Evangeline's class made little Stars of David (I still want to say Star of Davids!) for the holiday.

[conuly]

And also to practice identifying triangles and words that start with the letter S, of course. She was very excited to tell me it's a "Dooiss" star, and I corrected her with the phrase "Star of David" - yes, Ana, David like David in your class, but not exactly.

It's interesting how these things stick with you. She swung her star a bit, Evangeline, and said "Hanukkah, Hanukkah", so I pulled her on my lap on the rocking chair and sang "Oh Hanukkah" with her, which we sang *every* year during winter when I was in Brooklyn. (We had more Jewish students in my class than I think either Ana or Evangeline does now, so it made more sense, but whatever.) And when we moved to Staten Island, the schools here didn't do that, they had other songs they did. So it's been a good 16, 17 years since I've sung or heard this song - but I was still word perfect.

Clicky!

Of course, when Evangeline was a baby I used to entertain myself by going "Oh, baby, baby, baby, I made her out of clay, and when I'm good and ready, with baby I shall play", which... didn't make sense even then, but it's a catchy melody to be sure. When I was a kid, they'd hand out these little plastic dreidles for us at the Holiday Party (or around Hanukkah if it was very early in the month, and then our party would be at the end of the month), and those chocolate coins, gelt. And now they sell those chocolate coins with Santa on them, presumably for Christmas, which just strikes me as either the ultimate in cross-cultural sharing or WRONG WRONG WRONG VERY WRONG. Not sure which.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

I just clicked your link... that's not how I learned it in Hebrew School. We always sang "sivivon to play with and latkes to eatle" not "dreidles to play with and latkes to eat". I can see how the switch would happen, since "sivivon" (sieve vee von... hmm how to write what "von" sounds like, it kind of rhymes with loan or hone) means dreidles.

Which scans better? Whichever does is probably the original. But I can't tell because my meter-perception is abnormal.

[conuly]

I learned sivivon as well, but they didn't tell us that sivivon is Hebrew for the Yiddish "dreidle".

[leora.livejournal.com]

You probably weren't going to Hebrew School. I learned various interesting bits of info about Judaism and Hebrew there. Unfortunately, my language acquisition skills are really bad, so despite studying Hebrew for many years I learned very little and remember even less (I used to be able to say the pencil is on the table, but I can't recall how to anymore). I did learn a little bit about mikvahs though. And I read Genesis and Exodus. Later I read Leviticus on my own when I accidentally locked myself out of my apartment while doing laundry and was waiting for my apartmentmate to get home from work and let me in. People left a small collection of books in the apartment building's laundry room and not that surprisingly, someone had left a Bible. Alas, I have not yet motivated myself to read Numbers.

[conuly]

No, we weren't going to Hebrew School, and we didn't go to CCD either. But my father used the fact that THEY got to leave early on Wednesdays to justify taking US out early on Thursdays for skating lessons, up until that got too expensive.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Cool! I never learned to skate. Sounds fun though.

[conuly]

I wasn't a very good skater, and have now forgotten how to skate entirely.

When we were little, we used to stop by the shop where you got your skates and skate guards - this was back when Sky Rink made sense instead of just being attached to Chelsea Piers and not, y'know, up in the sky somewhere - and the guy who worked there would give us the cast of ends of the skate guards. There were glittery ones and translucent ones and hard ones, and they were fine to use as building tools or just to have or to trade.