How to Spell Chanukah

[h6]Reviews[/h6] [blockquote_with_author author=”–- Publisher’s Weekly”]“Despite a cheery title, the writers in this…book tackle their subject-and its attendant traditions of family, guilt and, well, tradition-with ambivalence, a real sense of soul-searching…trying to make peace with their Chanukah memories…their stories are clearly vivifying. There’s a great deal of kvetching over the influence and excess of Christmas, and not just its consumerism; Jill Kargman, for example, writes about some casual mid-sermon anti-Semitism at a midnight mass. There’s also solidarity to be found, as in Peter Orner’s story of growing up in a family of “Christmas-tree Jews”: “Let me be clear: we had no relationship with Christ beyond loving the mall like everyone else in America.” Standouts include graphic artist Eric Orner’s “Traditions Break,” a compact and involving story about a young woman’s first Chanukah alone; Joanna Smith Rakoff’s “Dolls of the World,” an accomplished troubled-family tale; and Josh Braff’s “The Blue Team,” which happily extols, “What a holiday…. No synagogue, no guilt, no mortar, and no real lesson to be absorbed and passed down to my Jewish offspring. Thank God.”[/blockquote_with_author]