Page 40 of His for Hanukkah

They decided to get some anyway, but Min did the ordering in Mandarin. The result was several vegetable and fish dishes that were unlike anything Adam had tried before. He decided that he might actually enjoy Chinese food when it was made in a culturally authentic way.

The kids still had orange chicken and fried rice, though. Min rolled his eyes and lovingly complained about their pickiness.

After the kids settled down with a movie, Min and Tate had a jam session on the two guitars. Since Adam couldn’t play a note yet, he was happy to have his gift put to immediate good use. Tate was surprisingly talented, at least to his untrained ear.

Adam got to hang out with Cathy, learning about the pro bono work she did as a lawyer. In addition to her regular job, she counseled and represented queer and trans individuals and families a few hours a week.

When night fell, they decided that they were still too stuffed for a real dinner, but Adam and Cathy got out some cheese, crackers, and raw veggies to snack on.

Shyly, Adam brought a loaf of challah out to Tate where he was playing guitar in the living room.

He wasn’t sure why he felt shy, but Shabbat was more religious than Hanukkah. It was also something that he observed in a meaningful way, though not in a way that Orthodox Jews would approve.

Tate looked up. “What’s this, honey? Oh, wait. Challah, right?”

“Yeah. It’s for, I mean, would it be OK if we did the Shabbat ritual tonight, too?”

“I thought Shabbat was on Saturday.”

“It is. It’s just that Jewish days go from sundown to sundown, so in my world Saturday started about twenty minutes ago.”

“Ah. Well, in that case, I think everyone would be honored to share the ritual with you. What do we need to do?”

“I can basically take care of everything. I just wanted to make sure it was OK.”

When Adam helped the kids light the Hanukkah candles and then the Shabbat candles that night, it felt different than it had before. This was what holidays were supposed to be.

The children were fascinated by the ritual of hiding behind their hands after they lit the Shabbat candles. He explained that it gave them a chance to relax and think of only beautiful things, and that when the prayer was over, the first thing they would see was the beauty of the candles. Or, if you were four, you could play peek-a-boo.

The adults all drank the wine he’d poured, and he apologized for not having grape juice for the kids. When he’s suggested that they could dip one finger into the wine and taste it, with their parents’ permission, they both tried it. Mira made faces and pretended to gag. Raven pronounced it tasty, but he’d seen her wince and he was pretty sure she was just trying to look grown up.

When the kids discovered that they got to tear into the challah with their hands, “like beasts” as Cathy put it, they were sold on Shabbat.

He felt excited for the first time by the idea of passing on his traditions, teaching the children about his culture and seeing the delight in their eyes.

They played an endless game of dreidel, and he realized that it was much more fun with kids who were working on mastering counting and division, respectively. He happily gave them all the gelt to take home at the end of the night.

After everyone left, he gave Tate the books that he’d sneakily bought him after grocery shopping yesterday. And Tate gave him a plant that he promised he couldn’t kill.

It was the best Christmas/Hanukkah/Shabbat ever.

Chapter 8.

The Sixth Night

Tate took in the majestic architecture of the synagogue in front of him. Adam had stated that he usually went to shul every Saturday—he hadn’t missed a week in years—but he didn’t mind skipping it today. Tate wasn’t going to let that happen on his watch, though.

He had originally thought that Adam was disdainful of Hanukkah because he wasn’t very religious and didn’t like how his culture was misinterpreted by Americans. He’d thought of Judaism as a mostly cultural phenomenon, like Christianity was for him, with his mild observance of Christmas and Easter.

He was now starting to realize that Adam had a much stronger religious practice, community, and identity wrapped up in Judaism than he’d expected.

So, he was going with his boy to shul to learn all that he could and show his support. He expected to be a fish out of water, but his Daddy instincts all said it was the right thing to do.

It turned out to be not just a new experience, but an entirely different world. It wasn’t just that everything was in Hebrew, though Adam had managed to hunt down a prayer book with English translations for him to follow along with.

Everything was different.

Body language was different, both in the way people moved around each other and the way that they rocked forward and back instead of side-to-side while they prayed.