Not So Happy Hanukah

By Alan Singer 

Hanukah this year starts with tremendous sadness because of the murder of Jewish celebrants in Sydney, Australia. I decided to make this post anyway as an act of defiance against antisemitism and against racial, ethnic, and religious hatred directed at any group of people.

In the 1950s Bronx when I grew up Hanukah was not such a big deal the way it is today as the commercialized Jewish Christmas. My friends and I played with dreidels and lit a menorah each night adding a candle until we got to the eighth night. Because Hanukah is a historical holiday, it celebrated the Maccabee’s victory over Greek forces in the 2nd century BC, and not a religious holiday recorded in the Old Testament, we all went to school. As kids, we received token gifts, chocolate candy and 50 cents from Zayde Solomon, my father’s father, and a dollar from Bubba Rachel, my mother’s mother.

In the 1970s my wife and I were teachers and community organizers at the United Community Centers in East New York, Brooklyn. At the day care center, where she was the assistant director, she and the staff invented their own winter holiday they called the Festival of Lights. The pre-kindergarten and school-age children learned about winter holidays from around the world including Christmas, Yule Log, Three King’s Day, Loy Krathong, Diwali, and Hanukah. My step-daughters and son attended the program and were among the few white and fewer Jewish children.

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Source: Daily Kos

Alan Singer is a historian and teacher educator at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. His most recent books are Social Studies for Secondary Schools, 5th edition (Routledge, 2024) and Class-Conscious Coal Miners (SUNY Press, 2024). Blogs, tweets, essays, interviews, and e-blasts present his views and not those of Hofstra University.