A tale of syncretism, cultural generosity, and general weirdness
As I may have mentioned, friends of mine here in Madrid have invited me for 24 December ("nochebuena" in local parlance) so that I'm not lonely over the holiday. I said that of course I would be glad to come if I was around, and mentioned that I normally spend the Christmas break in Puerto Rico with my parents, and the tradition of the midnight swim on December 31. (I don't know if now with no beach the midnight swim will happen again, but let's hope that it does soon, and that the water isn't too polluted for the "underwater fireworks" of phosphorescence.) "So do you not celebrate Christmas because you're Jewish?" asked the kind friend who had just extended the invitation. When I confirmed that this was the case she said, "Oh, that's why you talked about New Year's instead."
To be clear, my friend knows that I am Jewish, she just wasn't sure if that was why I didn't celebrate Christmas. I didn't have the heart to tell her that if I was a practicing Jew the "New Year" would be in September. Spaniards really mean it when they naively claim that lots of Christian celebrations are cultural and not religious, mostly because they can't quite imagine life without them. (Nor did I explain that most Americans over the age of ten wouldn't be particularly bothered about Christmas Eve since the celebration even for American Christians is on Christmas Day. No point in making things too complicated.) Since I felt I ought to reciprocate for the kind Christmas invite, I said that my friends should come and bring their kids for one night of Hanukkah, which is a nice kid-friendly celebration, and which they would enjoy as exposure to a new culture. They were quite pleased with the idea and agreed to come if possible ("porque las tradiciones así son bonitas" as my friend explained, when adding that although they were not religious they put a "Belén" or creche scene for their kids at Christmas). I am most happy to invite them, and will even try for traditional food, although latkes without a food processor may be a challenge. (Perhaps I can borrow a food processor from someone? Or buy pre-shredded potatoes?) I have also decided (in the interests of cultural ambassadorship, and being a good host to people who have been super-nice to me) that I will try to get ahold of a dreidel and look up the half-remembered rules to the game so they can enjoy playing it. (Chocolate coins for gambling are at least no problem. Along with its acres of Christmas turrones in all possible flavors and several that are probably impossible my local Mercadona has started selling little baggies of chocolate euros in appropriate gold and silver foil. As with "El Halloween," candy makers don't miss a trick, or a holiday.) But this leaves the important problem of buying a menorah.
I know that Toledo has in the last decades made a good deal of touristic hay out of being the city of the "three cultures" and pushing its medieval synagogues as tourist attractions. Inevitably, this means that there are tons of souvenir stores selling pseudo-Judaica to tourists, Jewish and otherwise. I could of course take the cercanías to Toledo and be a tourist for a day. (I wouldn't mind seeing the restored synagogue, as Santa María la Blanca was rather ghostly and empty when I was there twenty-odd years ago. Though perhaps they've ruined it.) But it seems like a long way to go to get a menorah.
So, naturally, it was Google to the rescue. "Donde comprar menora Madrid" yielded several Spanish sites offering to sell online menorahs, although most of them appear to be seven-branched ones. A little further searching taught me that in Spanish a "menora" has seven branches (like those of the original temple) and a nine-branched Hanukkah candelabra is called a "januquía." (The holiday in Spanish is Januca, which is perfectly phonetically spelled, thanks to the Spanish jota being fairly gutteral.) I am deeply suspicious of the term "januquía" which strikes me as an abhorrent neologism, but perhaps it's a specifically Sephardic term. I suppose it could be judeo-español. But it sounds like a horrid neologism to me. And as to the various Spanish language websites which explain that a menora has only seven branches and is frequently confused with a Januquía....all I can say is that the website menorah.com disagrees.
Of course, I am fairly religiously illiterate, and if any of my better informed readers want to chime in via the comments section and tell me that Januquía is a perfectly cromulent word, at least within the Sephardic tradition, I won't argue. (After all, the person who told me that November 1 was a holiday celebrating the Ascension of Christ had twelve years of Catholic school and confirmation lessons at his back, and I didn't even do a bat mitzvah, so who am I to argue that menorah is correct?) Still, I am suspicious.
After looking at several places that wanted to charge 200 euros for super-special designer menorahs (for Hanukkah, with nine branches - and all I can say is for 200 euros they had better miraculously renew and clone a single candle every night), I finally returned to a website labeled "Los olivos judaica" and searched for an address, to see if I could possibly just go and pick up a menorah in a store, rather than going through the hassle of having a package delivered (which usually means me having to pick up said package at the post office, which is a twenty-five minute walk away). To my joy, Los Olivos had an address in Carabanchel, on the Calle General Ricardos. In fact, on the Calle General Ricardos only a few minutes walk from me. Hurray! I was extremely pleased, and also a little surprised, since I knew via Madrid friends that the city's only synagogue is in the north of the city, in a rather more expensive neighborhood. But I was pleased that places selling menorahs and other useful items seemed to be in a humbler place. It seemed right.
Undeterred by past experiences in Europe (at the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt, and the usual tourist medieval synagogues in Spain), I set off optimistically in the afternoon sunshine, hoping that Los Olivos would be open on Sunday and closed on Saturday as I would expect a similar shop to be in New York. (After all, it's not as if there aren't plenty of immigrant owned businesses open on Sunday along General Ricardos and in the general neighborhood. It wouldn't make the place stand out.) Alas, when I reached the shop (exactly where Google maps had said it would be) it was covered with a white metal grille and quite clearly closed. A sign on the door said that it's hours were on Saturday mornings until 2:30, and closed Sundays. I was saddened but less than surprised, since by this point I had walked past the storefront evangelical "Cuerpo de Cristo" church with which it shares a building (and which I believe based on architecture is an old movie theater, like many of the churches in Harlem). The church showed some signs of life (as one would hope on a Sunday), but the business next to it was shut up tightly, and I suspect is in fact related, as Los Olivos says that it is a "Libreria y tienda solidaria" and "solidaria" is the word Spaniards use when they mean "charity" (because "caridad" is so strongly marked as an exclusively Catholic word). More to the point, although the window display of Los Olivos did indeed show a variety of menorahs, and a few cups with Hebrew inscriptions, it also had a display of jeweled cross pendants, and a little sign saying that there was an end-of-year sale on "camisetas cristianas." So it appears to be a general religious supply store (possibly associated with the evangelical church possibly not), which sells things of use to several religions. (I realize I am as pathetically ignorant of the paraphenalia for Muslim holidays as my Spanish friends are about Jewish holidays, so I don't know if Los Olivos caters to what is probably a far more significant group in this immigrant community. I have the bad feeling not, but it would be nice if they did. I will investigate the store when it is open and report back.)
I left thinking that a combination Evangelical-Judaica store was rather cool, and also that it was a bit funny that Spain lumps everything that is not the Catholic church into one group, which smushes together Jews and evangelicals. (From a US standpoint, politically speaking, I am disgusted. But evangelicals here are mostly Latino immigrants, and they're so completely without political power that I don't mind sharing a store with them.) Then, since I was around the corner from the ubiquitous Corté Inglés, I decided the simple thing to do was top there and see if they sold any menorahs (and menorah candles, and dreidels) in among the aisles of Christmas promotional items that have taken over since November 1. Short answer: they do not. But they have a really impressive array of figures for Belenes, and creches, and also snowy Alpine scenes, to suit every size and budget. Honestly, a lot of the Belenes look like really cool little HO model railway buildings (if HO model railways ever reproduced Childbirth on the Orient Express), and there's a level of do-it-yourself model building which I can see must be super-fun for kids. (Decorating Christmas trees is meh, but you get to pick out little human and animal figures, and you can purchase separate little plastic baggies of straw and earth and fake grass and so on, and design not only stables but castle gates and other things. I didn't see any little camels, but I'm sure I could find some if I looked.) The Corté Inglés also has an array of Christmas tree ornaments and plastic trees and wreaths and similar (I know no one in this forest-poor and fire-prone land has real trees, so I will miss the smell of pine on the streets in a few weeks). But no menorahs.
I can't help the feeling that this is weird. For comparison, I checked the Bloomingdale's website (since they are a department store of similar prestige to the Corté Inglés) and they have twenty-five menorahs for sale at the moment, ranging from under $20 to over $1000. Macy's website has seven menorahs on sale. Lord and Taylor's has two. And of course I know I can walk into any Duane Reade or CVS or similar in New York and walk out with at least a cheap plastic menorah. (Menorahs, like double boilers, are mysteriously absent from the otherwise wonderful "bazaars" that are like dollar stores here.) Further investigation however reveals that New York is in fact out of step rather than Madrid. A quick search of their websites reveals no menorahs at Primark, Tesco, Marks and Spencers, Harrods, or the Galeries Lafayette.
Objectively speaking, I know there's nothing odd about this, since of course the Jewish community in Madrid is tiny, and even in places like London with bigger communities, menorahs tend to be handed down in families, so it's hardly an item that you buy every year, which means it may well not be worthwhile for big department stores (or little local places) to stock. Still, it was an unexpected challenge, and also a reminder of one of the (few) good ways the US is out of step with Europe. In my google searches I found a blog entry from an undergraduate from the university of Wisconsin who did a year abroad at the Complutense a couple of years ago. She describes the holidays in Madrid and notes that though she isn't Jewish, she tagged along with a Jewish friend to celebrate, and since "of course we didn't have a menorah" they creatively arranged wooden clothespins on a cloth, and clipped birthday candles to them to improvise. (She attaches a picture in her blog. It's cute.) It may be unfair and unrepresentative, but New York has enough cultural weight in the US that even in Wisconsin people are perfectly familiar with Hanukkah and know what a menorah (not a "januquía") should look like. Many of the Spaniards I've met are almost pathetically eager to meet Jews, and are very interested in Spain's Jewish past....but they also haven't the first clue about any kind of Jewish culture that post-dates 1492.
This is why it's important to get a menorah so that I can show it to my friends. As a student wise beyond her years who was one of the few African American kids at Stuyvesant once said, "I like to think that people like to hear my point of view because I'm different, so I try to share as much as possible." Her articulate comment sums up something that it has taken me a long while to formulate: frequently (not always) those of us who are in one or another kind of minority are actually pretty happy to be different and special, and tend to be vaguely confused when well-meaning members of majorities feel sorry for us and assume that we must feel out of step. I'm glad I grew up in New York, where there are giant public menorahs every few blocks along Broadway, and little electric ones in every store and most apartment buildings and where the schools close for Rosh Ha Shana and Yom Kippur. But I'm also totally ok with New York being out of step with the rest of the world, and not too bothered (except in a practical way) about the lack of menorahs here. (I'm more bothered by the lack of double boilers. Some things are necessary, damn it.) In this highly globalized world there isn't much I can do that's special for my friends here, but this is something nice that can be a holiday thing that's special. (My friends were most impressed by the gift-giving tradition at Hanukkah. I think, having two children, they were mentally making calculations about the cost of eight gifts each, and being grateful that they could get away with fewer per capita on the grounds that the Reyes Magos camels could only carry so much.)
Tomorrow I have commitments all day, but perhaps Tuesday (or at any rate later in the week) I will make it back to Los Olivos, and pick up one of their more reasonable menorahs, happy in the knowledge that I am supporting a business that is "solidaria" and that generally seems to be humble and ecumenical. (Candles and dreidels will be part II of the quest.)
To be continued....
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