Dreidels on the Brain Read online

  “Chopped liver!” I said again, louder. My mom doesn’t hear very well. I have to look right at her when I speak. “Esther asked if she was chopped liver. Why?”

  “Well,” she said, “‘chopped liver’ is an expression that means ‘nothing special.’”

  “Like ‘This weekend I have no plans, so I’m chopping liver’?”

  “Not exactly,” my mom said. “You only say it to complain, when you feel like nothing special: ‘What am I? Chopped liver?’”

  It was funny to hear her say that, because she never complains about anything, even when she should. Everyone’s heard about the Jewish mother who makes you feel guilty. She gives you two shirts for Chchchcanukkah, and when you try one on, she says, “What’s the matter? You don’t like the other one?”

  That’s not my mom. She wants to believe everything is wonderful, even when it’s not, which is pretty much all the time. And I’m the type of kid who tries to make everything wonderful for her, because I can’t stand it when she’s miserable. Sometimes I manage to do it. But, when I can’t, I end up feeling worse than the kid with two shirts.

  Even though the words chopped liver are English, it’s a Yiddish expression. Yiddish is a Jewish language, like Hebrew, except Hebrew is for praying and Yiddish is for complaining. And for making jokes—it’s really good for that. There are a bunch of Yiddish words that are just plain funny, like “Gesundheit!” That’s what you say when someone sneezes, but it works as a punch line all by itself. If you don’t believe me, try shouting it out sometime, you’ll see.

  As for chopped liver, I think “nothing special” understates the case. It isn’t just unspecial—it’s revolting. That’s one of those funny words that can mean different things. The Maccabees in the Kchanukah story were revolting in a good way, the hippies are revolting in a confusing way, and chopped liver is revolting in a disgusting way. As a phrase, though, chopped liver is great—and the perfect name for when the exact right thing doesn’t happen. You pray for a miracle, and what do you get? Chopped liver.

  The weird thing is, old people seem to like the stuff. Last year we were at a bar mitzvah party for the son of another one of the Esthers. This one wears a wig that spins around on her head when she sneezes, which she does fairly often, because she has allergies. And if that isn’t enough to remember her by, her whole name is Esther Nestor. And her husband—get this—is actually named Lester, so they’re Lester and Esther Nestor. I like the name, though I don’t know how she felt about it when she married Lester. He must have impressed her. But maybe it stressed her. Or depressed her. Kenny and I joke about it, but never to her face, lest we pester Esther Nestor.

  Anyhow, it was her son’s bar mitzvah, though his name is something of a mystery. He’s called—don’t ask me why—Steve. They could have named him Chester or even Fester, like the uncle on The Addams Family on TV. He could learn to juggle and become a jester. Or a banker—Chester Nestor, Investor. The party was at this fancy hotel in downtown Los Angeles, with a huge buffet of Jewish foods like bagels and lox, and right there in the center of the table, like some kind of wedding cake, was the head of President Nixon—sculpted entirely from chopped liver!

  We all gathered around staring at it until Marty Finkelstein said that if they were going to go to all the trouble to make a president’s head out of chopped liver, they should have chosen a good president, like John F. Kennedy. We all agreed—everyone knows Nixon is a crook—until Sidney Applebaum pointed out that it might not be right to have everyone scooping out chunks of Kennedy’s head, given how he had died.

  Everyone laughed. Then, suddenly, we stopped. There was a long, awkward pause as we all stared at our shoes. I don’t know what everyone else was thinking, but I was remembering that morning in 1963 when I was in line with my mother picking up the turkey at the Midway grocery store. When we finally got to Mr. Chen, the cashier, he was crying. I was four, and had never seen a man cry in a grocery store.

  “Mr. Chen?” my mother asked. “Are you all right?” He just stood there, shaking his head, and we all stood there, not buying groceries.

  That year for Thanksgiving the whole country ate chopped liver. And three years ago, when President Kennedy’s brother Robert was killed, we had leftover chopped liver. And now Nixon is president.

  But Hanukkyah is not supposed to be a chopped liver holiday—it’s a latke holiday. And so, after the almost-but-not-quite-miracle with the dreidel, I got out the Veg-O-Matic and potatoes and went to work. With three Gimels in a row, I figured, God was at least watching.

  “All right,” I said. “Maybe dreidel isn’t your thing. I agree. It’s kind of a dumb game. But how about this: Supposing I make this the most perfect Kquanukkah ever, starting with the latkes. And if you want to do me a little miracle, you can make it snow. Is it a deal?”

  Latkes, in case you don’t know, are potato pancakes. It’s also a Yiddish word, and sounds a lot like another Yiddish word—gatkes—but that’s completely different. Latkes means “potato pancakes” while gatkes means “underwear.” Some people make latkes with grated potatoes, while others use mashed. Of course, no one can agree, which is what makes them a Jewish food. But everyone does agree they should be crispy, not soggy, and fried in plenty of oil, because Khanakah is supposed to be all about the miracle of the oil.

  Last year, though, my father tried to make latkes without oil, so they would be healthier. He’s always trying to make healthy food, like his sugarless cheesecake made with cottage cheese and sweetened with grapefruit juice. Yuck. But his latkes kept sticking to the pan, so he added a bunch of oil, which pretty much undid any health benefits, and we ended up with clumps of greasy potato mush. When latkes come out right, they’re delicious and you eat them with sour cream and applesauce. I like them with jam, because that’s how they eat them in Chelm, the Jewish village of fools. But you don’t eat latkes with katsayp. Or kitshoup. Or catsip. None of those.

  I couldn’t find a recipe book, but then I remembered we have this little red 78 RPM record called “Let’s Make Latkes!” I found it and put it on the record player, and it actually sang the recipe for latkes—including onions, which burn your eyes when you grate them, but it’s worth it.

  I followed the recipe exactly and made a sample one to test. It came out crisp and golden brown. Tasted like a dream! Perfect latkes for the perfect Kchahanukkah.

  I covered the batter so it wouldn’t get gray and disgusting, then went to decorate the house. I had time—Kenny was with my mom, at McVey’s hobby shop. He’s fourteen, and had his bar mitzvah last June. He also has a paper route and has been saving up money to buy a model airplane kit, which is the latest thing he’s into. He makes them from balsa wood and coats the wings with tissue paper, then hangs them from the ceiling in his room.

  As for my dad, he said he’d be home a couple of hours ago, and we were going to cook latkes together, but he’s always late. It usually bugs me, but in this case it may be good, because he was meeting with this guy named Forentos who has some serious investors lined up for “Omni-Glow.” That’s my dad’s new business, which is all about glow-in-the-dark plastics. If you haven’t heard about them, you will soon. My dad says they’re the next big thing, and the world is waiting.

  That’s what makes Omni-Glow a sure bet, unlike the Garage-O-Matic, which was what last Chanakayah was all about. It actually began a couple months before, after Halloween, when we were driving home in the Dodge Dart. The rain was coming down in buckets, and my brothers and I got into an argument about who had to get out and open the garage door. Guess who lost? Me, that’s who. The youngest. That was really unfair, because I had already lost the argument before that one, and had to sit in the middle of the backseat, where there is a big, uncomfortable bump. Usually the middle seat isn’t so bad, because of the hole in the floor that lets you watch the street zip by below. But with the rain it’s a whole different story, and I was getting soaked. Having
to get out to open the garage door—well, that added insult to injury.

  I didn’t think much more about it, but my father stayed up late that night, and every night for weeks, fiddling with wires and switches and other little electronic gizmos. Finally, one day, he took us out to the garage to show us what he’d built. Hanging from a pulley was a contraption with a rope and all the weights from Kenny’s weight lifting set—which explained where that went.

  But we didn’t care about the weights, because our dad was so excited. We stood outside the garage, he flicked the switch, there was a loud grinding and banging noise, and suddenly—voila!—the garage door began to lift all by itself! We couldn’t believe it.

  You know how many garage doors there are in the world? A lot. And how many people there are who don’t want to open them? Even more. So my dad called his brother, my uncle Morrie, who is a total schmoozer, which means “he knows everybody.” Uncle Morrie flew out all the way from Cleveland and lined up some big business people, ready to pay real money for my dad’s invention—five thousand dollars! Three of them actually came to our house, driving a Cadillac, just to see our garage! We even cleaned it up just for the occasion. Everyone watched as my father pressed the button. There was the grinding and, a moment later, it opened up! You should have seen their faces. They were as impressed with the Garage-O-Matic as we were. They did it again and again, opening the door, then closing it. This was it.

  There was a loud pop, and I turned to see my uncle Morrie, who had opened a bottle of real champagne for the occasion, which bubbled all over the driveway.

  “Here’s to the Garage-O-Matic!” he said.

  They were just about to shake hands on the deal when my dad started to tell them the whole story of how he invented it. While he was talking, one of the investors—Mr. Rosenberg—went over to examine the mechanism. Just then an airplane flew overhead and must have triggered the garage door to close. By the time Mr. Rosenberg noticed, it was too late. We didn’t see his face, but his legs were sticking out from under the door, like the Wicked Witch of the East, and he was screaming about a law suit.

  The deal was dead, nothing left but a puddle of champagne.

  Like I said, Chanaykayah isn’t supposed to be a chopped liver holiday. Of course, in Hebrew school, Cantor Grubnitz reminded us that it isn’t even a major holiday, and we shouldn’t get too excited about it. A major holiday is Yom Kippur, in the fall, which is the end of the beginning of the Jewish New Year. Let me tell you, Yom Kippur is not fun. You dress in uncomfortable clothes, go to temple, and sit there forever, not eating, standing, then sitting, not eating some more, then standing again, listening to Rabbi Goldberg go on and on, and to Cantor Grubnitz, who lives to hear himself sing. The two of them dress up in black robes and pointy hats and tell you to say you’re sorry for everything you’ve ever done and a whole bunch of things you’ve never even thought of doing. Then, when you get back to school, everyone says, “Wow, you got the day off? Lucky!”

  This year was even worse than usual. My dad was in the hospital—again—recovering from another operation. So we were in temple with my mom, praying for him. And Cantor Grubnitz decided to sing extra operatically with notes that lasted for hours and nearly shattered the stained glass windows. That’s a major holiday. Some fun.

  Major holiday or not, I was going to make this a perfect Kchanakkah. I hung all our decorations. We had two letter chains—HAPPY HANUKKAH and HAPPY CHANUKKAH!—so I put both up, one in the kitchen and the other in the living room over the fireplace. Then I cleaned up our menorah, which I don’t think had ever been cleaned. It’s gold with blue-and-white enamel, and has eight soldiers, who I guess are supposed to be the Maccabees, each standing on one leg and holding up a torch, which is where the candle goes. There’s a ninth soldier in front, a little taller than the rest, who I suppose is Judah, the leader of the Maccabees. My parents brought it back from their trip to Israel when I was in the third grade, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Now it seems a lot less cool, and the soldiers look more like the USC marching band than the Maccabees. Even so, once it was clean and shiny, it looked pretty good.

  That done, I picked out candles for the menorah. That’s always my job, partly because no one else cares and partly because it lets me choose the shammes. I’ve always had a thing about the shammes, which is the helper candle, the one that lights all the others. It’s not really part of the holiday, just a little bet I have going with myself each night, to see whether the shammes is the last candle to burn out. Because you light it first and it burns the whole time you’re singing the blessings and lighting all the other candles, you’d think it would be the first to burn out. But I’ve noticed that a lot of times it actually stays lit longer than the rest, like it’s being rewarded for sharing its light with the other candles. The first time I noticed, it seemed like a mini-miracle. Now I look for it to happen. Actually, I do more than look; if one candle is a little longer, I’ll choose it for the shammes. Maybe that’s cheating, trying to force a miracle, but I’ll take what I can get. Tonight I chose a longish blue one for the shammes and a yellow one for the first night.

  Only then did I allow myself to think about my Chahahnukkah present. I had noticed that my parents had been running mysterious “errands” in the past week, to Los Angeles, and I figured they had gone to Berg’s Studio of Magic to buy me the one thing I’ve wanted for the past five years: a real silk top hat.

  I do magic shows—that’s my thing. While Kenny goes from one thing to another—baseball, then coin collecting, then rock collecting, then weight lifting, and now model airplanes—magic has been my one and only thing. It started when Kenny got “Sneaky Pete’s Professional Magic Show” from Steve Klein, who lives next door, then lost interest in it, and gave it to me. Now I do magic shows around town, at birthday parties and libraries. Lots of my tricks involve a hat, but all I have is a crummy felt one. What I’ve always wanted is a real spring-loaded top hat, like the one Mister Mystery has—he’s my magic teacher. They’re from the old days, for going to the opera, made so you could take your hat off and press it down flat so you didn’t block the view of the people sitting behind you. Then, when the opera was over, you’d whack the brim against the back of your wrist and—pop!—it was a full-sized hat again!

  You should see the audiences when Mister Mystery opens his. It’s not even a trick, but they’re amazed. And they have one for sale at Berg’s Studio of Magic. It costs $50, but once when I was there with my dad, Mr. Berg said he’d sell it to me for $38, which is still a lot of money—my felt one only cost three dollars. I’ve never asked for a gift for my birthday or anything else—what’s the point?—but I know my dad saw my face when I tried it on.

  If it seems like I know a lot about Chaynukkayyah, I do. I’m kind of an expert. It began in December of first grade, when my teacher brought out song sheets and started leading the class in Christmas songs—first “Frosty,” then “Rudolph,” then on to “Silent Night.”

  “Mrs. Grumbacher?” I said, raising my hand.

  “Yes, Joel?”

  “These are Christmas songs. But my family doesn’t believe in Christmas. We have our own holiday, which is even better.”

  I had been giving this a lot of thought. My brothers and I were the only Jews in Bixby Elementary School, which goes from first to eighth grade. When Howard started fourth grade, he came home and told us how the kids in his class had figured out he was Jewish and threw pennies on the ground to see if he would pick them up. He did, and they laughed and said, “Jews love pennies!” The next time he didn’t pick them up, and they laughed again and said, “Why don’t you pick them up? Jews love pennies!”

  Howard, in response, said, “You’re all stupid jerks.” In retrospect, this was not the cleverest comeback line. He may be an Einstein genius in math, but he has never been too smart at dealing with people, and quickly became the least popular kid in his class. Unlike Howard, Kenny
gets along with pretty much everyone, so he didn’t think the Jewish thing would be a problem. But when some kids in his class discovered he was Jewish, they started asking him questions, like if he was rich, and whether Jews had horns and could they see his. He came home crying.

  Being the only Jew in my class had never affected me personally. In kindergarten I hadn’t said anything about it, and no one had asked. We sang all the Christmas songs, and when we got to the ones that mentioned “Jesus” or “Christ,” I mouthed the words, like Jews are supposed to do. In fact, the only time the Jewish thing ever seemed like it might be a problem for me was at the start of first grade when I was at Jimmy Bowen’s house and met his parents for the first time. His dad looked at me and said, “So, this is the little Jew-boy?”

  Then Jimmy’s mother, who is really nice and always gives us sweet iced tea, said, “Oh, Donald, don’t say that!”

  Then his dad said, “No, it’s fine! We like Jews, right? The chosen people!” Then he shook my hand so hard, my fingers hurt. That started me thinking about the Jewish thing, and I decided it would be better to strike first, like the Maccabees, which is why I had raised my hand.

  “Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Grumbacher. “I’ve heard of your holiday, the Jewish Christmas. It’s called ‘Cha-nu-kah,’ isn’t it?” She said the Ch like in chocolate. “There’s even a song on our song sheet. . . . Ah, here it is!”

  “Actually, Mrs. Grumbacher, it’s pronounced Chhhhanukah,” I said, clearing my throat to stop her from singing “The Horrible Song.” “And it’s eight times as good as Christmas, because it lasts for eight days and nights. It’s a time when miracles happen!” This was a little hard to say because saying the Chhhh in Chhhhanukkah had generated a big loogie in my mouth, which I couldn’t spit out but didn’t want to swallow.

  My comments caused a ruckus. Every kid in that class lived for Christmas—the best day of the year by far—and the notion that some holiday they’d never heard of might be even better was inconceivable. Finally Arnold Pomeroy shouted above the rest.