An Example of What's Not Second Nature

As a Jew-by-Choice, some things "Jewishly" aren't second nature. My friend Sara and I discussed this the other day. She asked for examples. At the time, all I could offer was how though I'd heard of certain words like schtick, schmuck, schmooze, and shlep, they weren't a part of my everyday vernacular.

Enter Chanukah and the lighting of the menorah. After two years of lighting candles I still haven't figured out how it all works. The picture above is the correct way to handle this custom. It took until last night - though in my defense, last night was the first night I stayed home, and thus, my first attempt to light candles on my own - for me to finally get it, well sort of.

As you can see from the picture below, I had it all wrong last year. First I put all of the candles in the menorah on day one. I also started the first night by lighting the candle all the way to the left rather than the one all the way to the right.

This year has not been much better. Again, if you refer to the picture below, you'll see I grasped that it was improper to place all of the candles into the menorah at once, but still had the direction of their placement wrong.

I finally searched the internet for articles that included pictures. Only then did I discover the correct way to position the candles. I went to sleep last night thinking I finally had this figured out. But when I exported the pics to post on my blog, I realized yet another error, I skipped over the fifth holder and placed the candle in the one for night number six.



Bottom line: I'm thankful there are eight nights of Chanukah. Though I have a party to attend tomorrow and plan to rely on the lighting of candles at services tonight to fulfill this mitzvah, I'll have Sunday night at home to finally feel like a competent Jew.