How to Spell Chanukah...And Other Holiday Dilemmas by Emily Franklin Page A

father’s brushes, stiff with very old paint, and a photograph of my sister and me, holding hands beneath the mistletoe, smiling up at our father, who I’m sure is the one behind the lens.

JILL KARGMAN
    The Only Dreidel in Idaho
    S INCE I GREW UP IN M ANHATTAN, THE LAND OF J EWY J EWSTEINS, FELLOW 212’S GASP IN HORROR WHEN I TELL THEM I HAVE SPENT EVERY C HANUKAH SINCE BIRTH IN I DAHO. AS N EW Y ORK STARTS TO CHOKE ME IN D ECEMBER, WITH THRONGS OF FANNY-PACK-WEARING TOURISTS IN SWISH-SWISH SUITS GLUTTING Fifth Avenue, I am always desperate to get to the wide-open Rockies, free of crowds and full of sky. But can you import this treasured Jewish holiday from loxland to landlocked Idaho? I have learned that you can.
    Yes, it’s true: thirty-one menorah lightings in the capital of potatoes, though no one there has ever heard of a latke. If you mentioned the word, they’d probably think it was a kind of hat or something. Let’s face it: the state ain’t exactly chock-full o’ brethren — that is, unless you’re talking about the crazyass skinhead and neo-Nazi compound-dwelling kind. Granted, my fam is hardly in some David Koresh – style arms-bearing militia — we ski in Sun Valley, a century-old resort with old-world glamour that’s also heavy on rough-around-the edges rustic charm. But as my friends have often pointed out, if we were to get into our rental car and drive an hour in any direction, we’d be exiting the tiny pocket of blue in a blood-red state: the oversized-sunglass-and-Prada-ski-outfit set from the Hollywood scene would quickly seem far away, the giant Rocky Mountains a symbol of the drastic shift in social and religious spikes.
    If you Google “Jews” + “Idaho,” not surprisingly the top sites
are all related to antidefamation or, more horrifyingly, are blogs by various Neanderthals ranting from their log cabins about Anne Frank’s diary being a hoax or claiming that 9/11 was, like the Plague, the Depression, and Every Bad Thing Ever, caused by those horned Jews. According to research conducted by Idaho State University professor Jim Aho, potato country is second only to Montana in our fifty states as the worst bastion of radical “Christian patriot” groups, home to countless maniacal factions like the Order, Aryan Nation, and the Tabernacle of Phineas Priesthood, all of whom celebrate Hitler’s birthday. You’re thinking: Gee, what a great place to light them candles and say Happy Chanukah! L’chaim, people!
    But despite nearby bonkers mountainfolk, the place has an enchanting charm that keeps calling us back every year, beginning with my dad’s first trip as a bachelor with friends over four decades ago. Because I’m so lucky to live in the melting pot of the planet, the capital of the world, the Big Apple, I normally never have any weird moments of self-consciousness about being Jewish. I love my synagogue, frequently weave Yiddish or my mom’s Ladino into sentences, talk openly about our Shabbat services or holidays, and have the company of “one in four, maybe more” Jewish peeps on the same twelve-mile isle.
    But when I’m in Idaho, I suddenly feel like Woody Allen eating at Annie’s WASPy Wisconsin dining table, complete with full Hasidic curlicues. It’s not like I ever had Grammy Hall – style face-offs with outward anti-Semites; it’s subtler than that. Never has there been an actual run-in with a real-life knuckle-dragging,
swastika-tattooed freak show, à la countless Web sites I encountered. But sometimes feeling alien is on a less pronounced level; let’s just say a kippah in Idaho feels about as common as a jockstrap in a convent. And going from what Jesse Jackson once called “Hymietown” to a place where nary a wall is sans moosehead is a shock to the system.
    â€œ Okay, all ten bags are here!” my dad says, counting aloud, as we move our