Hanukkah Lights 2006
Hanukkah Lights one-hour special
Hear the Stories
'Gifts of the Jewish Magi' by Allegra Goodman
'Nona Maccabeus' by Gloria DeVidas Kirchheimer
'Hanukkah in America' by Amy Bloom
'The Macabee of Miami Beach' by Thane Rosenbaum
'Hanukkah at Tiffany's' by Lesléa Newman
NPR's annual Hanukkah Lights special is well into its second decade and this year NPR's Susan Stamberg and Murray Horwitz again share original stories that celebrate the festival of light.
Hannukah Lights for 2006 unveils an ironic, wistful take on the seasonal celebration, in a brand new and evocative story by Amy Bloom. The show also revisits favorite moments from recent years:
A comfortably aging couple exchange awkwardly ironic Hanukkah presents in Allegra Goodman's "Gifts of the Jewish Magi" — with "apologies to O. Henry."
A 90-year-old grandmother reacts to a teenaged combo's "Hip Hop Hanukkah" by Gloria DeVidas Kirchheimer with a bit of musical improv, revealing the holiday's deepest meanings in the process.
Amy Bloom's "Hanukkah in America" tells the insightful tale of a wise but inexperienced seamstress, who gets a bittersweet taste of the high life in the colorful, "old world" of Yiddish theater in the Roaring Twenties.
In "The Macabee of Miami Beach," by Thane Rosenbaum, a down-and-out retiree gets a dramatic chance at fame — though maybe not fortune – amidst the art deco glow of Collins Avenue.
A four-year-old's rebellious name-change moves a kindly grandmother to recall her own childhood, and share the wisdom of three generations, in Leslea Newman's, "Hanukkah at Tiffany's."