Hannukah

• Hannuka (or Channuka, or H.annuka, or other spellings for the Festival of Lights) is said to be an occasion when people who don't look like they bought their clothes there can go into haredi neighborhoods like Meah She'arim in Jerusalem without being harrassed. This is true wherever Jews follow the commandment to publicize the miracle. (No one follows all the commandments and those who violate this one, and the commandment to provide hospitality, do not welcome outsiders at any time.)
• You can see the lights in many other Jerusalem neighborhoods. Try Nahalaot.
• All along the street, oil lamps flicker in glass enclosures. Some buildings have a glass-doored niche built into the wall along the sidewalk. Elsewhere families put the lights on a kitchen chair or small table beside their gate.
• If you are in Jerusalem during Hanuka (minimalist spelling), go out between 5:30 and 6 and stroll around any neighborhood where people put their hanukiot (eight branches plus one candlelabra) outside. Elsewhere you will see the lights in windows and on balconies.
  Ha'Shla St. in the Sha'arei Khesed neighborhood is a good place to start. See eMap (http://www3.emap.co.il/eng_index.asp) for directions. Keep turning corners to see more and more of the lights, tiny but lovely.
• In windows, candles burn in greeting-card "menorahs." (A misnomer. Th menora was the seven branched candelabra in the Temple. But, since the holiday commenmorates the relighting of lights in the Temple, why not call its candlelabra a menora?)
• In the shouk, wait till a batch of soufganiot comes out of the oven. Buy some hot. The traditional red jelly ones are still best. The bakery on Yafo, between Mahaneh Yehuda Street (the widest in the shouk) and Eitz H.ayim (Chaim) (the narrower alley with Bashar's cheese store in the middle) has some of the best. The soofganiot at the more modern bakeries get lower ratings in newspaper polls.
  

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox