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Momme stood and placed the now sleeping baby back in the cradle. She buttoned up her dress and gestured to the menorah. “Well, let’s light the candles before the sun goes down.” She patted Tatty on the shoulder as he picked up the box of matches. He caught her hand and gave it a squeeze.
They said their prayers as they lit the menorah. Then they sat at the table and passed the plates of heaping food.
The Girl in the Triangle
Evidence of Ruth’s family’s deeply rooted faith are woven throughout The Girl from Saint Petersburg and The Girl in the Triangle. We are just over a week away from the lighting of the first candle on the menorah and the Feldman house would be busy acquiring candles and trinkets for the dreidel game, Momme would be planning for their meal and the women would be cleaning and cooking. Whether you celebrate Chanukah or not, the traditions and celebration of a miracle is fantastically fascinating and has inspired some incredible historical fiction reads worthy of adding to your Chanukah books list.
The Hanukkah Trike by Michelle Edwards
This book is geared toward younger readers, offering a sweet historical glimpse into a poor, early 20th-century family in New York, subtly connecting the holiday spirit to the struggles of immigrant life.
Gabi Greenberg loved Hanukkah. She loved to watch the sun go down. She loved to see the sky grow dark. When the stars appeared, she loved to light the menorah.
When Gabi receives a new tricycle, she names it “Hanukkah” and vows to ride it everywhere. On her first try she falls off the trike, but she finds the courage to try again by remembering the brave Maccabees and their struggle and victory over King Antiochus and his army. This would be a great addition to any children’s Chanukah books list.
All-of-a-Kind Family Hanukkah by Emily Jenkins & Paul O. Zelinsky
Part of a beloved historical series, this book charmingly depicts a Jewish immigrant family celebrating the holiday in New York City.
Join the five sisters back in 1912, on the Lower East Side of NYC, and watch as preparations for Hanukkah are made. When Gertie, the youngest, is not allowed to help prepare latkes, she throws a tantrum. Banished to the girls’ bedroom, she can still hear the sounds and smell the smells of a family getting ready to celebrate. But when Papa comes home she is given the best job of all: lighting the first candle on the menorah.
The All-of-a-Kind Family gives a heartwarming glimpse of a Jewish immigrant family and their customs that is as relevant–and necessary–today as when it was first written. It’s a fantastic addition to the Family Chanukah Books list.
Oskar and the Eight Blessings by Tanya Simon
A refugee seeking sanctuary from the horrors of Kristallnacht, Oskar arrives by ship in New York City with only a photograph and an address for an aunt he has never met. It is both the seventh day of Hanukkah and Christmas Eve, 1938. As Oskar walks the length of Manhattan, from the Battery to his new home in the north of the city, he passes experiences the city’s many holiday sights, and encounters it various residents. Each offers Oskar a small act of kindness, welcoming him to the city and helping him on his way to a new life in the new world.
The Last Watchman of Old Cairo by Michael David Lukas
Joseph, a literature student at Berkeley, is the son of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father. One day, a mysterious package arrives on his doorstep, pulling him into a mesmerizing adventure to uncover the centuries-old history that binds the two sides of his family.
From the storied Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, where generations of his family served as watchmen, to the lives of British twin sisters Agnes and Margaret, who in 1897 leave Cambridge on a mission to rescue sacred texts that have begun to disappear from the synagogue, this tightly woven multigenerational tale illuminates the tensions that have torn communities apart and the unlikely forces that attempt to bridge that divide.
Moving and richly textured, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is a poignant portrait of the intricate relationship between fathers and sons, and an unforgettable testament to the stories we inherit and the places we are from. This is a great addition to any adult Chanukah Books list.
The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason
Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a medical student when World War I explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. But when he arrives, at a commandeered church tucked away high in a remote valley of the Carpathian Mountains, he finds a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus. The other doctors have fled, and only a single, mysterious nurse named Sister Margarete remains.
But Lucius has never lifted a surgeon’s scalpel. And as the war rages across the winter landscape, he finds himself falling in love with the woman from whom he must learn a brutal, makeshift medicine. Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow, his uniform stuffed with strange drawings. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the lives of doctor, patient, and nurse forever.
From the gilded ballrooms of Imperial Vienna to the frozen forests of the Eastern Front; from hardscrabble operating rooms to battlefields thundering with Cossack cavalry, The Winter Soldier is the story of war and medicine, of family, of finding love in the sweeping tides of history, and finally, of the mistakes we make, and the precious opportunities to atone.
Hanukkah is a holiday of perseverance and miracles, I hope these books help you to celebrate!
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