SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Hanukkah begins in a couple of days. And every year for the past 35 years, NPR has commemorated the Jewish holiday the same way.
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SUSAN STAMBERG: A time of light and miracles and faith.
MURRAY HORWITZ, BYLINE: Don't forget food and family and discovery.
STAMBERG: It's Hanukkah, and Hanukkah Lights.
HORWITZ: The NPR holiday tradition.
DETROW: That is Susan Stamberg, founding mother of NPR who died earlier this year, and public radio broadcaster Murray Horwitz, introducing their annual radio special, Hanukkah Lights. For over three decades, the duo has read and performed Hanukkah stories, many of which were specifically commissioned for the broadcast. Like this one - "Interview With God" by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. This is from 2002.
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STAMBERG: Let me just start out by saying I have been a fan of your work for a long time.
HORWITZ: (As God) Well, thank you.
STAMBERG: I guess the first question I have - and I think I speak for the masses here - are you male or female? No offense. You look great either way.
HORWITZ: (As God) Female.
STAMBERG: Aha. I knew it.
DETROW: Murray Horwitz joins me now to talk about Hanukkah Lights. Thanks for coming by.
HORWITZ: Oh, thanks. It's a real pleasure to be here, Scott.
DETROW: What has this program meant to you over the years? How have you thought about it?
HORWITZ: Boy. It started out as just a thing to do. I was working here at NPR, and we had a very aggressive marketing director, and she stood in the doorway to my office and said, we need holiday specials. What are you going to do? And I perform a one-man show of stories by Sholem Aleichem, the Yiddish short-story writer, and I knew there were a few Hanukkah stories that he'd written, so I figured there must be a lot of Hanukkah stories. And I picked up the phone, I called Susan Stamberg, and I pitched her the idea of her and me reading Hanukkah stories. And she said, really? The Jewish stuff again?
DETROW: (Laughter).
HORWITZ: Because she had done a number of stories. She did a series...
DETROW: Yeah.
HORWITZ: ...On the Jews of Shanghai. So we read some stories, and it turned out to be very successful with the stations. They loved doing something for Hanukkah. And so what it means to me now is much more since Susan's death because it keeps her alive.
DETROW: Why was it important for you to bring new stories to the fold each year?
HORWITZ: Well, it was necessity, Scott. Turns out I was dead wrong - there weren't a lot of Hanukkah stories. And I think it was Andy Trudeau, our senior producer, who said, well, let's commission some. And we ended up commissioning stories by people like Chaim Potok and Elie Wiesel and Rebecca Goldstein and Kinky Friedman.
DETROW: What were those conversations like? Like, hello, Nobel Prize winner.
HORWITZ: (Laughter).
DETROW: You want to write a story for NPR's Hanukkah special?
HORWITZ: A lot of credit has to go to the producers of the show. The initial producer was a guy named Bruce Scott. Bruce was brilliant at working with authors. He was able to cajole them. The great science fiction writer Harlan Ellison was notoriously difficult to work with, and he wanted nobody to edit a word. And Bruce edited it, and it's still my favorite story.
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HORWITZ: (Reading) And I hurtled back toward the light that was greater than this light that filled me. And in a moment, I stood in the year 165 Before the Common Era, within the burned gates of the second temple on the mount in Jerusalem.
DETROW: What is it about that story that makes it your favorite?
HORWITZ: It's a time-travel story about a scientist who goes back to the time of the Maccabees. Anytime we tell the story of Hanukkah, we're going back in time.
DETROW: True.
HORWITZ: But this is really, literally time travel. And it's a great, surprising turn, the way it goes and the way it ends up.
DETROW: Like you said, there's not a ton of Hanukkah canon out there...
HORWITZ: Right.
DETROW: ...To choose from. My gentile point of view, for whatever that's worth...
HORWITZ: (Laughter).
DETROW: ...Is that Hanukkah is - it's a holiday about faith and hope and kind of the doubt that creeps in when you're not quite sure it's going to work out, you know? Like, what, to you, is the essence of a Hanukkah story?
HORWITZ: I think light has a lot to do with it, and it's why we called it Hanukkah Lights. Not unlike Christmas, it's right around the solstice. And Hanukkah tells us - I'm sorry to sound sappy - that there's always light, there's always hope, even in the darkest times.
DETROW: What is the future of the Hanukkah Lights special?
HORWITZ: When we were planning this year's Hanukkah Lights, even before Susan had passed away, the producer, Suraya Mohamed, and I were talking about how to handle Susan's participation 'cause, you know, her capacities were diminished a little bit. And then Susan died. And neither of us hesitated. We said, well, we've just got to play some of the stories that Susan read and that we did together.
DETROW: Yeah.
HORWITZ: Susan was the only person I knew at NPR before I came to work at NPR. We were friends through Ed Kleban, the lyricist for "A Chorus Line." Susan really taught me about how to lift the words off the page and put them in the ear of the listener. So we continue to commission stories. So there's a new - at least one new story this year. And we've got some of Susan's best work as well.
DETROW: Can you tell us any special ways you celebrate Hanukkah off microphone?
HORWITZ: We're going to have a Hanukkah party next week at my son and daughter-in-law's house and my two young grandsons'. We're giving them presents. We're lighting the candles. My wife makes the best latkes - or potato pancakes - on the face of the Earth.
DETROW: Are you a sour cream household or an applesauce household?
HORWITZ: We are both. It's not an either/or, Scott. And some people actually like to mix it on their plate, which I find disgusting. But I'm a sour cream guy.
DETROW: I like applesauce.
HORWITZ: Oh, well, come on over.
DETROW: That's Murray Horwitz, public radio broadcaster, the cohost of the annual NPR special, Hanukkah Lights. Thank you, and happy Hanukkah.
HORWITZ: It's my pleasure. Happy Hanukkah to you, too.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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