Welcome to the 4th annual 34th Street Magazine Writing Contest. We received almost 50 submissions this year - the poem and work of fiction that follow are the best of the best. Congratulations to all our winners.
Special thanks to our guest judges, Diane Ayres, author of Other Girls and fiction instructor in Penn's College of General Studies; and Stephen Fried `79, author of The New Rabbi and adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and to our sponsors - Copabanana, Marathon Grill, the Saturn Club and Smokey Joe's - for the prizes they donated to our winners.
August in Rehoboth
Jessie Schneiderman There was the time I dreamt that I was Walking backwards on the beach and I decided the next day that Watching my footprints come towards me Was like wading in the past.
But it wasn't my dream. It was probably Stephanie's because she likes to be deep And because she's from LA, and the impressions in the sand had nothing To do with the past.
They were now, they were the waves At that moment, fighting To hold their shape.
And then there was that July, North Shores, Where five o'clock would roll over my skin Like it had been waiting for me all day, and Steve would say just wait it gets better and I felt almost sad for him because I knew that it would.
Sometimes you can feel time struggle in your hand And its a small silver chain or water and Its so hard to find once you've lost it.
And other times you can feel it Rest in your lap, and it's a hum When the moon breaks through the afternoon, When someone says we are here.
Tradition
by Lindsey Palmer
Tonight was the fifth night, and without Dad even reminding me I remembered the right direction to put the five candles plus the Shamash into each menorah. Dad was in the kitchen frying up his latkes and yelling out the ingredients as he used each one. Any of us could've recited them by now in our sleep, and Dad refused to let anyone write them down. Once, Noah had gotten out a pen and paper and started writing, yelling all loud and dramatic, imitating Dad so perfect, "The rind of one large orange! Half a cup of finely chopped onions! Ten whole potatoes, plump and peeled, folks, plump and peeled!" and so on, just to be funny. And it was funny, only Dad didn't think so. Dad says you don't joke around with tradition.
Normally the dining room table wasn't even a table at all, in the sense of being something to set things down on, because Mom insisted you couldn't put things directly on it, except over placemats or on coasters or cooling racks. So we didn't ever use it. But on Chanukah we always ate in the dining room, and the table was packed with things set right directly on it. In the middle was the big clear bowl full of dreidels. Me and my brother Noah had built up quite a collection over the years from the handouts at the annual Hebrew school Chanukah parties. And now that Noah was well past Bar Mitzvah, so too old to go to the parties, I always nabbed a few extra when the boys in my class got stuck with girly-colored ones and left them behind. During Chanukah I didn't have to suffer through Mom and Dad's boring dinner conversations about taxes and Pottery Barn, because the bowl of dreidels was right there at the table; I was always challenging Noah to spinning contests, and he usually beat me, but only because he was eight years older. Mom didn't mention scratch marks on the table even when Noah performed his upside-down topspin trick and the dreidel came plunking down hard on the wood. There were also menorahs on the table--the big gold one, and the glazed clay ones Noah and I had made in Hebrew school field trips to the JCC art workshops. We lit all of them every night, so everyone had a chance to guide the Shamash's flame. There was a basket full of yarmelkes, most of which Noah had accidentally stolen from Hebrew school when he forgot to take them off at the end of class and wore them home. There was another basket, full of chocolate gelt coins, then after a while full of just wrappers.
I could hear the latke batter sizzling into pancakes under Dad's spatula. Mom came running down the stairs poking around with an earring for her ear hole, and then went scurrying back and forth in and out of the dining room, emptying containers and filling bowls with applesauce, cinnamon and sour cream. Noah was standing in front of the mirror apparently fixing his hair, but it had looked the exact same for the past ten minutes. I was just sort of hanging around, pretending to be busy. Then the doorbell rang. I went and got the door.
"You must be Naomi," she said right away. She smiled and handed me a card with blue and yellow stickers that said "Happy Hanukah," without the "C" at the start, but when I looked it up in the dictionary later it said that that was okay. Then I saw that her eyes were tearing up, right there in the doorway, which is what Dad's latkes will do to you if you're not used to them, cooked up in so much onion and oil, heavy in the air. But even filled with tears and all, her eyes were so pretty. Bigger and darker than mine. I guess I was just standing there really focused on deciding if I'd ever seen someone before with such big eyes on such a little face, because suddenly Noah was there next to her, and those eyes of hers became just huge.
"Naomi, this is Singheeta." Noah sandwiched one of her hands in his own two as he introduced her to me. She reached out her other hand. It was gold, like our big menorah, and the softest hand I'd ever shaken. No wonder Noah kept reaching to hold it all night.
"Singheeta, hi Darling, I'm Joan, Noah's mother," Mom appeared behind me.
"It's so great to finally meet you," she said. "I brought cranberry-nut bread."
"Oh how sweet. Let me take your coat. Dave'll be done with the food in a minute. Make yourself at home, Dear." Mom hurried away, arms full of Singheeta's coat and bread.
We went into the dining room and Noah took out the "Guide to Chanukah" booklet that the temple sent us in the mail each year. Noah handed the booklet to Singheeta and she started flipping through it, studying it like a textbook. I waited, but she didn't seem to crack a smile at the penciled drawings that sent Noah and me into uncontrollable fits, like of the Macabees who looked like WWF wrestlers, and the latkes that looked like piles of poop.
Dad came into the dining room with a plate of food, wearing his battling-Macabee-printed apron and matching oven mitts. "Hi Mr. Paul, I'm Singheeta." She reached out that golden hand, but Dad's hands were covered in mitts and full of food.
"Hi, nice to meet you." He turned to me, "Naomi, could you give me a hand with this here?"
I grabbed a latke from off the plate and stuffed it in my mouth, "Lightening your load, Dad," then I helped him set down the plate on the table.
Noah took the basket of yarmulkes, tossed Dad his monogrammed one, and then dug out a navy blue one for his own head. Singheeta smiled at him when he put it on and ran her fingers along its velvet surface, then through his hair. He didn't seem to mind, even after so long in front of the mirror before. I felt sort of proud of Noah for picking out a yarmulke that seemed to be Singheeta's favorite color, or material, or something. Mom dimmed the lights and Dad brought a match to the Shamash on each menorah, spreading the flame.
We began singing the first prayer, though no one in our family could really sing. We knew which parts to sing higher and which parts to make loud. We made it work. But now there was another voice, beautiful and clear, so horribly in tune. It was smooth too, the harsh spits of the Hebrew chet and chav replaced with softer English "ch"sounds. This was Hooked-on-Phonics Hebrew, the English transliterated version sounded out in stunted syllables in the back pages of "Guide to Chanukah." I kept singing, staring down at the table, trying to ignore that one voice so out of place. I glanced across the table to Dad, who stood dead still and staring forward. He usually chanted with eyes closed, swaying. The prayer seemed longer than usual. At Amen, Mom clasped her hands together, then reached to gather our plates for dinner.
"Ma O Zur..." Dad went right on singing. Mom quietly un-stacked and replaced our plates. The rest of us joined in the new song, and I didn't bother doing any sort of hoping that it would be just us four, because I could see Noah fumbling through "Guide to Chanukah" to find the transliterated version. We suffered through the entire rest of the song with that extra voice trailing along, and during the whole last verse I stared hard at Dad. He wouldn't return my gaze though, and I was angry. At the end of that song he began right in on singing "Sivivon Sov Sov Sov," and I realized there was nothing I could do. This was a children's song. It had been years since we'd sung it. Mom laughed in her nervous way. Noah was facing the other way, so I couldn't make out his face. I counted down in my head the verses, and then the words, until it was over. Silence.
We sat down. Noah reached to replace the "Guide to Chanukah" on the side shelf, scraping and squeaking his chair across the floor. I tried not to giggle. Mom cleared her throat. I tried to stop picking at my fingernails. Dad sat back in his chair and breathed slowly. I couldn't tell if maybe he was smiling. I tried not to stare.
"So, this all smells so great, I can't wait to try it!" She spoke. I stopped holding my breath. Mom passed around the food, and we dug in. We kept filling our mouths with the latkes long after our stomachs begged we stop. It was rare that Dad poured so much of himself into making something and then offered it to the rest of us on a platter, and we were greedy to feel it slick and oily on our fingers, heavy in our stomachs. It was a new taste for Singheeta, but she too wanted a real sense of it, piled in extra helpings and licked her fingers. The room was loud with chewing and swallowing and stomach gurgling.
After latkes, we passed around the bowl of gelt. I explained to Singheeta that gelt was just another name for chocolates wrapped like golden coins. Noah unwrapped one, told her to open her mouth, and put it on her tongue. She closed her mouth slowly over the chocolate, and closed her eyes too, probably expecting Godiva.
"It isn't the body of Jesus," I heard low from Dad's side of the table.
"Great, huh?" Noah asked, gauging her reaction. He continued, "Don't you think? In a stale kind of a way?" She started giggling. Everyone knew gelt was like chocolate-flavored cardboard, even though we all ate it anyways. We taught Singheeta to play dreidel too. She wasn't so bad at the game itself, but when Noah tried to teach her topspin, her dreidel went flying across the table and plopped smack in the middle of the pile of applesauce on Dad's plate.
The phone rang.
"Who calls at dinner time?" Dad thought dinnertime spanned from five to ten p.m. "No one get up. I'll get it." He left his seat, his plate, and the dreidel sitting in the applesauce to get the phone. A minute later he came back in, "Anyone wanna say hi to Uncle Steve?" I ran to the receiver.
Uncle Steve did his Austin Powers impression for me, which I didn't let him know was kind of outdated, then he sang me some ridiculous song all about Chanukah Harry and how we got eight times as many presents as people did for Christmas. Until last year we'd gone to stay with Steve for the first few nights of every Chanukah. But when his new wife Kathy had started setting up a big Christmas tree and lights and stockings in Steve's living room, we started having other plans. I'd wanted to go there and see the tree because Kathy was an artist, and she'd designed and made all the ornaments herself, but Dad said that trees are like scenery -- they might've been nice to admire from far away but you just didn't go and bring them into your own home. I sort of understood what he was talking about, but still, I missed Uncle Steve. Lately he'd started calling to send his regards, as he called it, on all the Jewish holidays, even on the ones no one really celebrated, like Tu Bishvat and Simchat Torah. He usually made me laugh on the phone, though.
When I got off the phone, the remains of our meal were now crammed into the kitchen sink, and I joined everyone in the living room. "Doing those dishes is gonna be a real blast, huh?" I said.
"Why do you look at me when you say that?" Mom answered. "You used those dishes too."
"Jesus Mom, don't shit a brick." That was Noah. I didn't talk to Mom that way because she had a tendency to shit a brick.
"Excuse me, young man? What was that?"
"Nothing. Forget it."
"Okay. Well, clearly it has been brought to my attention that there's a lot of cleaning up to do. If anyone feels compelled to help out..." She walked out of the living room, sort of stomping her feet, though it was more like tap-dancing because of her heels' clicks.
Singheeta started to get up. "No, no, you're a guest." Noah said, real host-like. So he got up to go help. Now I finally had Singheeta to myself, and I was planning out all the questions I wanted to ask her. But Noah shot me a look that made me feel bad about not going to help out too.
In the kitchen, Mom told me to bring in the dirty glasses from the living room. I headed back to the living room and was about to go in, but I stopped and waited right outside, sort of hidden. I could hear her beautiful voice asking all sorts of questions, talking and laughing. From where I was standing I saw Dad perched on the couch's edge. He was fidgeting and not leaning back, and he looked tired trying to hold up his end of the conversation. I didn't recognize his short laugh or the tone of his responses. I guess he was trying.
"Hey," I walked in the room, "Mom says--" Dad looked up at me. "Um, Mom says it's late and I should get to bed. Dad, will you come upstairs with me?"
"Sure." He smiled to Singheeta a smile that I recognized as his, "Excuse us."
"It was so fun to meet you." I hugged he, "Come back and play dreidel with us."
"And we'll eat gelt!" Her eyes lit up big and she waved goodnight.
Upstairs, in bed, when Dad turned out my light and was about to shut my door, I stopped him, "Hey Dad?"
"Yeah?"
"So you know how next Friday we have that winter dance for the fifth grade?"
"Sure."
"So I think I'm gonna go with Josh. He asked me yesterday. I think I'll tell him yes."
"Naomi that's great. That'll be fun for you." Josh was the best rope climber in the class, and also really smart in science. But he liked to make armpit farting noises. I'd been waiting to see if Chris would ask me, because sometimes during Math he smiled at me across the room. Maybe he wouldn't, though, so I would tell Josh 'yes' the next day. He probably wouldn't make those farting noises at a dance anyways. At least not too much.
"Dad?"
"Yeah?"
"Those latkes were really good. Goodnight."
"Goodnight. Oh, and Naomi?"
"Yeah?"
"I do love you kids."
"Yeah."
"No matter what"
