Hanukkah (Traditions & Celebrations) by Jessica Server
Hanukkah (Traditions & Celebrations) by Jessica Server
Hanukkah is about celebrating! Often called the Festival of Lights, the eight-day celebration honors a miracle that happened long ago. During Hanukkah, people light the menorah. They sing songs. They gather with family and friends to eat special food and give gifts. Readers will discover how a shared holiday can have multiple traditions and be celebrated in all sorts of ways.
In 2003, a plane touched down in Auckland, New Zealand, and I was on it. That trip initiated me into the clan of world travelers, and since then, New Zealand has remained a place imbued with deep significance. I stayed for nine months but changed immeasurably.
For me, writing and traveling are, in fact, a kind of homecoming. Two forms of human connection, both all at once social and personal. The more I embark on either journey, over a sea or a page of my journal, the more I realize neither one can ever truly be mastered. Writing and traveling offer limitless raw material rife for exploration. They are lifelong pursuits.
(Jessica, Vietnam)
Since my first experience living in Auckland back in 2003, I have traveled to England, France, Scotland, Italy, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Vietnam, Australia, the Kingdom of Tonga, The Cook Islands, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua—and yet, I’m no travel expert. In fact, the more I travel, the more I learn. But also, the less I understand about the world, the more I see the mystery, synchronicity, and joy. Travel, like writing, is an art form. It’s a practice. We do these things regularly and we get better, but ultimately, I’ve only learned how much further I can still go.
Alain de Botton in The Art of Travel writes:
“If we find poetry in the service station and motel, if we are drawn to the airport or train carriage, it is perhaps because, in spite of their architectural compromises and discomforts, in spite of their garish colours and harsh lighting, we implicitly feel that these isolated places offer us a material setting for an alternative to the selfish ease, the habits and confinement of the ordinary, rooted world.”
I hope in my writing for Wanderled that I can get myself—and maybe you—out of the “rooted world” and into the wild and wonderful spaces between. I feel grateful to have had beautiful experiences abroad, but I have also had challenging moments, and scary moments, and dangerous moments, and moments that could have been so much easier, if only someone had told me differently. I have known sad longing on the road, and incredible, buoyant joy. But what I wish to share, the reason I keep packing my bags, are the small moments of human interaction: Sang, a young monk in Vietnam, who practiced his English as he told me about his family; the sheep farmer on Rangitoto, in New Zealand, who gave me a ride so I wouldn’t miss the last ferry; Eruera, a rightful chief of the Cook Islands, who’s artwork is still one of my prized possessions; the construction paper cards made for me by my students in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Whether we realize it or not, connection is what we’re all really looking for, whether exploring a foreign land or logging in to our favorite blogs.
De Botton also wrote, “I realised that the problem with going away is that you take yourself with you.” Since I cannot leave myself at home as I wander through New Zealand, or anywhere else that I know of, I may as well bring you, the Wanderled community, along for the ride. Hopefully you will delight in my musings. At the very least, I hope you may learn something useful.
I’ve returned to New Zealand because—well, I don’t quite know. I often embark to leave the “rooted world” behind, only to find that in fact, I’m really headed toward something. Maybe it’s “poetry in a service station;” maybe it’s you. And maybe we’ll meet somewhere along the road…
