Updated edition 2021
Text copyright © 2007 by Ellen Kushner
Illustrations copyright © 2021 by Kevin Keele
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Charlesbridge and colophon are registered trademarks of Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.
At the time of publication, all URLs printed in this book were accurate and active. Charlesbridge, the author, and the illustrator are not responsible for the content or accessibility of any website.
The Golden Dreidel was originally developed with Shirim Klezmer Orchestra under the auspices of WGBH Radio Boston, and first appeared in different form as a radio production of PRI’s Sound & Spirit with Ellen Kushner, produced by WGBH Radio Boston and distributed by PRI, Public Radio International.
Published by Charlesbridge
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Watertown, MA 02472
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www.charlesbridge.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019020268 | ISBN 978-1-62354-144-6 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-63289-920-0 (ebook)
Ebook ISBN 9781632899200
Illustrations began as rough pencil sketches that were scanned into a computer and then digitally painted over in Photoshop using an art tablet
Display type set in Wanderlust Gold by Cultivated Mind
Production supervision by Brian G. Walker
Ebook design adapted from print design by Susan Mallory Sherman
a_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Glossary
Thank you
To my mom, who taught me Hebrew; my dad, who read me The Thirteen Clocks; and Uncle Ron, who told me the jokes, this book is lovingly dedicated—E. K.
To Pete, thanks for helping my wife and me keep our boys happy and healthy.—K. K.
IT WAS THE HOLIDAY SEASON, but Sara was not happy. Riding home from school on the bus was pure torture. Sara stared out the window at all the colored lights decorating the houses on street after street…. Sometimes people left their curtains open, and Sara could see right into their living rooms, where big trees glittered and shone.
Her friend Felicity poked her. “Here comes my stop. Are you coming to Trina’s tomorrow? We’re making Christmas cookies.”
“Can’t,” Sara said glumly. “Family stuff.”
“OK, I’ll save you some. See you Monday!”
Felicity got off the bus in a flurry of red scarf and green coat. Sara could see Felicity’s house beyond her, all decked out in giant candy canes, with reindeer landing on the roof next to a huge star blinking on and off.
When she got to her own house, it just looked dark and ordinary. She banged the front door loud enough for her mother to hear from the kitchen.
“Is that you, Sara? Don’t drop your coat on the floor.”
Sara dragged her coat into the kitchen and dropped it on a chair. She said to her mother, “I bet we’re the only family on the block that doesn’t have a Christmas tree!”
Sara’s mother sighed. “You know we can’t have a tree, honey; we’re Jewish. Jews don’t celebrate Christmas, so Jews don’t have Christmas trees. End of story.”
Sara knew her mother loved beautiful things. “But they’re beautiful.”
“I know, honey. And you can go over to your friends’ houses and enjoy their trees as much as you like.”
“It’s not the same! We’re not the same. Jews are weird.”
Her mother stopped what she was doing and crouched down in front of her, hands on her shoulders, and looked into her eyes. “Sara. Has someone said anything at school? Anything bad about being Jewish?”
“Mom, quit it. It’s not like that. I just want a tree, that’s all. Why can’t we just have the same stuff as everyone else for once?”
“Sweetheart, we may not have an evergreen in our living room, but we have plenty of lights this time of year, now that Chanukah’s started.”
Sara kicked the floor sulkily. “Just eight dumb candles. So what? Chanukah’s not even a very important Jewish holiday. You said so yourself.”
“Maybe not. But it’s what we celebrate in December, so learn to love it. SETTTHHH!!!” Sara’s big brother Seth came barreling down the stairs, sounding like a herd of elephants, as their dad used to say. He wasn’t much older than she was, but he was a whole lot bigger—especially his feet.
“What, Mom? I was just getting to the ninth level—” Seth liked computer games. He didn’t care much about trees or lights if they weren’t on a screen.
“Did you do your homework? Wash your face! Get changed, and go get your overnight bag. We’re leaving for Aunt Leah’s in twenty minutes.” Their mother opened the fridge and started taking out covered dishes. “It’s the Chanukah party tonight, remember? What did we do with all the presents I wrapped? Sara, go get your sleepover bag.”
“I’m not going,” said Sara.
“Yaay!” Seth shouted.
Their mother ignored this. “Oh, yes you are. Come on, Sara, you know you always love Aunt Leah’s Chanukah party. We’ll eat latkes and light candles and sing songs and play dreidels….”
“Dreidels are boring,” said Sara.
“That’s just ’cause you don’t know how to play,” said Seth.
“I do so!”
“Get your stuff and get in the car, kids,” sighed their mother. “We’ll be late!” She said that every year. And she was right.
AT AUNT LEAH’S PARTY, the Chanukah candles had already been lit. The menorahs were sparkling in the windows, and the rooms were full of aunts and uncles and cousins of all ages, doing what they always did. The teenage cousins were off in a corner talking about teenage stuff, so everyone ignored them. The baby cousins were falling down and sticking their hands in the food, but everyone thought they were adorable anyway. Seth and Sara found their cousins Jason and Amy and Max, and they did what they did every year, which was to try and find all the gold-covered chocolate coins that had been scattered around as decorations and hide them to eat when no one was looking. Everyone really wanted to watch Aunt Leah’s giant new plasma screen TV, but, “No TV at a family party!” said the grown-ups.
It was cold outside, but inside there was none of the crisp, snowy, green feeling that Sara loved at this time of year. Everything at the Chanukah party was warm and golden: the glowing candles, the deep-fried latkes, the applesauce, and the bright foil on the chocolate coins…. It was pretty, in its own way, and the food was fantastic as always. But it wasn’t the same as at her friends’ houses, with their evergreen wreaths and plaid ribbons, or at the mall with its candy-cane decorations, or the city department store windows with their scenes of Ye Olde Village with the carolers and the mistletoe….
“Wake up, Sara!” said Seth. “How much chocolate have you got?”
Sara counted her coins. “Six big ones and five little ones.”
“OK. Let’s say the big ones are worth three little ones.”
“Why?” she asked suspiciously. “I’m not giving you any.”
“Of course you’re not giving me any,” he said loudly, as if he were talking to an idiot, “you’re goin
g to play me for them!” Jason and Amy laughed. “Told you she was sleeping,” he said to them, and to Sara, “Told you you didn’t know how to play dreidels.”
“I do so!”
“OK, how?”
“You spin them around and you win stuff.”
“Yeah, right,” said Cousin Jason. He was Sara’s age, but he was always trying to act big like Seth. “Don’t they teach you anything in Hebrew School?” He thought he knew so much because he went to Hebrew School four days a week after school, while Seth and Sara only went on Sunday mornings.
“All right, everyone!” Uncle Isaac stood up, and everyone started clinking their spoons on glasses. They did this every year. It meant he was going to make a speech about how wonderful it was that they could all be together, and he did. The children waited patiently until he was done—then, before anyone could nab them and ask them how they liked school this year, they fled off together to a corner of the den. Amy produced a handful of little plastic dreidels and dumped them onto the floor.
Sara wasn’t sure she really wanted to do this, but it was either join Seth and her cousins, or go off by herself and risk having grown-ups tell her how much they’d hated having their cheeks pinched when they were little and then try and pinch her cheek, not to mention asking, “So how’s school?”…so she sat.
“Four sides.” Seth picked up the biggest dreidel and showed it to all of them. “Four chances. OK, now everyone put a chocolate coin into the middle.”
“Little or big?” Max needed to know. He was just a kid, not much more than a baby, but they had to let him play with them or they’d get in trouble.
“Big. OK, everyone in? I’ll go—no, Amy, you go first,” Seth said diplomatically. “Alphabetical order.”
Cousin Amy was a good dreidel spinner. She gave it a twist in the air, then dropped it onto the floor. Around and around the little dreidel went; they had to scramble out of the way when it spun toward their knees because nobody wanted to stop it or it wouldn’t count. Finally it fell over on its side. One Hebrew letter lay faceup.
“Gimel.” Amy read the letter. “That’s a gimel. What do I get?”
“Um…gimel’s good,” Seth said. “I think it means—I think it means you get the whole thing.”
“Great!” Amy scooped up all the coins.
“Let’s keep going. Everyone put a little one in.”
“I don’t wanna give her my chocolate!” Max whined.
“Don’t be such a baby, Max.”
“Mo-o-o-o-o-o-o-omm—”
“Shush!” Sara put her hand over Max’s mouth. The last thing she wanted was Max and Amy’s mother, Aunt Rachel, coming down on them and giving them yet another lecture on being nice to him because he was little. “Look, Max, you don’t have to play with chocolate. You can play with nuts.” There were always big bowls of nuts still in their shells at the Chanukah party, waiting for someone to get bored enough or hungry enough to crack them. Sara put a handful in front of him. She saw Jason opening his mouth to say it wasn’t fair, but then he realized it wasn’t worth it. Anyhow, it was his turn next. He spun, and the dreidel tottered and fell over immediately.
“Not fair—I get to do over.”
“Wait, what did you get?”
They looked at the letter lying faceup. “Nun. That’s like none; you don’t get anything.”
“I wanna do over. That didn’t count.”
“You can’t,” said Amy. “It’s Max’s turn. Just put a little one in,” she muttered, then changed to her big-sister voice. “Come on, Maxie, spin the dreidel.”
Max twisted the dreidel, and it fell on its side.
“Does that count?”
“It counts,” Seth said quickly. “What’d you get, Max? Ohhh, hey. That’s a good one.”
“Daddy says ‘Hay is for horses,’ ” Max said primly.
“This is a different hey—this is a Hebrew letter. It’s like half. You get half of what’s there.”
Max scooped up all his nuts plus one coin. No one corrected him.
“What about the rest?”
“It stays in the pot,” said Seth, like a poker player. It made the game seem more grown-up and interesting. “My turn. And I say—put in five.”
“Wait a second,” said Amy. “Since when did “e” come before “a”? I thought we were taking turns alphabetically. It’s Sara’s turn, not Seth’s.”
“I don’t care,” Sara muttered. Seth was always going on about how being older meant he got to do everything first. Fine, she thought. Just finish the stupid game.
And of course, because she wasn’t arguing, Seth opened his mouth to be nice about it—but before he could say anything, Sara snatched up one of her two big coins and two of her little ones and threw them in the center. “Just go,” she said. “OK?” The other cousins put in their five, too (except Max, who put in three nuts and got away with it). The littlest and the biggest, Sara thought, always get away with everything.
Seth held the dreidel upside down in one hand, spun it, and flipped it at the last minute.
“Show-off,” Sara muttered. It gave a quick bounce on the floor, like a stone skipping on a pond, and spun for a while before landing with the letter shin facing up.
“Aw, shoot,” Seth grumbled.
“Give it up!” Jason crowed. “Come on, Seth, put one in. You gotta, when you get shin. That’s the rule.”
Seth tossed one of his coins into the middle. There were twenty-five chocolates in the pot, thirteen big and twelve small ones, and it was Sara’s turn.
It might have been all right if Seth had kept his mouth shut. But Seth hated losing when he played games. Losing made him mean.
“Sara’s going to spin, now,” he said. “She’s the baddest dreidel-spinner on the block. She’s the Spin Queen of Dreidel Land. They call her ‘Sara the Terra.’ Come on, Sara, spin that thang!”
That did it. Sara put the dreidel down. “I’m not playing,” she said.
“Why not?” asked Amy.
“This is a dumb game. It’s a baby game.”
“No, it’s not,” said Jason. “It’s Jewish.”
Amy said, “You’re just saying that because you’ve only got five coins left.”
“No, I’m not. I’m saying it because it’s dumb.”
“It’s not dumb,” Amy answered doggedly. Amy was a big fan of reason and logic. “You’re just scared to lose.”
“No, I’m not. Who cares, anyway? I said I’m not playing.” Sara started scooping up what was left of her coins.
“You were playing when you put your chocolate in,” Jason said. “Don’t you want to try and win it back?”
“Nope. I said I don’t care. Dreidels are boring.”
Amy was cautious and reasonable, except for when she wasn’t. Sometimes she’d just cut loose and surprise you. “OK,” Amy said, “let’s make it interesting.” Everyone watched with their mouths open as Amy threw all her chocolate coins into the middle—the big ones and the little ones.
“That’s everything,” she said. “I’m betting everything, and everyone else has to, too. The next gimel takes them all. It’s your turn, Sara.”
It was a dare, and they knew it. The coins came pouring into the center: five more, ten more, eighteen more…. The pile glittered with chocolate and promise, and Sara wondered what it would be like to scoop them all up. All she had to do was back down. All she had to do was pick up the dreidel and spin….
“Come on, Sara!”
“I—”
“Sara, are you playing or not?”
“Sara, do it!”
All of a sudden, the front door blew open with a bang so loud they heard it across the house. “Hag sameach!” a high voice shouted, almost as loud as the door.
Max jumped. “What’s that?”
“Hebrew for ‘Happy Holiday,’ ” Jason explained. “But who is that? What’s
all the noise?” The grown-ups were calling to each other, sounding surprised and glad. “Everyone’s already here, aren’t they? Aunt Rachel and Uncle Izzy,” he counted, “Aunt Sophie and Uncle Abe. Uncle Joseph and Aunt Colleen, Great-Aunt Chaya and Dr. Maimon, all the Springhill cousins, plus Ruth and Naomi and their evil twins who never stop screaming. Oh, and us. So who’s missing?”
They ran to the door to see.
It was an old, old lady, with a huge old satchel on her shoulders. Her hair was as white as the moon, and she was all wrapped up in layers and layers of scarves, scarves like all the colors of the world.
“Chanukah alegre!” she cried, “and a gut yontif to you all. Buen moed, everyone. May the oil in your lamp never run out!”
“Who is that?” Jason whispered, and many of the uncles seemed to be asking the same thing. But Sara’s mother and the other aunts had huge wondering smiles on their faces, as if a combination of Gandalf and Mary Poppins had just walked in the door.
“I don’t believe it,” Aunt Leah said.
“It’s Tante Miriam, after all these years!”
Sara’s mother and aunts rushed forward to help the old woman. “Tante Miriam!” They clustered around her, taking off scarves and kissing her and peppering her with hugs and questions. “Auntie, how are you? Do you remember me? Tante Miriam, where’ve you been? And how on earth did you get here?”
“You may well ask!” The old lady shook herself free of her scarves. “It’s been some trip! Deserts, mountains, rivers…I crossed the Red Sea with all the rest. On the shore I danced, and then I sang and beat my drum and tambourine…. And then I collected a few things—you know, for the children. C’m’ere, children!”
The kids couldn’t help drawing closer. It was a very big bag the old lady was carrying. Out of it came wonderful things: costumes and candy, sailboats and dump trucks, glitter and spangles and paint sets and drums. It was as if the old woman knew what each of them wanted, without ever having met them. Amy got the telescope she’d been dying for. Jason got an antique baseball autographed by Sandy Koufax. Seth got a complete set of enamel paint for his character models, and Max got a toy pirate ship, plus a bandana and eyepatch. Everybody got something…. Finally, only Sara was left.
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