The Male Hysteric

Well, I hope everyone had a nice holiday. Instead of the traditional movie and Chinese food, I spent Christmas volunteering. There was a volunteer day at the mosque, and what they usually do is pack items for homeless shelters, but this time they wanted some cultural activities so I spent the day handing out jelly donuts and teaching small children how to play dreidel while their parents world. My cantor brought 500 plastic dreidels to give out and a 5 pound bag of gelt, and because we had donuts, chocolate, and gambling, I said we were the ‘fun table.’

For those who don’t know, ‘gelt’ generally refers to gold-foil wrapped chocolate coins. Dreidel and gelt are usually associated with each other though before this year I’d never actually played dreidel with gelt — gelt usually comes in tiny bags that you’d need several to play a game with, so as a kid we would always play with candy that was actually sold in bulk like tootsie rolls or jolly ranchers. The tradition of gelt goes way back, though it used to be actual money, as tips for teacher sand rabbis, menial workers, gifts to children or as tzedakah, and it seems to have switched over to chocolate as Jewish people started giving non-money gifts for Hanukkah as Hanukkah and Christmas general occur around the same time of year.

Hanukkah gelt, as in chocolate, is so traditional that it was not something me or  the cantor really had a second thought about bringing until the actual event. The cantor worried that it was bad optics to have the Jewish cultural table covered in gold coins. The other problem was that, with about half of our audience not being Jewish, a lot of people did not seem to understand that the coins were chocolate and not just game tokens. We tried to have one open for display purposes but it got thrown out by someone ‘helpfully’ trying to clean up the table. Then, as I was leaving, one of the coordinators rushed after me with some gelt left on the table and I had to explain that we were giving them out and that they were actually candy. The kids enjoyed the shiny golden game token candy so whatever the ‘optics’ of it, at least they had fun.