If you’re looking for a way to rationalize all this carb-loading,
take heart; nearly every holiday party in this town is a fundraiser
for charity. Those are calories for a cause.

…Or you could head West,
to the capital of holiday kitsch
Ugly sweaters and silly costumes — why should Christmas corner
the market on holiday kitsch? That’s the question asked by a lot of
San Francisco Jews, who celebrate Chanukah with the quirky, ironic
spirit that defines Bay Area culture.

You’ll find that spirit at nightspots around town, at events like
HANUCON, the Chanukah edition of the “Mazel Top!” Gay Jewish
cabaret series at SF Oasis — amazingly, it’s the Bay Area’s only gay
Jewish club night. Or at the Punchline Comedy Club on Dec. 15,
where “undercover” members of the tribe riff on their experiences
as Asian-American and African-American Jews in a show called
“You’re Funny, But You Don’t Look Jewish.”
Only in San Francisco would a nonreligious rock-music pro-
moter team up with Chabad to make Chanukah history. That’s ex-
actly what happened in 1975, when Chabad partnered with Bill Gra-
ham — who also happened to be a Holocaust survivor — to mount
a 25-foot-high menorah in downtown Union Square.

And that’s how San Francisco became the birthplace of the public
menorah-lighting movement. San Francisco designates the first
Sunday of Chanukah as Bill Graham Menorah Day, and the “Mama
Menorah” — so called for the legions of oversized public menorahs
it has spawned in cities across the globe — remains the heart of the
city’s Festival of Lights, drawing more than 5,000 people for latkes,
sufganiyot and singing.

A very different kind of Chanukah party takes place in San Jose,
where Jews who have always secretly coveted those bell-and-
elf-laced Christmas sweaters gather for the Ugly Chanukah Sweater
Party hosted by the Hillel of Silicon Valley. What qualifies a sweater
as ugly in a place as counterculture as San Francisco maybe a matter
of debate. But those looking to appropriate Christmas kitsch can
advance the Jewish argument over donuts and dreidel designs.

And if you land in San Francisco too late for Chanukah, but right
in time for Christmas? You’re in luck — just in time for the 23rd An-
nual Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, San Francisco’s longest-running com-
edy institution and a Christmas ritual for legions of irony-prone Jews.

From Christmas Eve to Boxing Day, choose either the dinner show
(early) or the cocktail show (late) at the New Asia Restaurant, for a
metaphysical sendup of the ultimate American Jewish holiday rite.

Celebrate a Modern Miracle:
Chanukah in Berlin
If Chanukah celebrates a long-ago miracle, what location could
be more fitting for the party then Berlin, the modern miracle of Eu-
ropean Jewish rebirth? Jewish life is flourishing in this least likely
of postwar burgs, fueled by newcomers from the former Soviet
Union and a more recent influx of Israelis, who have imported their
taste for nightlife to a city already humming with after-dark activity.

Even before the menorahs are lit, wintertime Berlin bathes in the
soft glow of candles flickering from the windows of cafés.

There is perhaps no Chanukah sight more indelible then the
massive chanukiah that illuminates the Brandenburg Gate, a land-
mark powerfully associated with the German state and the Nazi
regime. When Yoav Sapir, an Israeli-born tour guide who specializes
in Jewish heritage (berlinjewish.com), takes his visitors past that
site, he talks about the dramatic changes in German-Jewish status
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JEWISHEXPONENT.COM WINTER HOLIDAY GUIDE
NOVEMBER 19, 2015
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