A Chanukah Fairy Tale: with apologies to Charles Dickens

Morgenstern was dead. Dead as a lump of clay. Dead as he had been during his life, only more so.

There had been only one mourner at his funeral, his surviving business partner, Eliezer ben Kamtsin. This gentleman is a hollow-eyed, thin-lipped farkriminis of a man with a pinched expression set in plasticine features. Though not short of a bob or two, he leads a parsimonious life, governed by the motto emblazoned in bold lettering above his desk, Fun gelt kumt glick’.

His sole employee, a clerk by the name of Kravchik, is forced to work every day of the week, even Shabbes. He tries to make ends meet but never does. Consequently, Kravchik’s family are perpetually hungry but they remain cheerful. On Chanukah they light their carefully polished Menorah.

It is the first night of Chanukah but Kamtsin has no time for such frivolities. As is his wont, he retires early to ensure that his brain will be fresh for the next day’s business transactions. However, barely has he dosed off when he is startled into wakefulness by a thumping noise and the raucous tones of a familiar voice. He opens his eyes, and there, sure enough, is the figure of his late partner, Yankel Morgenstern, looking every bit as farkrimt as he did in life.

“Oy vey! Oy Gevalt! A chaleria af mir! Vos ies dos? It must be the gehakte leber I had for supper!” wailed Eliezer.

“Shut up for a moment and listen, Eli!” growled the ghost. I’ve come to give you a warning. Punkt. Over the next three nights you will be visited by three spirits, each of whom will take you on a journey to a land which will be of much interest to you. This is your last chance to make a good, otherwise you will be joining me in the malodorous quagmire through which I must schlep for all eternity because I once led the wicked, selfish life that you are now leading. Farshteyst?”

“Can’t the spirits all come at once to save time?” whined Eliezer. “I’m not very well, you know. I need all the sleep I can get”.

Morgenstern ignored this rachmonisdike appeal and without another word, vanished into the ether, leaving only the faint aroma of freshly dug soil.

You can imagine how upset Eliezer was by this visitation, but the following day he had forgotten all about it, just as a bad dream evaporates from the mind after a good breakfast. The following night he sank once again into a deep sleep at a ridiculously early hour. Around midnight, however, he was once again stirred out of his slumber, this time by the clang of metal on metal.

A figure clad in armour from head to foot and brandishing a wicked-looking sword stood at his bedside. “Good morning, Yankele”, said this apparition. “I am the spirit of your Chanukah Past. You can call me the Hammer. Come with me and I will show you a thing or two about the art of self-defence. We are about to make mincemeat of the Romans, who have turned our sacred temple into a chazerstal”.

Before you could say Jacob Rubenstein, Kamtsin found himself in the middle of a fight to the death between the Romans and a brave band of Jewish Zealots. Terrified, he hid behind the Hammer’s huge shield until it was all over and the Romans had either fled or been cut down. After that, the temple had to be cleansed and the eternal lamp relit. Although there was only enough oil left to last one night, the lamp continued burning for seven whole days and nights.

“Now you know what your ancestors had to deal with from time immemorial”, said the Hammer, and promptly vanished like his predecessor, leaving Kamtsin a gibbering wreck but a little bit more thoughtful than before.

Another day rolled by, and the following night Kamtsin was again shaken out of REM sleep by another apparition, this time of a lady whose beauty dazzled him even before he had opened his eyes. “You probably don’t remember me, Yankele”, quoth she. “I was always fond of you, but you were too immersed in your accounts and your bookkeeping to take much notice of me. Never mind. What’s past is past. Let me now show you what you have missed out on”.

So saying, she spirited him off to the home of his employee, where he was greeted by an astonishing scene. In a sparsely furnished apartment, the Kravchik family, consisting of father Reuven, mother Dvorah and their daughter, tiny Channah, were gathered round a small table, on which a Menorah blazed away, illuminating the special meal prepared by Dvorah to mark the occasion. The trio were contentedly nibbling at portions of pickled herring and challah, while a carefully sectioned orange lay waiting to be consumed for dessert.

Eliezer looked hard at the little girl. Her deathly pallor and spindly arms and legs spoke of a grave affliction but she appeared serenely happy.
On the table beside her lay the gift for which her father had saved up from his meagre earnings – a wooden dreidel which she had already spent many happy hours spinning.

The Spirit of the Chanukah Present (for that was indeed the beautiful lady who had thrust Eliezer into this poignant scene) read Eliezer’s mind before he could even open his mouth. “A serious case of malnutrition”, she said. “Unless she can be restored with nourishing diet, she will be dead within a few weeks”.

For the first time in his life, Eliezer felt a pang of pity for someone other than himself. ”Zol Gott aus hitn!” he exclaimed. “Surely there must be something we can do about this! I can buy her chicken soup, vegetables, chocolate, anything! This terrible state must not be allowed to continue.” He looked around for the spirit but she was nowhere to be seen. The next minute he was back in bed, trembling like a leaf.

On the third night of Chanukah, Eliezer could not fall asleep. He lay awake for hours, counting his savings, but his mind kept drifting to the poignant scene of the night before. Around midnight,m there was a flash of lighting and a rumble of thunder. A gust of wind blew open his window and a grey, featureless apparition appeared, with wings like a bat.

“I am the Spirit of the Chanukah Future”, announced the creature. “My name is Moloch but you can think of me as an Angel, come not to fetch you away but to give you a trailer of what will be in store for you if you do not change your ways pronto. Come with me! This is not a request”.

Poor Eliezer did not know whether he was coming or going. He was swept up by the winged monster and taken out into the storm, to a deserted field. There, he dimly descried a granite tombstone, half sunken in the mud and overgrown with weeds. On it was carved the inscription, “Here lies Eliezer ben Kamtsin, together with his beloved pile of treasure, deeply mourned by nobody and forgotten by all”.

“Ayayaya”, cried Eliezer, “I promise I will change!” but there was nobody around to hear him. Moments later, drenched in tears, rainwater and mud, he found himself back in bed.

The next day dawned bright and crisp. A transformed Eliezer couldn’t believe his luck – he was alive! Suddenly, the world was a wonderful place with much good work to be done. He flung open his window and yelled like a meshuggeneh to bewildered passers by, “Chag Sameach! Baruch Ha-Shem!” The words rang strangely in his ears but he liked their sound.

“You, boychik, come here!” he called out to a street urchin loitering nearby. “You know Katz’s Delicassen? Good! Go, pick out the biggest hamper they have and tell them to deliver it a.s.a.p. To the Kravchik family apartment”, and he scribbled down the address on a piece of paper. “And here’s a little something for your trouble”, he added, tossing down an astonishingly large number of coins which the youngster scrambled to gather up before scampering off on his mission.

From that day on, Eliezer’s life went from good to better. He joined the local branch of the Jewish Benevolent Society and made impressive donations to a number of charitable organisations. He soon became a local hero, known and loved by all for his philanthropy and cheerful demeanour. And he was a frequent guest at the abode of Reuven Kravchik, (now his business partner). ‘Uncle Eliezer’ was a particular favourite with tiny Channah, who, thanks to his efforts, had blossomed into a sheine meydel.