The story of Chanukah begins during the reign of Alexander the Great. Alexander conquered Syria, Egypt, and much of the Middle East, including the land where Jews lived that is now called Israel. After 400 BC Alexander allowed the Jews to practice their religion.

Later, things changed. In about 300 BC a descendent of one of the generals of Alexander the Great, Antiochus the Fourth, a Syrian, put one of his men in the Holy Temple. The man had orders to forbid Jews to practice their religion and to desecrate the Temple by sacrificing pigs, a non kosher animal, on the altar. Antiochus killed many Jews.

A Jew named Judah Maccabee led a revolt against the government. The revolution succeeded and the Temple was rededicated, including the relighting of the holy light. At the time of the rededication, there was only enough oil in the Temple to burn for one night, although according to Jewish law at that time, the lamp was supposed to burn throughout the night every night. Miraculously, it burned for eight days; the time needed to prepare a fresh supply of oil.

The holiday of Chanukah commemorates that miracle with symbolic candles. Jewish children are taught to remember that the holiday honors the miracle of the oil, not the military victory.

Each night more and more candles are lit in a small candelabra, called a menorah, prayers of thankfulness are offered, and then the menorah is placed in a window, "to spread the news of the miracle." The candles are small and are required to bum for only a half hour. Parents and children spin small tops called driedels, and play games together. Chanukah is a fun holiday for families.

As Chanukah is celebrated according to the Jewish calendar, it fluctuates, like Easter.

In time, it became traditional to eat fried foods on Chanukah because of the significance of oil to the holiday. Among European Jews, this includes potato pancakes called lotkes (pronounced lot-kuhs) and doughnuts.

My father and both sets of grandparents were born in Europe, so in our house our family celebrated the Jewish holidays with the traditional customs.

In 1946 when I was nine years old, my Uncle Joe came to live with us in our rural home in the Adirondacks and he went into my dad's construction business. No cars had been made during the war. I had heard on the radio that all the American factories made only defense materials during wartime.Uncle Joe had just been discharged from the Army and had saved up some pay during his service on Saipan and other islands in the Pacific. The next year he bought a 1947 Ford, one of the first new cars that became available in our little village after the war.

The next year, when I was eleven, my father ordered a new 1948 Ford from Lungen Motor Sales, the only automobile dealer in our hamlet of Mountaindale. It was a big event in our family. During the war I had ridden to the movies many times in our dark green 1936 Ford pickup truck, wedged between my mother and father, with the heater whirring loudly on the floor in front of me. No matter how much warm air it sent out, the cold wind inside the pickup immediately blew the warm air away.

One afternoon, my brother Norman rode with my father to the auto dealer in the pickup to get our new car. Then Norm drove the pickup home and my father drove the new car. It was early December, during the days of Chanukah, and that evening we stood around the menorah. My mother wore her good dress. My brothers and I wore clean shirts. My grandfather, wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt and dark blue tic, said the Hebrew prayers and lit the little candles.

My father, home from working outside all day, wore a black and red plaid wool shirt and tan trousers. When my dad prayed, it seemed to me that he gave a little extra emphasis to his thanks for living until this season. I thought I understood. After all these years, it was a big deal to go from a 1936 pickup to a brand new sedan and, of course, the war was over.

When I walked home through the snow from school the next day, my mother told me, "Dad got a call from a chicken farmer who said his coops are caving in. He asked Dad to come out night away and see if he could help him. I don't know what time he'll be back. We may have to light the Chanukah candles without him tonight."

I looked outside at the snow drifting down and I was glad that my father had a new car. It would help him get through the snow.

For supper that night, my mother made roast chicken with many fried crisp potato lotkes and homemade applesauce on the side. I dipped each lotke in applesauce, Delicious!

For dessert, she had dark brown fried doughnuts dusted with powered sugar. I had watched her cut the doughnuts out of a sheet of dough with a small round doughnut cutter, putting the holes back into the dough every once in a while, then rolling the dough again. After they were cut, with a sideways flip of her wrist, she would fling the doughnuts into a frying pan full of hot oil. I watched each doughnut roar and sizzle, then the oil subsided. When it was fried, she would take each doughnut out with a slotted spoon and put it on a dishcloth to drain, then put a bunch of them on a plate and dust them with confectionery sugar.

After supper, we gathered around the menorah, my grandfather said the prayers and lit the candles and we put the menorah in the window.

My grandfather had whittled a small square wooden driedel and written Hebrew letters with a pencil on each of the four sides. Each letter stood for a number. Also, the four letters were the first four letters of Hebrew words that meant, "a miracle happened there." He had drawn a series of one inch by one inch squares on a big sheet of cardboard.

We put our tokens on the first square. My token was a dull, gray penny that had "1943"on it. I felt I was a patriotic citizen because I knew that all of the copper in the old pennies was needed to make casings for bullets for the war. Then each of us spun the driedel, moving our tokens the correct number of places on the board. My grandfather reached the end of the road before I did, and I lost my penny quickly. I "borrowed" it back from him so we could start over and play another game of driedel. After the game was over, I went upstairs; finished my homework then went to bed.

At breakfast the next day my mother said, 'Dad ran out of gas last night. Norm had to drive the pickup out to him and bring him some gas." Dad kept several Army surplus five gallon cans of gas, in the large garage behind our house, to use in our cement mixers and pumps.

I forgot about the incident until a few evenings later. Once again after supper we stood around the menorah, my grandfather lit the Chanukah lights and said the prayers. Then we all went into the dining room to have some tea and cake.

My dad said, "It's snowing again. I'm glad I'm home tonight. On Chanukah it's good to be home."

"We're glad you're home too." I said.

"Do you remember Tuesday night?"

"No. What happened Tuesday night?"

My dad sipped his tea. "You remember Monday afternoon Norman and I picked up the new car. Then on Tuesday afternoon I got a call from a chicken farmer asking me to come out right away and look at one of his coops. He said it was starting to go sideways. I put on my galoshes and drove out there in our new car. When I got there, he told me he had built the coop himself out of scrap lumber during the war. He must have had a thousand chickens in there, maybe more. He had eighteen inches of snow on the roof and it was starting to snow some more. I could see that he knew a little bit about how to build a chicken coop, but not much.

I told him that it could be fixed by criss-crossing cables every twenty feet or so inside the coop. Of course he would have to step over the cables each time he walked through. Putting in cables would be expensive and it would only be temporary. Eventually, he would have to tear the coop down and build a new one. I told him that the first thing he had to do was to make him a rake and rake off the snow from the roof It was just too much weight up there.

I could see that he didn't like it when I told him it would be expensive. He said he thought that maybe I could just put a few more nails in the building, maybe hold it up with a couple of two by eight's, and that would fix it. He said that he'd rake the snow off the roof and then call me and let me know.

"It was snowing pretty good when I left him and started back. Of course, it was dark. I put on the lights in the car and turned up the heater. The car felt pretty good and I was looking to getting home and lighting the Chanukah candles with the family. But even so, I drove slow. I didn't want to slide off the road. There was no other car on the road. Everyone else was smart. They stayed home. I thought about the farmer's chicken coop and how, if he gave us the job, we would have to attach the cables to the walls.

"All of a sudden, the new car started to go chug chug chug. Then the motor stopped running. I looked at the gas gauge. It said the tank was empty. I couldn't understand it. When I picked up the new car, I remember Leo Lungen saying to me. 'I filled your new car up for you.' I only drove to the chicken farmer. How could I run out of gas on the way home? It was as if Judah Maccabee ran out of oil for the lamp. I just couldn't understand it.

Well, I wasn't even sure where I was. I got out of the car and buttoned up my coat. I looked around and didn't see any houses or any lights, just snow, and more snow coming down. I pulled down the earflaps on my cap and I started walking. I didn't hear anything and I couldn't see any sign that people lived here. I saw just big rocks and trees and fields. No moon or stars. Just enough light to see the trees and the fields. I didn't know where I was. I didn't recognize anything. And a steady snow, not a sound, just a steady snow kept falling all around me, everywhere.

I kept on walking. I started to shiver from the cold. I threw my arms at my sides to get some circulation. I walked for maybe an hour. It seemed like a long time.

In some places, there were piles of snow on the side of the road where during the week the plow had come through. Then I came to the top of a little hill. I stopped to catch my breath. The plow had pushed the snow to the edge of the road and the snow had fallen away from the road, down the hill.

"Through the dark, I thought I saw a light. I looked at the place and blinked my eyes a couple times. There was lots of snowflakes falling, but I thought I saw a just little bit of light. I'll take a chance, I thought. If it turns out that I didn't really see a light, I'll head back to the road. So, I left the road and started down the hill to cross the field toward what was maybe a light.

At first the snow was up to my chest, where the plow had pushed it. It was hard to walk. I had to really push against the snow. Then as I started across the field the snow was only up to my knees. Then the light got a little clearer. As I got closer and closer I saw that it was Chanukah licht. You know the little candles only burn for maybe 30minutes. I was walking by at just the right time! Chanukah! Right away I thought of children and playing games and laughing. My legs and feet felt warm again.

When I got to the house I was almost laughing when I knocked on the door. An old farmer and his wife answered it. I've lived here for a long time, but I've never seen them before. I looked at them and said 'Chag Samayach!' You know, that means Happy Holiday in Hebrew.

He asked me in Yiddish, 'Vos tut zach?' (What's happening?") I spoke to them in Yiddish and told them who I was and what had happened. They let me use their phone. I called Mom, she told Norman. While I was waiting, they gave me some tea and lotkes. Then Norman came in the pickup. We drove up to the new car, put gasoline in the tank and I drove home. When I got home you were asleep."

My father stirred, then sipped his tea, and then said. "The next day I took the new car back to Leo Lungen and told him what had happened. I left the car there and today he called me and asked me to come down to the garage. When I got there, he showed me a gas tank that had been crushed. It had a big dent in it, like somebody had dropped an engine block on it in the factory. Maybe three quarters of it was dented. Maybe it could hold only a couple gallons of gas. The gauge would say that it was full, but only a few gallons of gas would be in the tank.

This was on your car," Leo told me. 'I replaced it with a new tank. I'm sorry it happened. I guess that they're still having trouble starting up the Ford factory again after the war. It's a terrible thing that they did to you. It's like they desecrated the Temple when they put this piece of junk in your new car. Anyway, Chag Samayach! Have a happy Chanukah!