A feast of dedication
For the last eight nights, I’ve been steeped in Hanukkah…more or less. More-or-less because kids and parents still have school and work going on in the background, my wife has a persistent and worsening illness (that she can't get a doctor to look at without a referral...grumble) that has disrupted our evening plans more than a few times, and other events (a T/Th night class, a Friday-night High School choir concert, a Star Wars movie that went way longer than any of us expected, a routine appointment for several of the kids, and last night a "cookies with Santa" event at the elementary school) have conspired to intrude upon our evenings. How much more-or-less? Only once have we managed to light our hanukkiot (the 9-branched "menorah" made especially for Hanukkah is technically called a hanukkiah ; the original Temple "menorah" had only seven branches, one for each day of the week) anywhere close to sunset…and on that night I had to leave (in the