The Miracle of Chinookah

This only took one crazy afternoon.

By now most people, at least in Encino, Scarsdale, Haifa, and my Facebook feed, know the story of the Miracle of Chanukah.

But I'd be remiss if, before the Festival of Lights darkens for another year, if I didn't share the story of the Miracle of Chinookah.

To believe this now-mythic tale, you'll first have to accept that Brown University when I went there housed many of the brightest people I've ever met. And a handful of the dumbest. And there was usually a direct correlation between dumbness and how loudly one spoke in a gravelly New England thug accent.

The other salient piece to consider is that back when I was a columnist for the Brown Daily Herald (still my favorite job ever), there were no digital clicks to measure. There were no analytics to assess readership or algorithms to drive it.

Instead, there was a stack of actual paper newspapers placed at the front of the Ratty, our dining hall, at lunch. If you wanted to gauge readership, you could casually saunter around the hall and see if anyone had the paper open to the Op-Ed page. That was as much numerical approbation as was available in 1986.

So, one winter day, probably a January after returning from break, I had published a piece, cutesily-named, "My Chanukah Vacation." It didn't mean anything, except it was surely consistent with my newfound Jew-centric voice- which basically meant lots of jokes about my bar mitzvah and exotic chest hair.

But on this day, on the way back to my lunch table, I happened past a group of guys, actually reading my column, who were well-outside my intended target audience. They were clearly on some sports team. They were each three times my size (neck and total). I'd guess that many of them had thrown bricks through my fraternity window. There was not a Hebe in the bunch. And they weren't just reading my column, they were laughing.

This was it. This was my moment. Assimilation was working, I was being embraced by the East Coast/ Gentile/ Wall Street mainstream thugocracy.

And then I heard, not imagined, but literally heard, the biggest guy at the table turn to the second biggest guy, and say in the thickest Natick by way of Wooster by way of Ben Affleck bank robber movie accent, "What the fuck is the Chinookah shit?!!"

Okay, maybe and my landsmen haven't been completely accepted just yet. I choose to believe this wasn't anti-semitism, per se. But maybe, he wasn't as entirely well-versed in the story of Judah the Maccabee as I had assumed. And as such, he was turning to his comrade/goalie for some clarification about what exactly this Chinookah shit really is.

As anyone who knows me can surmise, this story was the holiday gift that keeps on giving. It's given me more unbridled joy than any sixth night pair of trousers ever would. I now call the holiday Chinookah. So do everyone who was there waiting for me at the lunch table that day. And I truly can't look at the word Chanukah without reading it as Chinookah. And I can't read it as Chinookah without smiling.

And that, my friends, makes it a true holiday miracle.