MIRACLES AND MENORAHS: Blog post featuring Stacey Agdern!

Possibilities, Fantasies and Miracles by Stacey Agdern

This year is different. No two ways about it. Some of us will be celebrating long distance, with computer monitors connecting us to friends and family across the country and across the world.  And others will be celebrating differently.

We will all, however, dream of being together in person, hoping that it will be next year.

It’s a theme that flits through different holidays, of music and of observance. The hope of the future, the dream of togetherness as a community and a family. I’ll be home for Christmas, White Christmas are two examples of songs that derive from a dream of togetherness.

Miracles and Menorahs is a book that I wrote before everything changed, but it also derived from a fantasy.  I’ve never been to a Hanukkah festival, because, quite frankly, they don’t exist, not the way I wrote about them. 

But they could.

And that’s the important thing.  People have gathered together for centuries, for more, celebrating together in the summer and in the winter. And they will again.

At the end of one of my favorite holidays, there is a wish that we all get together…next year. 

And so my wish to you is that may we all find ourselves together, next year. 

Wherever family is.

Stacey Agdern is an award-winning former bookseller who has reviewed romance novels in multiple formats and given talks about various aspects of the romance genre. She incorporates Jewish characters and traditions into her stories so that people who grew up like she did can see themselves take center stage on the page. She’s also a member of both LIRW and RWA NYC. She lives in New York, not far from her favorite hockey team’s practice facility.