shot us
just so that the light could endure no matter what the darkness lost us

The Hebrew word for grandfather is saba.
Mine fled from that hell to the land of McDonald’s
and never practiced Judaism until my mother found hers
He ate pork with every meal, never wore a yarmulke
but near the end he lit eight lights on every last Hanukkah
because my mama, she told him every candle was a wax middle finger pointed straight at Hitler
to remind every last Nazi that we will not be broken
that my people have lasted past every king that was put in a casket

If you’re looking for a tradition as old as the pyramids of Giza, walk into a synagogue
but if you’re looking for Nazis, check Wikipedia
or the Republican party
or the clientele at Arby’s
That ideology isn’t dead, but every candle is a heartbeat
Another pair of feet, marching to fight that war for freedom we won so long ago
but continue as a species to fight today

So from Standing Rock, to the Million Man March
from Auschwitz to Trump media outlets and the Stonewall Riots
the only thing worse than violence…is silence
That cold, cruel quiet

In the words of Haile Selassie
It has been the inaction of those who could have acted that allowed evil to triumph

Or in other words, what if David never fought Goliath
just put down his slingshot and gave in to the giant?

If those fraternity boys want to torch their joint with that immortal flame, I don’t mind it
but do me one favor: don’t blaze it, light it.

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Author: Max Miller

Image: Pixabay

Editor: Toby Israel

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