Chanukkah Greetings

12/26/2022

There are a number of traditional greetings appropriate to Chanukkah, including Chag Sameach (Happy Holidays), Chanukkah Sameach (Happy Chanukkah), and Chag Urim Sameach (Happy Festival of Lights). There is also the standard Facebook greeting intro of “To All Who Celebrate…” Chanukkah greetings are offered by friends and relatives, as well as retail stores and banks, and almost every politician. What online Chanukkah greeting was offered this year by a politician which has garnered a lot of online response?

Moose Menorah by Mark D. Zimmerman

A. Mike Pence tweeted “Happy Hanukkah! May the light that shines from every Menorah make the world a brighter and better place.” But the accompanying picture was of a 7-candle menorah instead of the correct 9-candle hanukiyah which is used for this holiday. Online responses included “Good try, but not quite, Mr. Vice President,” “So we know that you don’t have any actual Jews on your social media team, nice work,” and “Ay dios mio… I’m not Jewish and even I know you have the wrong menorah.”

B. Donald Trump tweeted a picture of a 7-candle menorah, and when he was criticized for not posting a picture of a 9-candle hanukiya, he responded, “There were 9 candles when I posted that picture, but two of the candles were stolen. I think any Jewish people that criticize that menorah – it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty. And by the way, did I mention that I have Jewish grandchildren?”

C. Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the Israeli ultra-right wing Religious Zionist Party, is slated to be in the new government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. Smotrich has advocated to change the Law of Return to limit Israeli citizenship only to Jews who are halachically Jewish (currently anyone who has one Jewish grandparent or who is married to a Jew can become a citizen under this law). He tweeted Chanukkah greetings reading “Chag Sameach to our Jewish brethren. And to be clear, this only applies to those of you who actually have a Jewish mother. Happy holidays to the rest of you.”

D. George Santos, newly elected Congressman representing parts of Queens and Long Island, tweeted a greeting saying, “As a proud Jew, a graduate of Baruch College (named after one of my fellow Jews), a landlord who received no rent for a year because of COVID (just like so many of my fellow Jewish New York landlords), a former employee of Goldman Sachs (a company founded by Jews and filled with Jews just like me) and the owner of an animal charity, Friends of Pets, which advocates for humane slaughtering of kosher animals, I wish all my constituents a merry Chanukkah.”

E. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted, “May your Chanukkah be filled with light from the great Jewish space laser in the sky.”

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Chanukkah

12/19/2022

Chanukkah started last night with the lighting of the first candle. Celebrants are playing dreidel, eating latkes and sufganiyot, and singing traditional songs such as Chanukkah O Chanukkah and Maoz Tsur. But there are many other ways to celebrate the holiday, including attending concerts such as “The 8 Nights of Hanukkah” with Yo La Tengo at the Bowery Ballroom in New York, Dave Grohl and Greg Kurstin’s “Hanukkah Sessions” at Largo in Los Angeles, and “The Matzo Ball” at the historic 100 Men Hall in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi featuring Meryl Zimmerman & the Miracles. A company in Jerusalem is offering a different type of Chanukkah celebration experience. Participants get the opportunity to creatively re-enact the Maccabean battle against the Greeks in what unusual way?

Menorahs by Mark D. Zimmerman

A. Eat and Meet Jerusalem, which offers cooking classes throughout the year, will be sponsoring a special Chanukkah cook-off for groups of up to 10 people. Participants will be divided into two teams, Judah’s Maccabees and Antiochus’s Greeks. The Maccabees will be taught to make traditional Chanukkah recipes, including latkes, bunelos (a traditional Sephardic treat of fried dough balls topped with orange glaze), keftes de prasa (fried leek patties that are traditional for Spanish Jews), and cassola (a baked ricotta cheesecake popular among Italian Jews). The Greeks will prepare tomatokeftedes (tomato fritters), baklava, kolokithokeftedes (fried zucchini balls), and kataifi (almond syrup pastries).

B. Falcon Laser Tag will set up a special Chanukkah competition for participants in a parking lot, inside a building, or in a public park for a laser tag battle between the forces of good and evil. You can also hold your laser tag event in the Engineering Corps Museum – only a 7 minute drive from Latrun, where Judah and the Maccabees prepared for battle against the Greeks.

C. Beitar Jerusalem, one of Israel’s premier soccer teams, is sponsoring amateur soccer games at their home field, Teddy Stadium. Families and friends can make up teams of 15-20 to be randomly assigned as Beitar Maccabees and Beitar Seleucids. The Maccabees use the Beitar Jerusalem locker room and the Seleucids use the visitor’s locker room, and everyone receives a soccer jersey with their team name. Beitar Jerusalem team members volunteer as coaches during the Chanukkah tournament, and all proceeds go to support youth soccer leagues throughout Israel.

D. Jerusalem Paintball is offering special Chanukkah paintball wars between the Maccabees and the Seleucids at its outdoor space in the Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem. The Maccabees are given blue paint balls, symbolic of the Jewish people, while the Seleucid team will fire red paint balls. But the Maccabee players are also given oil-filled balls, symbolic of the oil in the Temple which lasted eight days.

E. In an event sponsored by the creators of Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, participants sign up for Toula and Motel’s Big Fat Sunrise Sunset Greek Jewish Wedding. Attendees are divided into two groups–the Jews and the Greeks, and one member of each team is selected to participate in a wedding ceremony. All of the Jews then object to the intermarriage with a Greek (a la Tevye), and all of the Greeks object to the intermarriage with a Jew (a la Gus), with everyone agreeing that the marriage won’t last a day. But in a Chanukkah miracle, the marriage actually lasts 8 days.

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Hawaii

12/12/2022

Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano, began erupting on the island of Hawaii on November 27, sending molten rock and lava down its sides and huge gas emissions into the air. The first Jews to come to Hawaii were probably English and German traders who arrived in the mid-1800’s. Organized Jewish life began with the establishment of the Hebrew Benevolent Society in 1901, and a Jewish cemetery was dedicated in the same year. The current Jewish population is around 7,000, though with a large number of unaffiliated Jews it is hard to know the exact number. There are nine synagogues in Hawaii, with most of the Jewish population living in Oahu and Maui. The most famous Jew from Hawaii is singer and actress Bette Midler, who was voted “Most Talkative” in her sophomore class in high school and “Most Dramatic” in her senior year. What Jewish person played a significant role in Hawaii’s history?

Aerial overview of an erupting fissure of the 2022 Mauna Loa eruption by Civil Air Patrol is in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A. Isaac Bensimon was a Jew who moved to Oahu from Australia in the late 1800’s. Bensimon had worked on a macadamia farm in New South Wales, and he brought seeds with him which he planted in Oahu, establishing the first macadamia crop in Hawaii. Bensimon eventually founded the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Company, which is now owned by Hershey.

B. Leon Godchaux, a French Jew who emigrated to New Orleans in 1837, established plantations and sugar refineries in southern Louisiana, eventually becoming known as the Sugar King of Louisiana. Godchaux’s business expanded to Central and South America, where he became familiar with the pineapple, a plant that was originally cultivated in Brazil and Paraguay. Godchaux brought the pineapple to Hawaii, recognizing that the climate there would be particularly favorable to this plant, and he established what became Hawaii’s largest agricultural crop.

C. Elias Abraham Rosenberg, who moved to Hawaii from San Francisco in 1886, became a friend of Hawaiian King David Kalākaua. Rosenberg shared Bible stories with the King and encouraged him to revive traditional Hawaiian religion, leading the King to bestow upon Rosenberg the title of kahuna-kilokilo, or royal soothsayer.

D. Morris Lapidus, a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant, was the architect who is most famous for his Beaux Arts design of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. Lapidus eventually moved to Hawaii, where he designed a number of resort hotels, including the Four Seasons Maui and the Ko’a Kea Hotel & Resort at Po’ipu Beach.

E. The first European to arrive in Hawaii was British explorer Captain James Cook in 1778. A Jewish crew member, Josiah Levy, became friendly with King Kamehameha I. They each shared information about their religion and culture. The king was particularly impressed to learn that Jews used the same word as a greeting upon arrival and departure–Shalom. Given that the Hawaiian alphabet only consists of 13 letters, thus greatly limiting the number of words which could be created, the King decided to follow suit, creating the word Aloha to mean both hello and goodbye.

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Itamar Ben-Gvir

12/05/2022

Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the Israeli far right-wing Otzma Yehudit party, is set to become the Minister of Israeli Security in the new government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Ben-Gvir is a very controversial figure. He was a follower of Meir Kahane and an advocate for removing Arabs from the West Bank. Ben-Gvir hung a picture on his living room wall of Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish terrorist who murdered 29 Muslim worshipers in Hebron in 1994. He only took the picture down after entering politics in 2020, saying, “I’m declaring that for the sake of unity and a right-wing victory in the elections, I’m removing the photograph in my living room.” The Ministry of Israeli Security is an expanded version of the current Ministry of Internal Security, with increased authority over border police in the occupied territories. Given Ben-Gvir’s radical right-wing beliefs and statements about Arabs, many in Israel and worldwide Jewry are fearful of the steps he may take in that position. For example, Abe Foxman, former head of the ADL, recently said in response to the inclusion of Ben-Gvir in the government (along with Bezalel Smotrich, another far-right politician whom Netanyahu is appointing as finance minister), “I never thought that I would reach that point where I would say that my support of Israel is conditional...I love Israel and I want to love Israel as a Jewish and democratic state that respects pluralism.” What else did Ben-Gvir previously do that was controversial?

Itamar Ben Gvir 1 by דוד דנברג is licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

A. Two weeks before Yitchak Rabin was assassinated, Itamar Ben-Gvir stole the dog from Rabin’s yard and held it up, saying “We got to his dog, and we’ll get to him, too.”

B. Two weeks before Yitchak Rabin was assassinated, Itamar Ben-Gvir broke the hood ornament off of Rabin’s car and held it up, saying “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him, too.”

C. When Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke, Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrated with a bar-b-q and stated, “We are, of course, happy. We hope there is a message here to everyone who wants to harm the land of Israel: the land of Israel is more powerful than all of you.”

D. Two weeks before Yitchak Rabin was assassinated, Itamar Ben-Gvir stole Rabin’s Nobel Peace Prize from his office and held it up, saying “He doesn't deserve a peace prize, he deserves a death prize.”

E. Itamar Ben-Gvir posted a picture of himself holding a brick and wrote, “I praise the Big Bad Wolf for blowing down the straw and stick houses of those unkosher pigs. But he failed to blow down the third pig’s brick house, so we got to the bricks, and we’ll get to those treif pigs, too.”

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Kanye

11/27/2022

Kanye West, also known as Ye, has generated much controversy over his antisemitic remarks (among other things). As far back as 2013 he stated that Jews are more well-connected than Black people, giving them an unfair advantage. He also criticized Jared Kushner for his efforts to improve relations between Israel and Arab nations, saying that Kushner was driven by greed. And he stated that “I prefer my kids knew Hanukkah than Kwanzaa. At least it will come with some financial engineering.” He has frequently referenced Jewish control of the media, including his recent response to rapper Sean Combs, who had asked Kanye not to continue wearing a White Lives Matter shirt. Kanye said, “Ima use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me.” And last week, Kanye went to Mar-a-Lago to have lunch with Donald Trump, bringing with him Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist Holocaust denier. When Kanye recently tweeted that “I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE” his Twitter account was restricted and the tweet was deleted. Following Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, Kanye returned to that platform with a tweet that read “Testing Testing Seeing if my Twitter is unblocked.” He followed that with what tweet?