● Hanukkah in America: A History By Dianne Ashton NYU Press, 368 pages, $29.95 Hanukkah, I learned while attending a liberal Hebrew school in the 1970s, became an important Jewish holiday only in order to compete with Christmas. My teachers and, I imagine, many others said this with a mixture of sneer and pity: It…
Sending holiday greetings to loved ones for Hannukah? Skip the e-card. The U.S. Postal Service has just issued a “Hannukah Forever” stamp showing — what else? — a lit menorah. Created by Steven Bronstein, a blacksmith from Marshfield, VT, the menorah depicted on the stamp took almost a week to make. Bronstei had to forge 20 feet…
Christian Zionists in the Netherlands are building what they believe will be Europe’s largest menorah as a Hanukkah gift to the country’s Jewish community. The Hanukkah candelabrum, or hanukkiah, will be approximately 36 feet tall and made out of metal, Sara van Oordt of the Netherlands headquarters of the Christians for Israel organization told JTA…
Every week, Rabbi Yael Buechler paints her nails. Only, unlike most of us, she isn’t on the prowl for the new Essie obsession. Every manicure has a purpose: to represent that week’s Torah portion. “I started doing nail art designs back when I was in middle school, long before nail art was in fashion. One…
It has become something of a White House Chanukah tradition. For the second time, the Obama White House used a menorah from a hurricane-hit region to mark the holiday. This Chanukah, Rabbi David Bauman brought to the White House one of two 90-year-old menorahs that survived when Hurricane Sandy ravaged Temple Israel in Long Beach,…
Temple Israel of Long Beach, the Long Island synagogue damaged in Hurricane Sandy, will send a 90-year-old menorah that survived the storm to the White House for a Hanukkah party hosted by President Barack Obama on December 13, according to the New York Times. The shul lost six torahs, incurred ten feet of flooding and…
Each holiday season, the constitutionality of the menorah and other religious holiday displays on government property engenders fierce debates — in traditional courtrooms and in the court of public opinion. In deciding whether a public display of a menorah outside a government building violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court,…
Former Real Housewives of New York City star Jill Zarin may have skipped Hebrew school the day they taught that the light of the Hanukkah candles may not be used for anything other than publicizing and enjoying the holiday’s miracle. How does the Shmooze know this? Well, we can’t be totally sure, but the fact…
100% of profits support our journalism
