Warning: Thanks for checking this out. However, this is an excerpt of a short, irreverent comedy that takes place during Hannuka. If you're looking for a real Hannuka story for the season, you should look somewhere else.
S.P.
Time….present
Setting….living room
(KATE and MIKE sit in front of a Hanukah menorah.)
KATE
You know what my mother gave us for Hanukah?
MIKE
What?
KATE
A story. Every night. Every candle.
(He counts the candles.)
MIKE
Nine stories.
KATE
Eight.
(He counts.)
MIKE
Nine candles.
KATE
This one is for lighting the others. It sits higher.
MIKE
Eight stories.
KATE
Well, no. We light one the first night, two the second night, three the third. So on.
MIKE
She told a different story for each candle, each night?
KATE
She liked to tell stories.
MIKE
That's…how many stories is that?
KATE
(pause)
Thirty-six.
MIKE
Were they all about Hanukah?
KATE
Never. Hanukah was the occasion. The stories were about people in my family.
MIKE
There are that many people in your family?
KATE
I guess. Well, there could be more than one story about some of the people. And there was no rule against telling the same story twice, or more… It changed every year. Hanukah is not…it’s not supposed to be that big – but my mom…she has her own interpretations.
MIKE
Sure.
KATE
I'll show you the way we did it.
(She lights the Shamas.)
Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha-olam asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Hanukah.
There, take that candle and light the first one.
(He lights the candle.)
Now, we didn't do this at home, but I thought I'd add a little extra celebration to the ceremony.
(She takes out a pipe and fills the bowl with marijuana.)
We'll take a hit with each candle.
MIKE
That'll work.
(She uses the candle to light the bowl and take a hit. He does the same.)
So, that'll be…eight hits.
KATE
Right.
MIKE
And the story.
KATE
Well, she always told this one. My Grandmother's two brothers went to work one day and nobody ever saw them again.
MIKE
Is that the story?
KATE
That's it.
MIKE
No wonder she told so many. They’re short.
KATE
I can make it longer, if you want to know more. Stalin did it.
MIKE
Stalin?
KATE
He's the one who made them disappear.
MIKE
Stalin made your grandmother’s brothers disappear?
KATE
According to the story. It was his policy.
MIKE
Stalin's policy.
KATE
Yeah. Next candle. Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha-olam asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Hanukah.
(He lights the next candle.)
When my mother was in college, in North Carolina, my aunt – in New Jersey -- sent her hot meals on the train. She put the plate on the train early in the morning. When my mother got the meal, in time for dinner, it was still hot.
MIKE
That’s impossible.
KATE
Things traveled faster back then.
MIKE
No, things were slower.
KATE
Not according to my mother.
MIKE
I don’t believe it.
KATE
You don’t know this aunt. Food was her life.
MIKE
I still don’t believe it.
KATE
She could have gotten it really hot, and taken it right out of the oven and packed it – in whatever they packed things in – and rushed to the train. It might have been possible.
MIKE
I don’t think so. When was this?
KATE
In the forties.
MIKE
No.
KATE
I said they were stories. I wasn’t alive then. Light the next candle.
(He lights the third one and they take a hit.)
My grandfather used to sit in the pool hall all day while my grandmother did all the work. They say he was a brilliant man.
MIKE
From shooting pool?
KATE
He didn’t shoot pool. He read the newspaper and the Bible.
MIKE
In the pool hall.
KATE
Right. It was quiet there.
MIKE
She worked.
KATE
Right. He was an architect in Europe, but after he immigrated he was a peddler. Then he got married when he was forty, got a store, had children. It was the first chance he had to rest, to catch up on his reading. So he got lazy. That gave him a chance to be creative again. He was very creative. When my grandmother got really angry, and needed him to come home – to do some sewing…she sent my mother down to the pool hall to get him.
MIKE
Pool is creative.
KATE
It was only two blocks. He could make anything. When they couldn’t get clothes, they got material so he could make clothes. If other people had material, he’d make whatever they wanted. He made pants, suits…he even made rain coats. If somebody had a couple of extra shirts but no pants, he'd turn the shirts into a pair of pants. When my grandmother needed him to do some other kind of work, like fix the toilet, or watch the store – she sent my mother to get him – but unless it was to make something, he wouldn’t go.
MIKE
Sounds like he had it made.
KATE
No, he wasn’t so happy. And there was another one…a friend of his…light another candle and I’ll tell you this one.
(He lights the fourth candle. They take a hit.)
My grandfather used to sit in the drug store, across the street from the store, and stay awake all night long, listening to news about the war on the radio. This one guy…one of the guys in the drug store…his wife came in the middle of the night wearing her nightgown and told her husband to come home. She walked down there in her nightgown. It was a scandal in the town. A real shocker. A woman in a nightgown, in the drug store. Light another candle.
(He lights the fifth one and they take a hit.)
This one is family legend, but I think it might have started in a movie. My cousin was in a firing line. He studied the yard, how the people dropped when they were shot, and how the bodies were removed at night. He fell just before the bullets were fired. He lay, piled with the dead bodies, until dark, and then escaped. Somehow he got to America and became one of the top life insurance salesmen in the state of New York.
MIKE
I think that was in a movie.
KATE
It happened more than once. Light another one.
(He lights the sixth candle and they take a hit.)
My mother never had a friend over to her house when she was a kid. She was embarrassed.
MIKE
About their house?
KATE
Because they didn’t have one.