I Didn’t Know What a Dreidel Was Until I Came to America

“What’s he crying about?” my mother asked after hearing the cries of my four-year-old son during a recent phone conversation.

“He’s upset because his brother took his gelt,” I replied.

“Let me talk to him,” she said. Knowing better than to argue with my mother, I handed the phone to my son.

“Did your brother take your belt?” she asked sympathetically.

“What? No, he took my gelt!” he sobbed.

“Your what?!” my mother, known as Mamani, responded.

“My gelt! My gelt!” my son screamed, frustrated more than before. “Mama, why doesn’t Mamani understand ‘gelt’?” He cried even harder, handed my phone back and ran away. Forgetting that my mother was still on the line, I put the phone down and followed my son into his room, only to hear my mother, who was on speakerphone, say, “Hello? Hello? Tabby, tell him I’ll buy him a new belt!”

The conversation reminded me once again that Ashkenazi customs, however charming (and downright awesome at times), have become ingrained in my (and my kids’) American Jewish experience. In fact, they’ve become so normalized that I even forget to consider that my 70-year-old Persian mother probably doesn’t know the meaning of gelt — those awful (if you ask me, a devout dark chocolate lover), gold foil-wrapped chocolate coins which originated among Eastern European Jews a few hundred years ago and became popularized by chocolate makers in the twentieth century.

No, my mother doesn’t know the meaning of “gelt.” But you know who does, beside my sons? My nieces, who were born to a Persian mother (my sister) and a French-Tunisian father. And my friend’s toddler, who has four Iraqi grandparents. And another friend’s son, who’s a second-generation Yemenite Jew. And nearly every child who attends a Jewish day school in the United States.

And it’s great. Jews should always learn about one another.

Before I came to the United States, I’d never met a Jew who wasn’t dark-skinned and dark-haired, but I wanted to learn as much as I could about other Jewish communities. The majority of the school happened to be Jewish (and about half of those Jews were young Persians who’d recently left Iran). Most of us Persian kids didn’t know a dreidel from a shtreimel.

Six months after I arrived, I was selected to play a dreidel in our Beverly Hills public school holiday show. I couldn’t understand why the teachers dressed me up as something big, blue and pointy. What was I supposed to be? I didn’t speak enough English to ask. And my parents didn’t know, either.

To the best of my knowledge (and memory), most Jewish kids in Iran didn’t play with dreidels. I don’t even think we had dreidels. I certainly never saw one until I came to the United States. In Iran, there was no gelt. No potato pancakes. Why would Persian Jews have any of these customs? They originate from Ashkenazi Jews.

Why would Persian Jews have any of these customs? They originate from Ashkenazi Jews.

During our first Hanukkah in Los Angeles, my mother arrived home excitedly from the local kosher bakery and announced she’d found “pirashki,” a popular Persian street food consisting of pillowy, soft, yeast dough buns (a twist on Russian and Ukranian donuts called “pirozhki”). Sometimes, piroshki in Iran were filled with custard and other times with ground beef. Soon thereafter, we learned that American (and Israeli) Jews called these donuts “sufganiyot,” and ate them during Hanukkah.

Back in Iran, our Hanukkah practices were pretty bare bones (and dare I say even more traditional to the holiday’s origins?). For eight nights, we lit the Hanukkiah and recited prayers. In some homes, children would then gather around their elders and listen to harrowing stories of “Yehuda Ha’Maccabee” and his band of brothers. In my family, we said the prayers over the candles and immediately proceeded to fight over who got the best piece of kabob and tadig at the dinner table.

Hanukkah wasn’t a big deal in Iran. In fact, it was a pretty minor holiday, primarily because Christmas is virtually a non-existent holiday in Iran (Christians in Iran are actively persecuted and in some cases, put to death). As for all those presents, the eight nights of gift-giving are a uniquely American invention, designed to compete with the magically commercialized, twinkling lure of Christmas. There’s a reason why such a custom doesn’t exist in Iran, which is 99% Shiite.

Beyond the superficial realm of dreidels and donuts, the most glaring difference between Hanukkah customs in Iran and those in the United States was the placement of the hanukkiah. In Iran, it was placed as far away from every window, door and crevice as possible.

That’s right. In Iran, it was nearly suicidal to showcase your glowing hanukkiah. Only when I came to America did I understand that there are some places in the world where a Jew can be safe displaying his or her Judaism right in front of the living room window. The post-revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran was not one of those places.

I recently asked my friend, Ronak Tumari, who left Iran in 2003 and came to Los Angeles, if she or her family ever displayed their hanukkiah within plain sight. “Never!” she replied. “We made sure no one saw it!” Twenty-four years after the revolution, Tumari and her family still didn’t feel safe keeping a hanukkiah in plain sight.

God bless America, indeed.

That first December in the United States, thanks to our friends and teachers, my fellow Persian Jewish classmates and I learned all about dreidels, latkes and yes, gelt. To our utter dismay and great frustration, we also learned that American Jewish kids expected eight nights’ worth of presents. Try making that request to your refugee Persian parents.

In those early years in the United States, we Persian kids were open vessels for learning about other Jews. And when Passover arrived, we expected our classmates to ask about our fantastic Iranian Jewish traditions (scallions, anyone?), but, as we soon learned, Jewish cultural exchange in this country was often a one-way street.

I also soon learned that Israel was no exception when it came to cultural dominance of Ashkenazi Hanukkah customs, though to a lesser degree than in the United States.

I’m not complaining much about that. I’m not Israeli. And I’ve tasted too many divinely fresh sufganiyot in Israeli bakeries during Hanukkah to hold any grudges.

If half of Israel’s Jewish population, which is Mizrahi or Sephardi, wants to join the other Ashkenazi half in the latter’s customs time of year, that’s up to them. But something tells me that in more than one Persian home in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or Bat Yam, there’s a grandmother who still is waiting for someone to explain to her the meaning of the word “gelt.”

I’m a realist. Judaism in America is primarily the Judaism of Ashkenazi Jews, and that’s okay. All I ask is that we don’t assume that Ashkenazi customs are the de facto way to celebrate holidays like Hanukkah. The road to cultural exchange among American Jewry is paved with more than milk chocolate gold.

There’s so much to share about Mizrahi and Sephardic Hanukkah traditions, like the glorious food, variations in prayer and the fact that virtually none of these communities light candles, preferring olive oil instead. And in some cases, children were given coins during Hanukkah — only they weren’t made out of chocolate. The concept of coins itself has meaningful origins dating back to Jewish independence after the Macabbean revolt.

I’ll delve into these wonderful customs in next week’s column. For now, I have some hanukkiahs to proudly display and some pirashki to enjoy.

Tabby Refael is a Los Angeles-based writer, speaker and activist.