December 16, 2016

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DEC EM B ER 16, 2016 | 16 K I SL EV 5776 | VOL . 97 | NO. 11 | 3 SECTI ONS | C a nd leli g h ti ng | FRI DAY, DECEM BER 16, 4: 38 P. M .

it’s hanukkah

A2 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

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Happy Hanukkah!

H

anukkah is late this year on the regular calendar, and that means we are nearing the end of 2016. It’s been a big year for us; our sales are finally doing better, and as a result you have seen our paper grow considerably. Now, we have one more surprise for our readers: we have reached our goal of digitizing the Jewish Press, and all 2016 issues can be viewed online! You can get to the digital Press through our website at http://www.jewishomaha.org/jewish press/ or by going directly to www.issuu.com/jew ishpress7. From there, you can choose which edition you want to view.

None of this would have been possible without the generous support from the Phillip and Terri Schrager Supporting Foundation and Amy and Sandy Friedman.

It never ceases to amaze me when community members step up and make these things possible, and I am proud to belong to a community where generosity is not an exception, but the norm. Taking care of each other is what really makes a community thrive. When donors and professionals share a dream, that dream quite often becomes reality.

Although Hanukkah is not a major holiday, it is nonetheless important to remember this time of year who we are. In a country divided, we have to stick together, as Jews, but also as human beings. That means we show chesed, kindness, empathy for those less fortunate. Focusing on candles, fried doughnuts and chocolate coins is not enough. We have to remind ourselves what it really means to fight for what kind of world we want to live in. We step up when others face discrimination and hate speech. We remember what it feels like to be a stranger in a strange land, and we follow the lead of Abraham and open our tents wide.

This year, we should all invite some of those strangers into our homes during our Hanukkah celebrations. We should show kindness, in our actions and in our speech. There has been too much hate in this country this year. During Hanukkah, we ask ourselves what the modern day equivalent is of the Greeks we are symbolically fighting. Maybe this year the answer is not the Christmas music blaring through the speakers at every retail store, the Christmas lights all over the city or the never-ending stream of Christmas wishes coming from members of the majority culture. Instead, it’s possible the answer lies within ourselves, and the challenge is in how we will act during these divisive times.

Personally, I’m a huge fan of Hanukkah. Of course, with kids still at home, those latkes and sufganiyot are omnipresent, but it also gives us an opportunity to talk about the real meaning of the holiday. Being true to yourself, not letting the majority culture overwhelm you or marginalize you is a topic that comes up often.

It can’t be avoided, living in Omaha, Nebraska.

Speaking of Nebraska, Emily Nohr recently reported in the Omaha World Herald that “Nebraska led the nation in resettling the most refugees per capita during the last year, according to newly released federal government data.”

Our state welcomed 1,441 refugess, many of whom joined family members already here. Focus on that number for a while: 1,441 lives, forever changed because our home is now their home. Refusing to welcome the stranger is what got Antiochus in trouble; welcoming that stranger with open arms is what the rest of us should be doing, Jew and non-Jew alike.

When we combine our generosity with our ability to welcome others, we have a winning combination. It’s how we make the world a better place, and isn’t that the real message of Hanukkah? That when we see a need, we answer that need and fight our hardest to make improvements, no matter how hopeless the situation may seem?

We want to wish all our readers a wonderful holiday.

We hope you enjoy our new and improved Hanukkah issue (it will take you a little longer to read; it’s twice as big as last year’s!) and, most of all, we hope you enjoy each other.

Chag Sameach!

Eric Dunning, President Annette van de Kamp Wright, Editor

The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | A3

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Celebrating freedom

hat does Hanukkah mean to you? It is probably the most recognized Jewish holiday in America, more so even than Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. Hanukkah may have made it into American mainstream culture when Saturday Night Live introduced Hanukkah Harry and Adam AlAn PotAsh Sandler. However, many of us remem- Chief Executive Officer, ber explaining the difference between JFO Hanukkah and that other December holiday since elementary school. Some of my clearest memories of elementary school are about explaining why I didn’t celebrate Christmas; I am sure almost everyone reading the Jewish Press had similar experiences.

I really learned and experienced the value and meaning of Hanukkah when I had the privilege of leading a group of college students to the Ukraine in the late 1990s, partnering with Jewish students from Kiev who were reigniting Judaism in the former Soviet Union after the fall of communism.

During the years after Gorbachev opened the borders, efforts to provide social services, cultural programs, educational opportunities and Aliyah initiatives increased. Hillel, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and at that time the United Jewish Appeal (UJA), which is currently known as the Jewish Federations of North America, also began networking to educate the Jews of the former Soviet Union on Judaism.

American college students would travel to Russia, Ukraine and other parts of the former Soviet Union to work at camps and communities and offer assistance. My group was given the opportunity to introduce Hanukkah back into the communities. We taught the story of Hanukkah in shtetls, some with one or two families, and some with larger Jewish communities.

On our first day, we worked with a shtetl that once had more Jews than non-Jews. That day, there were only two remaining families. When we arrived, we were greeted by the most welcoming group of ladies (see the photos). We entered

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Buying orSelling? Give us a call! a small house with no running water, a telephone, or a piano, just two light bulbs (one for each room), and a table filled with precious food. We later learned that our host had baked everything in her kitchen with food she received via the Chesed.

The Chesed is a network of Jewish social agencies that provide a variety of services to the elderly (I will write more about Chesed in a future article). In this case, as our host was too far away from a Chesed, someone visited regularly to provide additional food and medicine she wouldn’t have been able to afford on her own. At that time, most elderly people received a pension of $35 a month.

In a room roughly 10’x12’ with a table filled with precious food, I found myself with the only two Jewish families left in the town, two college students from America, two college students from Kiev, the representative from the Chesed, and my colleague. After all of the introductions, explanations and eating, we started to tell the story of Hanukkah. Just after lighting

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the menorah, the grandmother of the host, who hadn’t said a word the whole time, showed a smile on her face and started singing Hanukkah songs in Yiddish. She sang nonstop for over 15 minutes. As she finished she began crying and said: “I haven’t been able to sing these songs since I was a child.

I couldn’t tell anyone that I was even Jewish.” Her daughter and grandchildren looked on in amazement, having never heard her speak Yiddish or even talk about being Jewish.

Think about that for a moment. Our being there opened up a part of her she hadn’t been able to share because under Communism, practicing Judaism was against the law.

For me, celebrating Hanukkah has never been the same.

Remember, Hanukkah is about the freedom to practice Judaism. It has evolved here in America to be almost trivial, but reconnecting to Jewish values is by no means trivial. It is to be celebrated. This Hanukkah, enjoy time with family and friends, spin the dreidel, eat latkes and sufganiyot, and reflect for a moment on those unable to celebrate their Jewish values and traditions.

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a4 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

Reaching out to educators

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Donna Walter Education Coordinator, Institute for Holocaust Education he Nebraska Holocaust Education Consortium and the Institute for Holocaust Education (IHE) traveled to Hastings College on Oct. 30-31 to host the Teaching the Holocaust Conference for 25 preand in-service teachers.

The conference covered topics such as “Teachers during the Third Reich,” “Using Diaries and Memoirs in the Classroom,” “Janusz Korczak” and more. Participants were especially fortunate to hear the survivor testimony of Milt Kleinberg. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum provided classroom materials for participants and one of their Regional Education Corps members, Terri Toppler of Davenport, Iowa, was a presenter. St. Cecilia High School in Hastings brought 30 students to hear the survivor testimony.

On Dec. 2 the IHE hosted an Echoes & Reflections training for 25 University of Nebraska education students and four in-service teachers. The training was held on the Jewish Community Center Campus and taught by Liz Feldstern, IHE Executive Di-

rector. Echoes & Reflections is a multimedia program that provides secondary educators with professional development, as well as print and online resources to teach about the Holocaust in today’s classrooms. The program is a collaborative effort of the Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah

Foundation, and Yad Vashem. Educators receive a Teacher’s Resource Guide with ten complete lessons ready for classroom use.

The IHE wants to once again reach many students through the annual Tribute to the Rescuers essay contest. The contest is open to high school students in Nebraska and Western Iowa. If you know of a high school teacher who might be interested having a class participate or know of an individual student who would be a good match, have them contact the IHE Education Coordinator, Donna Walter, at dwalter@ihene.org or 402.334.6453.

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Extraordinary eight

Gabby blair For eight lovely nights starting on 25 Kislev, Jews all over the world celebrate Hanukkah. We fry up delicious latkes, spin the dreidel for chocolate gelt with our kids, indulge in tasty sufganiyot and chip last year’s wax off our menorahs while recalling the brave Maccabees and the miraculous story of the oil. One detail of this story that perhaps should be examined a bit closer is the actual length of time the oil lasted. Eight nights. Everyone knows that this is the length of time Hanukkah lasts. Everyone knows we light the Shamash and one candle on the first night and that we add an additional candle for each night until we have filled our menorah to a bright, and somewhat startling, eight candle blaze. Would the story be just as miraculous or have the same meaning, had the oil lasted some other length of time? What is it that is so special about the number eight itself?

Details in Judaism, just as each word that is contained in the Torah, are not added frivolously. Every nuance has a very in depth and specific reason. Additionally, Judaism has an interesting relationship with numbers, as anyone familiar with Gematria is aware.

There is often great commentary and meaning associated with certain numbers. For example, most Jews are aware that the number 18 is particularly auspicious. It represents Chai, or life, and as such, it is not uncommon to make donations or give gifts celebrating simchas in multiples of 18. Another auspicious number we see repeated throughout in Judaism is seven. G-d created the world in seven days.

There are seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot when we are supposed to work on fine-tuning and controlling our seven emotions.

Shabbat is observed on the seventh day of the week. There are seven laws of Noah. Seven is the number of combined patriarchs and matriarchs. The Holy Temple’s menorah had seven branches, and the seven colors of the rainbow serve to remind of us of G-d’s promise after the great flood. The number seven, it is said, illustrates a state of completion. Seven is symbolic of the ordinary, natural world. Seven is what we can see, fee, and experience. So then, what is the meaning of eight?

Eight is considered to be one step higher, or an elevation above the normal limitations of nature. Eight is the extraordinary, the miraculous, the supernatural. Eight is a symbol of our loving and, at times, logic-defying relationship with Hashem. We see the number eight come into play when we perform the Brit Milah upon our sons as we fulfill our covenant with G-d on the eighth day after their birth. We celebrate Shimini Atzeret, on the Eighth Day of Assembly, immediately after Sukkot, prolonging the holiday into an eighth and transcendent day. The Mishnah contains a list, organized by the Rambam, concerning the eight levels of Tzedakah, one of the most important mizvot. There were eight people on board Noah’s Ark. Even the physical appearance of the number eight itself is unique, intertwining; connecting the higher and the lower, the supernatural and the natural, the ordinary and the extraordinary, infinitely, without end. This year, as your family gathers around the menorah, adding their light to the darkness on eight consecutive nights, take a moment and reflect on the many miracles, large and small, seen and not yet realized, that happen on a daily basis in our lives and give thanks for these, as they are truly extraordinary.

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The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | a5

community Hanukkah happenings at beth israel Mary Sue GroSSMan Executive Director, Beth Israel Beth Israel Synagogue will be brimming with special happenings in December, celebrating Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights.

The first happening is a treat for your sweet tooth. Everyone knows that donuts are a traditional treat during Hanukkah, enjoyed by young and old. Beth Israel is team-

ing up with Krispy Kreme to add special sweetness to everyone’s celebrations. For just $8, purchase a coupon for a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts. It’s a quick and easy way to enjoy these special treats and celebrate Hanukkah while supporting Beth Israel. These are also a great gift idea for family, friends, neighbors and teachers. Certificates are available in the Beth Israel office.

Third in the line up is the annual Hanukkah Carnival on Wednesday, Dec. 28 from 6:30-8 p.m. Everyone is encouraged to bring menorahs to be a part of a group candle lighting, led by Rabbi Ari, to start the evening. The carnival will have fun for kids of all ages including a bounce house, games, prizes and crafts plus hotdogs and cotton candy.

“This will be a wonderful event to celebrate during Hanukkah. It will also be a great outing for your kids to enjoy in the middle of winter break” shared Karen Cohen, who is chairing the event along with husband Michael. “The carnival is open to the community and is free of charge” she added. “We hope many families will join in the fun.” Reservations are requested to assure sufficient food and prizes will be prepared. Register at orthodoxomaha.org or call 402.556.6288. Sponsors are also welcome.

Please contact the office for more information.

Hanukkah will also be the focus on the weekly Day of Learning on Thursday, Dec. 29 when Rabbi Ari teaches The Story Behind Hanukkah. The class meets from 9:30-10:30 a.m. at Beth Israel.

The final event takes place on Friday, Dec. 30. Kabbalat Shabbat begins at 4:47 p.m. followed by a special Hanukkah/Shabbat dinner at 6 p.m. After dinner, Rabbi Ari will speak on Why We Spin the Dreidel. Adding a festive feeling to the dinner will be the first ever Beth Israel Hanukkah Table Decorating Contest. People are encouraged to sign-up for a table and share their creativity to celebrate the Festival of Lights. Voting will take place throughout Shabbat with the prize winners announced the following week.

“We are so excited about the table decorating contest” said Julee Katzman, Programming Committee Chair. “There is a multitude of talented people who plan to participate, and I can’t wait to see their creativity on display. I have no doubt the tables will be fabulous.”

The dinner menu will include challah, brisket, latkes, salad, roasted vegetables, applesauce and desserts. The cost is $12 for adults, $6 for children ages 4-12, and no charge for those under three years of age. Reservations are needed by Dec. 22.

Please register at orthodoxomaha.org or call 402.556.6288.

On the final day of Hanukkah, Saturday, Dec. 31, Shabbat services begin at 9 a.m. with kiddush at 11:30 a.m. The kiddush tables will include donuts and other special treats. On Shabbat afternoon, beginning at 3:45 p.m., Rabbi Ari’s weekly learning session will focus on the Talmud of Chanuka.

Mark your calendars now, make your reservations, and enjoy the wide variety of Hanukkah events at Beth Israel.

For more information, call 402.556.6288.

Campaign update

A6 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

community Temple students in Washington Members of the 10th Grade Confirmation Class at Temple Israel attended the L’Taken Social Justice Seminar in Washington D.C. along with Rabbi Darryl Crystal and Youth Director Aliyah Lasky.

Preserve, restore and reproduce The Omaha Transportation and Technical Museum has been established in three major parts. The first part of the museum is history. Our motto is “Preserve, Restore and Reproduce.” Displaying history isn’t the main goal for our facility. The ability for guests to use these pieces of history is our goal. By this, we mean use the items, such as ride the bicycles. There is a multitude of examples in history that people have never seen. We hope to bring to life technology from transportation through household appliances that are lost to history, some pieces available, some only in photographs.

The second and equally important part is education. We plan to use period trade shops to build or repair replicas and for apprenticeships. Being able to see trades in action can give people an option for a career. Having the operating trade shops allows us to maintain inventory at lower costs. There are 14 different areas people can train in including com-

munity darkrooms, blacksmith, carpentry shop, recording studio, tailor shop and others.

The final goal is to provide nonprofit organizations with affordable meeting and convention space. As a nonprofit organization, we can provide space at a lower cost for nonprofit clubs. Our staff will be able to assist small organizations plan and execute shows, swap meets and conventions. This would be good for the community, the area and the local clubs.

Our current goal is a $10,000 ad campaign. Our overall goal is to be self-sufficient. We believe this is possible between regular memberships, trade memberships, reproductions and conventions. Donations can be made through Great Western Bank.

Checks can also be sent to Omaha Transportation and Technical Museum, PO Box 27272, 7300 Main Street, Ralston NE 68127. We’re a 501 (c) 3 and all donations are tax deductible. Visit our website, www.otatm.webs.com.

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STeven W. LevInGeR Chief Development Officer, Jewish Federation of Omaha This month the Jewish People celebrate the miracle of Hanukkah and a time when our ancestors were able to see light in the darkness. Unfortunately, there are still fellow Jews whose light is not shining as brightly as others and depend on community support to improve their lives. This is precisely what we facilitate at the Jewish Federation. We are the “village square” where we work together to find common ground in the name of tikkun olam, making the world a better place. By raising funds through the Annual Campaign, our agencies, professionals, and lay volunteers have the resources to care for the most vulnerable around us. At the same time, it is more essential today than ever to fight hate... at home, in Israel, and around the world. As we celebrate Hanukkah with our family and friends, let’s consider that as Jews, we are responsible for each other, no matter where we are situated in the world or how we lean politically. This is no different today than it was 3,000 years ago or in 1953, as Leo Meyerson eloquently penned in this Campaign letter to the Omaha Jewish community:

Letter for 1953 Campaign September 21, 1953.

Dear Friend: We again appeal to you for the support of the United Jewish Appeal and the many worthy institutions which depend upon you, and

others like you, for their continued existence.

It should be a great satisfaction to be able to be on the giving end, and all of us ought to deem it a privilege to be permitted to share our good fortune with others less fortunate.

In a few days you will be called upon by

one of our friends and I hope you will give as generously as in the past. Once again we ask your cooperation in lessening the burden of the Committee by giving this matter your earnest consideration and be ready to sign your pledge and make your contribution. We are all very busy and taking time out from our various businesses, and time is a very important factor these days.

As President of the Jewish Welfare Federation, I should like to express to you at this time, my deep gratitude for your heartwarming response in previous years. Your sincerity and your willingness to cooperate have made our drives so successful in the past. We are grateful and proud, and hope we will have just cause to be equally as grateful and proud in 1953.

I want to extend my best wishes for a Healthy, Happy and Prosperous New Year and may the Almighty bestow his blessings upon you and all your dear ones.

Sincerely, Leo I. Meyerson, President, JEWISH WELFARE FEDERATION

The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | a7

U Name It, We Clean It

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We clean what others won’t

Preparations continue for the next Omaha shaliach Mark kirchhOff Program & Communications Assistant he Jewish Federation of Omaha continues to work diligently with the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) to select the next shaliach to be a part of the community. The most recent shaliach, Eliad Eliyahu Ben Shushan, was the shaliach for Omaha for three years. In that time he extended himself throughout the community and was embraced by all. His departure was followed by the initiation of a search for the next person who will bring his or her own talents, abilities and love for Israel to Omaha, Nebraska, USA. Most recently, the JFO’s Director of Development, Nate Shapiro, the Director of Community Engagement and Education, Jennie Gates Beckman, have worked with JAFI to establish the job description and expectations for the next shaliach. In order to do so, Nate and Jennie have been talking with people from the local synagogues as well as Jewish Federation of Omaha personnel and community members to explore and determine the needs that are present. It is from these discussions that the job description has been formulated.

JAFI is reviewing applications from the many Israelis who are aspiring to be shlichim. On the basis of those applicants, JAFI will select those whom they believe to be the best possible fit for Omaha and assist in the arrangements for interviews. The interviews will be conducted via Skype with some conducted by Nate when he is in Israel during the early part of February.

The Jewish Agency’s shlichim are dedicated to the Jewish people, Jewish heritage, and to Israel. They are hand-picked

from various streams of Israeli society, and different professional and academic backgrounds.

The shlichim get communities actively involved in securing a vital Jewish future by creating programming tailormade for specific community needs -- designed to increase Jewish awareness, knowledge and pride; to bridge the gap between Jews of different backgrounds and Israel; and to promote an understanding of Israel and its ideals. For Omaha, working with a variety of ages is a high priority.

Omaha’s shaliach will be selected in time to be here in August, the month for the beginning of all shlichim programs. We all await the selection and arrival of the next person. Contact Nate Shapiro, 402.334.6440, nshapiro@jewishomaha.org, or Jennie Gates Beckman 402.334.6445, jbeckman@jewishomaha.org for information, volunteer opportunities, and programming ideas for the shaliach program.

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A8 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

– Autism Study Enrollment –

Researchers connected with Johns Hopkins and Harvard’s teaching hospital published research showing remarkable improvements in autistic individuals using a single simple and extremely safe over-the-counter supplement. With a recent Study in Omaha, the non-profit Therapeutics Research Institute (TRI) repeated the results of this break-through treatment. These results have also been published in a medical journal.

TRI’s plan is to now expand this Study to up to 300 families. To learn more about this Study and TRI and how to enroll, go to the Study’s site ControlAutismNow.org. Nothing is being sold and there are no costs at all to participate. For a copy of TRI’s recently published Study, email sevans@gsm-usa.com and put Autism Paper in the subject heading.

Hanukkah at Temple Israel

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Susie Norton and Ellen Platt making latkes.

ScoTT LiTTky Program Director, Temple Israel Hanukkah is a time of great celebration for Jewish families. Although a minor celebration, Hanukkah has taken on important meaning for Jewish families throughout the world. In Israel, Hanukkah is a symbol of strength and survival. In America, it is a celebration of Jewish freedom and success. In her famous song, Not By Might, Debbie Friedman writes, “Not by might, and not by power, but by spirit alone! Shall we all live in peace.� Spirit in Hebrew is ruach. As we prepare to celebrate at Temple Israel we are excited about the ruach of Hanukkah that will be present in our community.

As written about in last week’s Jewish Press, we are excited to continue our tradition of Chinese Food and a Movie this year on Sunday, Dec. 25, which is the second night of Hanukkah. Before we enjoy our food and movie, we will have the opportunity to light candles together. The cost of the evening is $8 and children under 13 are free.

To RSVP, please contact Temple Israel at 402.556.6536 by Wednesday, Dec. 21.

Our annual congregation Hanukkah Dinner will be Friday, Dec. 30. In preparation for the evening, each year we make our own latkes. Under the supervision of our Chef John Hattam, we will make latkes during the week of Dec. 26; if you are interested in helping make them, please contact Program

Director Scott Littky at 402.556.6536. Information about the evening itself is as follows for Dec. 30: Candle lighting and Kiddush in the Simon Community Court, 5:30 p.m., Services, 6 p.m., dinner immediately following. Join us for a family-friendly interactive Hanukkah service, followed by dinner and games for all ages. The menu for the evening is: brisket, vegetables, latkes with applesauce and sour cream and dessert.

Those attending should also bring dreidels and a favorite family menorah to light. The cost of the meal is $10 for adults; $5 for children in 2nd- 6th grade; and no charge for kids under 2nd grade. Please RSVP, 402556-6536 or rsvp@temple israelomaha.com, by Tuesday, Dec. 27.

During the week of Hanukkah, we again will be bringing ruach to the residents of Heritage at Sterling Ridge and to Remington Heights. As in the past, different families will be lighting the candles for Hanukkah and singing Hanukkah songs.

There are still a couple of open nights if you would like to visit at Remington or Heritage. Let Program Director Scott Littky know if you would like to be assigned a night.

In closing, our Temple Israel Family would like to wish each and every one of you a very happy and fun filled Hanukkah with lots of ruach, latkes and songs.

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It is getting chilly outside and we are looking for places to get warm! There is no better place than Personal Threads Boutique, at 8600 Cass. This sister store to the Lewis Art Gallery is a welcoming, warm, and creative space for knitting, crochet, and needlepoint.

We have a knowledgeable staff that can answer any question. The five talented and intelligent ladies who work here in the Boutique are skilled knitters and crocheters that can fix any problem and can find fiber for any project. We have tried to cultivate a true sense of community in our shop, and we love to see what our customers are making and to explore new trends with them. We also appreciate hearing our customers’ ideas for ways that we can improve.

The real pride and joy of our little shop, however, is the selection. Oh, the selection! For needlepoint, we offer an impressive variety of canvases and threads, from pillows to wall hangings to coasters.

We carry Paternayan, Appleton (both crewel and tapestry threads), Silk and Ivory, Rainbow Gallery, and Kreinik. We have a variety of colors and textures in all the brands.

For knitting and crochet, we carry standard wools from some of your favorite brands (Cascade, Plymouth, Classic Elite, etc.) in quantities great enough for sweaters and blankets alike. We are also proud to offer some truly luxurious fibers from Juniper Moon Farms, Rowan, and Berroco--perfect for squishy-soft scarves and hats. We have some of your favorite boutique brands like Madelinetosh, Dream in Color, and Hedgehog Fibres; the largest color selection in the nation of Koigu hand-painted sock yarns; and some indie hand-dyers that are exclusive to Local Yarn Stores.

As we move closer to Hanukkah, we invite you to stop by, get warm, and fall even more deeply in love with your craft.

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The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | A9

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Kirk Douglas, on his 100th birthday, looks back -- and ahead Tom TugenD wife, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, who LOS ANGELES | JTA also welcomed leaders of numerous chariirk Douglas -- actor, director, ties and institutions in the United States and producer, author, philanthropist Israel that have received approximately $118 and Torah student -- celebrated his 100th birthday on Dec. 9, and there was a special treat in store for the centenarian.

Douglas has been under strict medical orders to abstain from alcohol, but his cardiologist, Dr. P.K. Shah, promised the actor that if he made it to 100, he could have a glass of vodka. So at an afternoon tea party at an event space in Beverly Hills, Shah was in attendance to personally Kirk Douglas with wife Anne at Sunset Tower in West Hollywood, administer the medication.

Some 150 other guests feted Calif., Feb. 24, 2013. Credit: Mark Sullivan/WireImage Douglas, ranging from his extended family, million over the years from Douglas and his including three sons and seven grandchilwife, Anne. dren, to old friends like director Steven “You have to give back,” Douglas once exSpielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Don Rickles plained. “I came from abject poverty. I and other Hollywood luminaries. didn’t dream of becoming a millionaire. So Also on hand were Rabbi David Wolpe of you have to pay back.”

Sinai Temple in West Los Angeles, who has On Dec. 9, 1916, the future Kirk Douglas directed Douglas’ weekly Torah studies for was born in the upstate New York town of many years. Wolpe also officiated at the Amsterdam as Issur Danielovitch, the son actor’s second bar mitzvah, when Douglas – of an illiterate Russian-Jewish immigrant then only 83 – declared, “Today, I am a man.” who supported his family of six daughters Hosting the event was Kirk Douglas’ son, and one son as a rag picker and junkman.

Oscar winner Michael Douglas, and his His rise to one of Hollywood’s top male

stars in the 1950s and ‘60s is the stuff of American legend.

In most of his 87 movies, the blond, blueeyed boy who once laid tefillin every morning was now cast as just about the toughest, roughest guy around. But this is only part of the story. Douglas is the author of 11 books, including harsh childhood recollections, explaining the Holocaust to children and love verses to his wife, as well as tracing his recovery from a helicopter crash, stroke and attempted suicide.

Douglas is now reading the proofs for his 12th book, co-authored with his wife and titled, Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter and a Lifetime in Hollywood.

With all these accomplishments, ask Douglas about his proudest recollection and he will point to his act of moral courage in breaking the Hollywood blacklist of alleged communists during the McCarthy redhunting era. He did so by insisting that the name of writer Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted for a decade, be publicly credited for the “Spartacus” screenplay, despite warnings that such a provocation would end Douglas’ own Hollywood career.

Most of his old friends who will attend the party are familiar with another of the actor’s talents -- for pithy observations on life, love and advice to future generations.

On religious observance: “I don’t think God wants compliments. God wants you to do something with your life and to help others.”

On the appeal of Torah study: “The Torah

is the greatest screenplay ever written. It has passion, incest, murder, adultery, really everything.”

In his heyday, when Douglas was as famous for his egocentricity and womanizing as his screen roles, he spared little time and interest for his Jewish heritage. However, he observed, “I always fasted on Yom Kippur. I still worked on the movie set, but I fasted.

And let me tell you, it’s not easy making love to Lana Turner on an empty stomach.”

Kirk was upstaged by his second and current wife at the celebration of their 50th wedding anniversary in 2004. The former Anne Buydens startled the guests by announcing that she had converted to Judaism.

“Kirk has been married to two shiksas,” she declared. “It’s about time he was married to a nice Jewish girl.”

Douglas has always had a special spot in his heart for Israel. In The Juggler, he starred in the first Hollywood feature to be shot in the Jewish State, returning later for Remembrance of Love and Cast a Giant Shadow.

Shortly before his 100th birthday, Douglas recalled a blessing he first pronounced on his 90th birthday.

“In the Jewish tradition, a birthday gives a person special powers, and if he issues a blessing, his blessing will come true,” he said.

“I bless all the people in the land of Israel that the current conflicts resolve themselves, that no more people die or are hurt, and that you can continue your lives in peace.”

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A10 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

the Legacy project: A Dance of Hope comes to Orpheum Theater

community Leadership and the Hanukkah shamash A free translation from the work of Rabbi Lior Engelman.

When we were children it was clear which of the Hanukkah candles was the most important: the shamash, the “helper” candle. It is the most prominent and tallest candle -- it is one of a kind. The shamash is the leader of the pack, the only one who can light the teDDY rest. In advance of the Hanukkah plays in pre-school, everyone wanted weinBerGer to be the shamash, and the child who landed the part was happy indeed.

Adults, too, are very impressed by the shamash. We similarly want to lead by standing out. And if we can’t lead, we often make do with getting close to the local shamash and serving him. However, anyone who has learned some of the basic laws of Hanukkah discovers something unusual: The tradition puts the focus upon the regular candles and not on the shamash. Precisely, the regular candles tell the miraculous story of Hanukkah: the victory of the Maccabees, and the solitary flask of olive oil that sufficed until the rededication of the Temple. The regular candles are so precious to us that we do not wish to benefit from them for profane purposes; as it says in the liturgy: “And no one may use them except to look at them, and to be reminded to thank and praise Your great name for all your miraculous rescues.”

The truth is that the shamash plays a negligible part in the Hanukkah story. It is designed to allow us to go about our lives in proximity to the Hanukkah lights -- using its light and not theirs. The shamash stands out; he is impressive, he is exceptional, but on Hanukkah we are most impressed by those who are not out of the ordinary, who are part of the group. Yes, the shamash is in charge of lighting the other candles; he is responsible for the lighting, he is the

leader, but his very name literally teaches him how our sages felt a leader should view himself. A leader is a shamash, an attendant, a servant. His job is to serve others.

He is not valuable in himself and the public is not supposed to worship him. It is likely that he has special abilities, which God gave him to a wonderful degree, but all this in the hands of an authentic leader turns into a tool to serve the public and not, God forbid, as a tool for the cult of his personality.

When Rabbi Gamliel, President of the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem in the first century, wanted to appoint two of his sages to leadership positions, they refused out of modesty. In response he said to them: “Do you think I am giving you a sinecure? I am putting you to work.” Leadership in Israel means work. Rav Kook referred to himself as: “A servant of a holy people in the holy land.”

We are all leaders in certain aspects of our lives: parents, teachers, people in important positions at work and, really, everyone who has an influence over the fate of another person. We need to remember that the big light that stands out, the special one, the one we so much loved in our childhood, is ultimately just a shamash. If the shamash is filled with self-pride and thinks that his light is the most important light, he has failed in his role. If he is a humble shamash, then all the candles around him will blaze joyously with a grand light. Happy Hanukkah!

Teddy Weinberger made aliyah in 1997 with his wife, former Omahan Sarah Ross, and their five children. Their oldest four, Nathan, Rebecca, Ruthie and Ezra are veterans of the Israel Defense Forces; Weinberger can be reached at weinross@netvision.net.il.

Acclaimed choreographer and storyteller Carolyn Dorfman brings a dance-theatre trilogy to the Orpheum Theater stage when Omaha Performing Arts presents Carolyn Dorfman Dance: The Legacy Project: A Dance of Hope thursday, jan. 19, 2017 at 7:30 p.m.

Performances in the Legacy Project bring Dorfman’s family stories and Jewish history together with a universal struggle for identity.

Through this combination, she inspires her audience to feel familiarity and unity, creating dances that serve as metaphors for the greater truths of the human experience. Told through the lens of the Holocaust and its devastation, hope inspires the journey to a land promising new beginnings. Dorfman’s creation joins us through our common experiences, highlighting humanity’s deepest desires for peace, freedom and family.

The company’s ten multi-ethnic and stunning dancers present highenergy and technically demanding dances that unleash powerful storytelling. The ensemble has appeared nationally and internationally for three decades, becoming known for its emotional resonance and artistic excellence in its interactions with audience, students and the community. Carolyn Dorfman Dance connects life and dance in bold, athletic and dramatic works by Dorfman and nationally renowned choreographers.

The Legacy Project: A Dance of Hope will make you cry, laugh, think and celebrate the capacity of the human spirit to rise above all circumstance.

Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. performance start at $15. They are available at Ticket Omaha, inside the Holland Performing Arts Center lobby, 1200 Douglas St., by calling 402.345.0606, or online at ticketoma ha.com. Hotel Deco is a hospitality sponsor for this performance.

Additionally, Omaha Performing Arts will partner with Carolyn Dorfman Dance in a series of special events during the week leading up to the performance. More information: www.omahaperforming arts.org.

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The Jewish Press will be closed on Monday, Dec. 26 and Monday, jan. 2.There will be no Jewish Press on jan. 6, 2017. Questions? Call 402.334.6448.

Wishing the Omaha community

Happy Hanukkah from

Karoline S. Anderson | John Andresen | Marie Belin Thomas M. Byrne | Kimberly Christner | Michael D. Cohen Kurt A. Davey | Mary C. Dek | Elizabeth Larson | Patrick J. Steinauer 18018 Burke Street | Omaha, NE 68022 | Corner of 180th and Burke | 402.573.7337

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Happy Hanukkah

Hanukkah with kids: A true miracle

Gabby blair here are few holidays that are more exciting to Jewish children than Hanukkah.

The nights are cozy and long, filled with parties, music, games, and the anticipation of presents. Add into this the general excitement of impending winter breaks from school and the scent memory of frying latkes, and Hanukkah takes on an almost magical quality; the stuff memories are made of. While the children are most excited about playing dreidel, winning gelt, and finding delight in opening gifts, I have come to cherish something simpler that cannot be purchased in a store or wrapped in star-covered paper. As a mother, I find that lighting the menorah with my children is one of those rare, sentimental moments that I have the foresight and clarity to recognize.

To see the tiny Jewish children one has nurtured and helped to grow into

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ing how long their sparks would last; realizing that it was a true miracle that their oil lasted as long as it did, and feeling blessed for the eight days, rather than bitter that the miracle did not last longer. It is bittersweet, as a mother, to know that soon, as our children grow older, our Hanukkah nights by candlelight are numbered. G-d willing, one day, in the not so distant future, they will have their own lives and families. I pray that when they do, they remember the magic of the lights dancing in the darkness and perhaps they will see, in their own children, the true miracles and blessings we share as Jews and parents throughout the ages. Seeing your child’s beautiful shining face, illuminated in the darkness by the lights they kindle on the menorah, and recalling the many blessings bestowed upon us, individually and collectively as a people, is reminder enough of the true meaning and miracle of Hanukkah.

young Jewish adults, year after year, with the candlelight flickering upon their faces like a blessing in the dark, is something I find a deeply emotional, almost primal response to. In our house, we lower our lights; and in front of our windows, we light our

Shamash and then the candles one by one. After reciting the blessings, we sit in the glow, mesmerized by the dancing flames, deep in both thought and conversation together. I imagine it wouldn’t have been so different for the Maccabees, watching their own flickering flames in the darkness, wonder-

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a12 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

Jewish groups to skip Conference of Presidents Hanukkah party HAPPY HANUKKAH

Ron Kampeas migration reform and refugees, said its WASHINGTON | JTA principal concern was Trump’s stoking of Eight liberal members of the Conference fears about refugees during the campaign. of Presidents of Major American Jewish Or- “Welcoming refugees is HIAS’ mission and ganizations did not attend its Hanukkah a fundamental Jewish value,” said its presiparty because it is being held at a hotel owned by President-elect Donald Trump. e Union of Reform Judaism, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the National Council of Jewish Women, Americans for Peace Now, Jewish Women International, HIAS, Ameinu and the Workmen’s Circle have all said they would not attend the Dec. 14 party at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. The Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC Some of the groups cited Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images the bigotry they associate with Trump’s campaign in explaining their abdent, Mark Hetfield. ‘Until HIAS gets a sence, while others pointed to the conflicts sense as to where the Trump administration of interest posed by the president-elect’s farstands on welcoming refugees, we do not flung business holdings. Two groups, Amer- wish to celebrate any Jewish holiday in a icans for Peace Now and the Jewish culture forum which is named for him and from and social justice group Workmen’s Circle, which he profits.’ also cited concerns about the party’s co-host, e Conference of Presidents, the organized the Embassy of Azerbaijan.

Jewish community’s foreign policy umbrella HIAS, the lead group advocating for imgroup, represents over 50 member groups.

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Chrismukkah: How interfaith families navigate celebrating both Hanukkah and Christmas

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EMily GillEr eing a part of an interfaith family is always difficult this time of year. If children are involved it gets even more complicated because parents must decide how best to raise their children in a way that suits their family’s cultural and religious needs. Of course, there’s no right or wrong way to observe Emily Giller and Tom Marston two different religions, but that doesn’t make it any less complicated. To make things even more problematic for interfaith families, this year, the first night of Hanukkah starts on Christmas Eve. So how do interfaith families decide how to celebrate these two holidays when they start at the same time?

Again, there’s no easy answer or best way to combine the traditions of two different religious holidays. I myself have to deal with this very conundrum.

My fiancé is Catholic and I am Jewish. Over the past several years we have celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas. Our celebrations usually included celebrating the first night of Hanukkah with my family, exchanging gifts, having a nice dinner with my cousins, and of course eating lots of latkes. For Christmas, we’d always have Christmas Eve dinner at my future-in-law’s house and then on Christmas day we would gather with my fiancé’s cousins and exchange gifts. There was never the issue of overlapping traditions because the two holidays have always occurred at separate times, at least since we’ve been together.

This year is a little different for us for two reasons: 1.

This is the first year we’re celebrating both holidays as an

The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | A13

community

engaged couple, and 2. this is the first year we’ll be celebrating both holidays without our families. We recently moved out of Nebraska, and due to crazy work schedules we aren’t able to go home for the holidays this year. Although we’re both very sad about this, we’re trying to be optimistic. This is a chance for us to start defining what these holidays mean to us and how we want to celebrate each of them. After all, both Christmas and Hanukkah are more than just putting up a tree and lighting a menorah.

One tradition I hope to bring back at some point is Chinese food. For many Jews, eating Chinese food on Christmas Eve is a long-standing tradition. For me though, and maybe for other interfaith families, the tradition of eating Chinese food on Christmas Eve was lost long ago and replaced instead with Christmas Eve dinner. I’m not going to lie; I miss Chinese food on Christmas Eve. It was always fun going to a Chinese restaurant and basically seeing every Jew you knew sitting and eating dinner with his or her family.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to make it to a Chinese restaurant this year due to the fact that Hanukkah starts Christmas Eve, but maybe one day. Instead, we plan on having our own Chrismukkah dinner. I’ve already located a nice Jewish deli I can buy some goodies from and, of course, we’ll be making latkes. My fiancé still needs to decide what he wants for his Christmas portion of the dinner, which he will have full say on, except for one minor detail. Although we don’t live in a kosher household, I feel as though I can’t serve a Christmas ham to go alongside my latkes. Everyone has a line; that is mine.

So, for all the interfaith families out there navigating how best to celebrate both holidays, just remember there is no wrong way to celebrate. Each holiday has its own traditions that go along with it and it’s up to us to decide how we honor and unify those traditions. After all, this time of year is about giving back and it’s about hope. It’s about being with family, and it’s about love. These sentiments are what’s truly important in any holiday tradition, whether it’s just Christmas, just Hanukkah, or Chrismukkah.

A $441,000 Hanukkah lamp

JTA NEWS STAFF AMSTERDAM | JTA A 270-year-old Hanukkah lamp became the most expensive artifact of its kind sold in the Netherlands in recent memory after it fetched $441,000 at auction.

The menorah, which belonged to the family of a Dutch Jewish resistance fighter killed by the Nazis, was sold last week by the Venduehuis der Notarissen auction house in The Hague to an unnamed Jewish collector, the Omroep West broadcaster reported.

Manufactured in Amsterdam in 1747, the menorah, which used to be part of the collection of the family of George Maduro, triggered an international bidding war that caught the auctioneers unprepared, according to the NOS broadcaster. The object in question was estimated to sell for anywhere between $9,000 and $15,000. Dozens of telephone calls came in with bids for the menorah, forcing the auction house to divert all available manpower to deal solely with that sale, Meefout said.

George Maduro, who during World War II helped smuggle stranded British pilots from continental Europe back to Britain, joined the resistance after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. He was caught and sent to the Dachau concentration camp where he died just three months before its liberation.

To commemorate their only son, Maduro’s parents financed the construction of one of Holland’s best-known tourist attractions: The Madurodam miniature city, which opened in 1952.

According to Omroep West, there is but one known piece that is identical to the Maduro menorah, which is part of the collection of the Dutch Royal House and is currently on display at the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam.

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synagogues B’nai iSrael Synagogue

618 Mynster Street Council Bluffs, IA 51503-0766 402.322.4705 email: CBsynagogue@hotmail.com

BeTh el Synagogue

Member of United Synagogues of Conservative Judaism 14506 California Street Omaha, NE 68154-1980 402.492.8550 bethel-omaha.org

BeTh iSrael Synagogue

Member of Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America 12604 Pacific Street Omaha, NE. 68154 402.556.6288 BethIsrael@OrthodoxOmaha.org

ChaBad houSe

An Affiliate of Chabad-Lubavitch 1866 South 120 Street Omaha, NE 68144-1646 402.330.1800 OChabad.com email: chabad@aol.com

CongregaTion B’nai JeShurun

South Street Temple Union for Reform Judaism 2061 South 20th Street Lincoln, NE 68502-2797 402.435.8004 www.southstreettemple.org

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Temple iSrael

Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) 13111 Sterling Ridge Drive Omaha, NE 68144-1206 402.556.6536 templeisraelomaha.com

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Member of United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism 3219 Sheridan Boulevard Lincoln, NE 68502-5236 402.423.8569 tiferethisraellincoln.org

B’nai iSrael Synagogue

Join us for our monthly Shabbat Speakers Series on Jan. 10, at 7:30 p.m. with guest speaker, Mary-Beth Muskin, Regional Director of ADL-CRC Plain States Region on ADL-Now more than ever. Oneg to follow service. Everyone is always welcome at B’nai Israel! Our services are led by lay leader Larry Blass.

For information on our historic synagogue, please contact any of our board members: Scott Friedman, Rick Katelman, Carole Lainof, Marty Ricks, Sissy Silber, Nancy Wolf and Phil Wolf.

BeTh el Synagogue

Services conducted by Rabbi Steven Abraham and Hazzan Michael Krausman. friday: Kabbalat Shabbat, 6 p.m. Bat Mitzvah of dina Saltzman, daughter of Linda and Kevin Saltzman.

SaTurday: Shabbat Services, 9:30 a.m. Bat Mitzvah of dina Saltzman, daughter of Linda and Kevin Saltzman; Junior Congregation, 10 a.m.; Mini-Minyannaires, 10:45 a.m.; Mincha/Ma’ariv, 4:45 p.m. weekday SerViCeS: Sundays, 9 a.m. & 5:30 p.m.; weekdays, 7 a.m. & 5:30 p.m.

Sunday: BESTT Classes, 9:45 a.m.; Gift Shop Hanukkah Sale, 9:45 a.m.-12:30 p.m.; Torah Study, 10 a.m.; Torah Tots, 10:30 a.m.; Kadima Program, 12:15 p.m.

TueSday: Rabbi Abraham’s Ethics & Values: A Jewish Guide to Life’s Most Difficult Questions, noon at Whole Foods. wedneSday: Gift Shop Hanukkah Sale, 3-5:30 p.m.; BESTT Classes, 4:15 p.m.; Hebrew High Dinner, 5:30 p.m. followed by Game Night at the Rose Blumkin Jewish Home; Rabbi Abraham’s Ethics & Values -- A Jewish Guide to Life’s Most Difficult Questions, 6:15 p.m.

Gift Shop Hanukkah Sale, friday, dec. 23, 10 a.m.-noon Lunch at NE AIDS Coalition, friday, dec. 23, 11:30 a.m.

Switch Day at the Blumkin Home, Sunday, dec. 25, 8 a.m.-2:30 p.m.

All classes and programs are open to everyone in the Jewish community.

BeTh iSrael Synagogue

Office hours: Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and Friday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m.. Services conducted by Rabbi Ari Dembitzer. friday: Shacharit, 7 a.m.; Mincha/Ma’ariv & Kabbalat Shabbat, 4:39 p.m.; Candle Lighting, 4:39 p.m.

SaTurday: Shacharit, 9 a.m.; Torah Parade, 9:45 a.m.; Insights in the Weekly Portion, 3:35 p.m.; Mincha/Seudah Shlishit, 4:20 p.m.; Havdalah, 5:44 p.m.

Sunday: Shacharit, 9 a.m.; Bagels and Beit Medrash, 9:45 a.m. monday: Shacharit, 7 a.m.; Lunch and Learn, noon with Rabbi Shlomo; Read Hebrew America, 7:30 p.m. with Rabbi Shlomo.

TueSday-wedneSday: Shacharit, 7 a.m.

ThurSday: Shacharit, 7 a.m.; Women’s Class, 9:30 a.m.

ChaBad houSe

Office hours: Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and Friday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Services conducted by Rabbi Mendel Katzman. friday: Shacharit, 7 a.m. followed by coffee, treats, study and shmoozing.

SaTurday: Shabbat Morning Service, 9:30 a.m. followed by a kiddush luncheon.

Sunday: Shacharit, 8:30 a.m. followed by Sunday Secrets: Jewish Fun Facts class at 9:15 a.m. weekdayS: Shacharit, 7 a.m. followed by coffee, treats, study and shmoozing. monday: Personal Parsha class, 9:30 a.m. with Shani. wedneSday: New Tanya Series -- The Anatomy of Your Soul: Who Are You?, 9:30 a.m. with Rabbi Mendel Katzman.

ThurSday: Advanced Talmud Class, noon with Rabbi Mendel Katzman.

Camp Gan Israel, monday, dec. 26-friday, dec. 30, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.

All programs are open to the entire community.

CongregaTion B’nai JeShurun

Services conducted by Rabbi Craig Lewis. friday: Pre-neg, 6 p.m. hosted by Kelen-Bloom Family; Candlelighting, 4:42 p.m.; Shabbat Evening Service, 6:30 p.m.

SaTurday: Shabbat Morning Service, 9:30 a.m.; Torah Study, 10:30 a.m. on Parashat Vayishlach; Game Night and

Potluck Dinner, 6 p.m.; Havdalah (72 minutes), 6:12 p.m.

Sunday: LJCS Gan, 9:30 a.m. at Tifereth Israel; LJCS Grades 1 through Gesher, 9:30 a.m. at South Street Temple.

Parents, please join with your children at their respective buildings at 11:45 a.m. for latkes; Mary Beth Muskin, Regional Director of ADL-CRC Plain States Region is speaking, 1:30 p.m. at Tifereth Israel.

TueSday: Ladies’ Lunch, noon at Tanner’s Bar & grill, 70th & A (formerly Grandmother’s). Please contact Deborah Swearingen with any questions; Star City Kochavim Rehearsal, 6:45 p.m. wedneSday: LJCS Hebrew classes, 4 p.m. at Tifereth Israel.

ThurSday: Temple Choir Rehearsal, 7 p.m. adulT eduCaTion TueSday: Intro to Judaism, Session #6, 6:30 p.m. led by Rabbi Lewis. wedneSday: Intro to Prayer Hebrew, Session #9, 6 p.m.

ThurSday: Beginning Conversational Hebrew, Session #7, 6:30 p.m.

The Annual South Street Temple Hanukkah dinner and service, friday, dec. 30. Dinner at 6:30 p.m. featuring salad, brisket, and latkes! Feel free to bring a dessert to share. Cost: adults (13 and up): $10, children (2-12): $5 and under 2: free.

RSVP to the Temple Office (office@southstreettemple.org; or 402.435.8004) by wednesday, dec. 28, or register online.

Erev Shabbat/Erev Hanukkah service to follow, with music by the Star City Kochavim and the Temple Choir.

It’s time for our annual holiday drive for Clinic With a Heart.

Please help by donating over-the-counter medications and personal care items. Donations can be brought to the Temple Office anytime the Temple is open.

President’s Office Hours, Sunday mornings, 10 a.m.– noon at SST. If you have any Temple business you would like to bring before the Board of Trustees, potential programs, or new ideas, please let us know! Call for an appointment at the Temple at 402.513.7697. Or if you prefer, email David Weisser at president@southstreettemple.org.

offuTT air forCe BaSe

friday: Services, 7:30 p.m. every first and third of the month.

roSe Blumkin JewiSh home

friday: Chef’s Demo, 1:30 p.m. with Beth Israel.

SaTurday: Services, 9:15 a.m. led by Scott Weiler.

Services will be held in the Chapel. Members of the community are invited to attend.

Temple iSrael

friday: OTYG Lock-in, 5:45 p.m. at Temple Israel; Shabbat Services, 6 p.m.

SaTurday: Torah Study, 9:15 a.m.; Shabbat Morning

Services, 10:30 a.m. Bat Mitzvah of emma eades, daughter of Leslie and Brian Eades.

Sunday: Grades PreK-6, 10 a.m.; Madrichim Meeting, 10 a.m.; Temple TED Talk, 11 a.m.; OTYG Meeting, noon. wedneSday: No Grades 3-6, Grades 7-12 or Family School.

ThurSday: No Adult Education Class.

Chinese Food & A Movie, Sunday, dec. 25, 6 p.m. Join us at Temple Israel for a catered Chinese dinner and a family movie.

The cost is $8 and children under 13 are free. Please RSVP to Temple Israel, 402-556-6536, by wednesday, dec. 21.

Hanukkah Service & Dinner, friday, dec. 30. Candle lighting and Kiddush in the Simon Community Court, 5:30 p.m., Services, 6 p.m. Dinner immediately following. Join us for a special, family-friendly, interactive Hanukkah service, followed by dinner and games for all ages. Menu: Brisket, Vegetables, Latkes with Applesauce & Sour Cream, Dessert. Bring your dreidels! Bring your favorite family menorah to decorate your holiday table!

The cost of the meal is $10 for adults; $5 for children in 2nd 6th grade; and no charge for kids under 2nd grade. Please RSVP, 402.556.6536 or rsvp@templeisraelomaha.com, by Tuesday, dec. 27.

TifereTh iSrael

Services conducted by lay leader Nancy Coren. Office hours: monday-friday, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. friday: Services, 6:30 p.m.

SaTurday: Shabbat Morning Service, 10 a.m. followed by a Kiddush Luncheon; Ugly Sweater Havdalah Service and Get-together,5:45 p.m. at the home of Lucy and Kirk Bowers.

Havdallah candles and spice boxes will be provided! Just come in an ugly sweater....and if you don't have one...create one out of a sweater you do have! This havdallah service is for all ages!

A prize will be given for the ugliest sweater worn! (based on a vote to be taken by all attending) Sunday: LJCS Gan, 9:30 a.m. at Tifereth Israel; LJCS Grades 1 through Gesher, 9:30 a.m. at South Street Temple.

Parents, please join with your children at their respective buildings at 11:45 a.m. for latkes; Mary Beth Muskin, Regional Director of ADL-CRC Plain States Region will be coming to Tifereth Israel at 1:30 p.m. to speak to us about the findings of the NOW IS NEVER national conference as it relates to the upswing in antisemetic acts in this country. We will have a babysitter available during this presentation.

TueSday: Ladies’ Lunch, noon at Tanner’s Bar & grill, 70th & A. Please contact Deborah Swearingen with any questions. wedneSday: LJCS Hebrew classes, 4 p.m. at Tifereth Israel.

TI Has Talent 4 & Our Annual Hanukkah Latke Party, dec.

25, 4 p.m. We're looking for congregants who will sing, dance, play an instrument, tell jokes, do martial arts, recite poetry, etc.

Sign up by e-mailing Nancy Coren at corenancy@gmail.com or ncoren@tiferethisraaellincoln.org.

Cut out traditional Hanukkah doughnuts, health minister tells Israelis

leading up to the holiday, with bakeries frying JERUSALEM | JTA Israel’s health minister called on the public to them on the street and selling them fresh to passers-by. refrain from eating the traditional Hanukkah treat sufganiyot.

“I call on the public to avoid eating sufganiyot, which are rich in fats,” Yaakov Litzman of the haredi Orthodox United Torah Judaism party said Sunday during a conference to promote healthy eating, Ynet reported. “You can find alternatives for everything nowadays and there is no need for us to fatten our children with sufaganiyot, which are not in line with Sufganiyot on display in Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station the principles of health and Credit: Ben Sales proper nutrition.”

Sufganiyot, or traditional jelly doughnuts, are “If I had to say this today, I’d say sufganiyot deep fried and covered with powdered sugar, out,” Litzman said. ‘You can eat them, of course, although variations include other fillings and because it is part of the holiday’s customs, but toppings. ey are ubiquitous in the weeks there are alternatives.”

The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | a15

lifecycles birTh

frankie nicole friedman

Candice and Dusty Friedman announce the Nov. 25 birth of their daughter, Frankie Nicole.

Grandparents are Pam and Julian Wong, and Amy and Sandy Friedman.

Great-grandparents are Molline and Fritz Cassman.

marriage

SorenSon-ShaPiro

carly Sorenson, daughter of Kaj and Jodie Sorenson of Dodgeville, WI and nate Shapiro, son of Charles and Joan Shapiro of Wayne, NE were united in marriage on Nov. 5, 2016, at the Wisconsin Riverside Resort in Spring Green, WI. A reception was held at the same location immediately following the ceremony.

The bride is a registered dietitian and currently works for the Nebraska Methodist Health System as a Diabetes Educator. The groom works for the Jewish Federation of Omaha as the Director of Development.

Anti-missile programs

WASHINGTON | JTA Missile defense programs for Israel worth $600 million are included in a defense policy act approved by Congress. e Senate approved the $619 billion National Defense Authorization Act on ursday, a week aer the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill. It awaits President Barack Obama’s signature. e bill approves joint U.S.-Israeli research and development, as well as procurements for Israel’s Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow-3 anti-missile programs, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said in a release praising the approval.

Other provisions for U.S.-Israel cooperation include combating tunnel warfare, which has emerged in recent years as a favored measure of the Hamas militants controlling the Gaza Strip.

Missile defense funding is separate from the approximately $3 billion Israel receives annually from the US States, according to a 10-year agreement the U.S. and Israel signed in 2007.

in memoriam

elizabeTh cohn morriS

Pulverente MONUMENT CO.

Frank L. Ciciulla Jr. 60 Years Experience With Jewish Lettering and Memorials 1439 So. 13th

Elizabeth Cohn Morris, a lifelong champion of women's rights passed away on Dec. 5 at age 63 in Chicago after a short but valiant fight with a recurrence of breast cancer. A memorial service for Betsy will be held in Chicago in January.

She is survived by her devoted husband of 37 years, Gareth Morris, her beloved daughter and son-in-law, Madelyn and Dan Goldberg, and sisters, Jo Sawyer and Doe Florsheim.

She, known as Betsy, daughter of the late Julius and Marilyn Cohn, grew up in Omaha and attended Central High School and Brown University. After moving to Chicago, Betsy worked in development for the University of Chicago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Hadassah. She also served as Director of the Chicago International Film Festival. She then consulted with the Steven Spielberg Shoah Foundation, the Gates Foundation’s Vaccine Fund, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the University of Chicago Law School, WTTW Chicago and Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. Most recently, Betsy was the Director of Major Gifts for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

In addition to her professional accomplishments, Betsy dedicated her life to the protection and preservation of women’s rights. She spent over 25 years leading and advancing the mission of Planned Parenthood, including serving as the Chair of Planned Parenthood of Chicago and until her death as Chair of Planned Parenthood of Illinois.

In honor of her life’s work, the family has established a fund in her memory at Planned Parenthood of Illinois, to continue the significant work that Betsy so tirelessly supported. Memorials may be made to Planned Parenthood of Illinois in memory of Betsy Morris.

402-341-2452

Email the Press at jpress@jewishomaha.org; mail to 333 So. 132 St., Omaha, NE 68154; or online at the Jewish Federation of Omaha website: www.jewishomaha.org. Click on Jewish Press and go to Submit Announcements.

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A16 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

Shucks Fish House & Oyster Bar

community The Dundee Dell

Did you know the Dell has been around since 1934? It is possibly the oldest restaurant and bar in Omaha, with the recent closings of Omaha landmarks such as the Bohemian Café, Piccolo’s, and others.

In 82 years, there have been several owners, most recently Greg Lindberg, who bought the Dell from Pat Gobel, who owned it for 27 years. Coincidentally, Gobel bought the business from Neill Everitt, who also had the Dell for 27 years. Lindberg thinks he has a shot at 27 years himself.

Famous for Fish and Chips for decades, that recipe continues to this day, and is considered sacred. Since The Dundee Dell is now in the Absolutely Fresh family, a few additional seafood dishes have been added to the menu: Faroe Islands Salmon, Peel ‘n Eat Shrimp, and the MacHaddie (haddock – quite similar to cod – with a very thin breading).

Pat Gobel, before he handed the baton to Lindberg, had this to say: The Dell is unique. It has its own vibe. It is a pub in the style of pubs in the British Isles. In the small villages and hamlets there, everyone gathers at the pub. Their homes were traditionally too small to gather in. So, the pub.

The smallest child, the oldest person, and everyone in between. No matter what your background or income level or your education, you are welcome at the pub. It is where you go to be yourself and be with other people; not virtually but really.

This is what the Dell is about.

Lindberg is proud to be able to say that 29 of the 31 Dell employees are still around, after the change of ownership.

“I swore I would never get into the restaurant business,” Greg Lindberg said many times. “So many restaurants have gone broke owing us money. And it’s an endless amount of work. You’re just never done!”

Lindberg, owner and founder of Absolutely Fresh Seafood Company, distributors of seafood to over 300 restaurants and clubs in the area, nonetheless found himself starting Shucks Fish House in 2006. Because of customer demand, Absolutely Fresh Seafood Market began serving soups, salads and sandwiches for lunch; on 4 tables next to the fish counter at 119th and Pacific.

“Back in the day, when I was looking for seafood

on the Gulf Coast, I would be killing time waiting for a boat to come in, and I would hang out in these seafood shacks instead of holing up in the Motel 6,” said Lindberg. “I never dreamed that someday I would make my own seafood shack in Omaha.”

From the very old barn wood (they call it ‘wharf’ wood) on the walls, to the straightforward recipes, to the oh-so-casual ambiance, Shucks is a tribute to the many establishments Lindberg frequented in Louisiana, as well as in New England, Florida and the West Coast.

“We have the very thinnest breading possible,” Lindberg said. “Never have I seen any thinner. When we started the Luncheonette in 2003, with Chef Claude

Hampton, we did not have a fryer. No fried fish, no french fries. I was trying to create a very healthy place to have lunch.”

“That was one of the biggest of my many, many mistakes,” Lindberg said. And he explained that people love fried food but not the calories. To that end, they purchased a fryer and started experimenting with the thinnest breading possible. That resulted in what Shucks touts as “the thinnest breading in town.”

Today, Shucks’ three locations each boast its own chef and long-term staff, and has been voted Best of Omaha for the last seven years.

The story of Absolutely Fresh Seafood Company: since 1979, Lindberg began bringing fresh seafood to Nebraska and Iowa, selling off the back of a refrigerated truck. He moved ‘inside,’ at the request of the Douglas County Health Department and never looked back.

1727 Leavenworth was the site of the first Absolutely Fresh fish market, as well as the emerging wholesale seafood operation, opening there in 1982.

In 2002, Absolutely Fresh retail market merged with Sherm’s Seafood, and then moved completely to that location, at 1218 South 119th Street.

Today, Absolutely Fresh consists of the market at 119th and Pacific plus the wholesale division (the Mother Ship) still at 18th and Leavenworth. Selling to over 300 restaurants, hotels, casinos and clubs in the Omaha, Lincoln and Des Moines areas, fresh fish is flown in several times each day.

The fish market has expanded from a few gulf seafood offerings (shrimp, crab, oysters, flounder, red snapper) into a thriving market featuring fresh and frozen seafood from around the world. The selection on any given day can include crab legs from Alaska, lobster from Maine, salmon from the Faroe

Islands off Scotland, shrimp from Louisiana, mussels from Massachusetts, oysters from New England, and fish from Central and South America.

Absolutely Fresh has long been famous for homemade cocktail sauce, freshly steamed shrimp and fresh smoked salmon. Prepared dishes, such as Seafood Enchiladas, are quickly becoming a significant part of the business. Also, fresh baguettes are delivered from Le Quartier daily.

Grab-and-go items, like sausages and cheese abound, as well as a wide variety of wine and beer.

Café Café occupied the space where Bailey’s is now, for about 25 years, under four different owners.

When it suddenly closed, Greg Lindberg decided to take a chance on the breakfast business.

“On a Tuesday noon, when the parking lot should have been busy, it was deserted. A sign on the door explained that Café Café was closed, and it was ‘just another Omaha statistic.’ That really got to me,” said Lindberg. The casinos had moved in, along with chain restaurants, and he was concerned about the loss of identity of Omaha as a result.

“We thought we could throw up a little paint, fix up some of the kitchen equipment, and be in the breakfast and lunch business,” said Lindberg. “Then I proceeded to lose a few hundred thousand dollars in the next 18 months, doing a complete remodel and then not having enough customers coming in” he said, smiling.

After the third year, the school of hard knocks started paying off, and Bailey’s has been profitable ever since.

Karen Bauermeister, who with other staff, started in 2007, even before Bailey’s was open, left in 2013

to open Over Easy. Lindberg and staff are delighted that she returned in January of this year to retake the helm.

Bailey’s claims to have the best bacon in town. “It ain’t rocket science,” says Lindberg, “we just buy the best, thickest, meatiest bacon on the market. You should try it.”

Best sellers include six variations of Eggs Benedict, Chicken Fried Steak, coffee cake, and salmon salad. The lunch menu also includes sandwiches, soups and several salads. Breakfast is served all day, and house made corned beef hash is available Fridays through Sundays.

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The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | B1

H

section2

HANUKKAH

The Sufganiyot saga Ozzie NOgg

ow’s this for a jaw-dropping statistic: According to a 2012 Ynet News article, the number of Israelis who eat jelly doughnuts -- sufganiyot -- on Hanukkah exceeds the number of Israelis who fast on Yom Kippur. To support this claim, Angel Bakeries, the largest bakery in Israel, reportedly fries up more than 250,000 sufganiyot every day during the eight-day Hanukkah festival -- which means every man, woman and child in Tzfat (current population approx. 34,000) could eat about 7.5 donuts a day, in turn creating a sugar high that might account for the mystical folktale wherein God -- after booting Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden -- comforts them with jelly doughnuts because, using Kabbalistic lettercrunching, sufganiyah can be read as sof-gan-yud-hey (the end of the Garden of the Lord, aka the Garden of Eden), the last two letters spelling out the Divine name. Phew.

The above explanation aside, the derivation of the word, sufganiyot, is a mini-lesson in Jewish geography and history. The word can be traced back to the Greek sufan, meaning spongy, or to the Arabic sfenj -- a small, deep-fried doughnut (but without jelly) eaten for centuries by Jews in North Africa to commemorate Hanukkah. The first known recipe for a jelly doughnut -- gefullte

krapfen -- is found in the 1532 German cookbook Kuchenmeisterei, one of the first cookbooks that Johannes Gutenberg ran off on his original printing press. The baking instructions read: Packen sie marmelade zwischen zwei runden scheiben brot und frittieren sie die ganze sache in schmer, danach sollte man die gefullte krapfen weg als Weihnachtsgeschenk. Translation: Pack jam

between two round slices of bread and deep-fry the whole thing in lard, after which one should give the gefullte krapfen away as a Christmas gift. (The thought of lard, let alone the word krapfen, makes my stomach wobbly.) Eventually, balabustehs from Antolepski to Zlatopol substituted schmaltz for lard, and next thing you know, Jews in eastern Europe (especially the Poles, who dubbed the doughnuts ‘ponchiks’) are gorging on the goodies every Hanukkah.

So how did jelly doughnuts migrate from Eu-

rope to Israel? Credit is generally given to the Histadrut Labor Federation founded in 1920 in what was then British-mandated Palestine. The aim of the Histadrut, which mimicked Russian socialist principles, was to organize and find employment for Jewish immigrants making their way to Israel during the Third Aliyah. The labor union’s thinking went like this: “Yes, potato latkes are the traditional Hanukkah food. But latkes can easily be made at home by any cook with a grater and a frying pan. To produce perfect sufganiyot is more difficult. This takes a professional.” And so, by promoting sufganiyot as a symbol of the Festival of Lights (instead of the do-it-yourself latke) the Histadrut created more jobs for Jewish workers who needed to knead the dough, roll and cut the doughnuts by hand, fry them in small batches on a kerosene heater, and then transport and sell them. Today’s sufganiyot tumble off assembly-lines, their fillings squirted inside through a baker’s syringe or a special industrial machine.

And oy, such fillings, like the Histadrut didn’t know from. Yes, you can still find traditional sufganiyot stuffed with strawberry jelly and topped with powdered sugar. But those who think outside the pastry box can also choose sufganiyot filled with cappuccino, tiramisu, cheesecake or peanut butter custard, dulce de leche, halva, pistachio, creme brulee, chocolate, vanilla and Bavarian cream, plus alcohol-infused doughnuts, saturated with vodka, pina colada, margarita or anise flavored arak and topped with coconut shavings, meringue or fruit pastes.

See Sufganiyot saga page B2

Chanukah brings light into our lives at a dark time of the year. When you make a donation to the Jewish Federation and the Jewish Federation Foundation, you share the light with those who need it most right now. Help a child attend our CDC or JCC Summer Camp or provide them a Jewish book, deliver hot meals to the homebound, support our seniors staying active and engaged.

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Sufganiyot saga

b2 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

hanukkah

Hanukkah books for young readers

Sybil Kaplan potatoes at Turtle Rock by Susan Schnur, Kar-Ben Publishing. $17.99 hardcover, $7.99 paperback, $6.99 eBook, 32 pp., Fall 2016 Rabbi Schnur, who wrote this book with her daughter, Anna Schnur Fishman, is a Reconstructionist rabbi who lives in Boston. She is also Editor-at-large for the Jewish women’s magazine, Lilith.

She and her daughter are also the authors of Tashlich at Turtle Rock.

This is the story of a family -- mom, dad, teenage son (Lincoln) and daughter (Annie) who have as pets a chicken (Richie) and a goat (Ubi).

They also have their own Jewish holiday traditions.

For Hanukkah, the family goes to the woods with dad carrying a lantern, mom carrying the chicken, Annie leading the goat and Richie pulling a sled. They make stops along the way where Annie provides riddles.

Like the previous books, the myth about the oil is repeated but not for the children who will read the book, ages 5 to 9.

Alex Steele-Morgan lives in Wales and illustrated the earlier companion book of Rabbi Schnur and her daughter with indigo-based paintings.

Although a little off-beat, this book illustrates to children that each family can be original and creative and create their own traditions for Jewish holidays.

a Hanukkah with Mazel by Joel Stein, Kar-Ben Publishing, $17.99 hardcover, $7.99 paperback, $6.99 eBook, 32 pp., Fall 2016 Misha is a poor artist living outside Grodno, a city in the western Belarus, in the late 19th or early 20th century. One cold winter night, he discovers a little cat. He takes her into the barn where his cow lives and then into his house and names her Mazel, meaning luck.

Hanukkah is about to arrive and he begins a painting of a chanukiyah since he has no money to buy oil for his chanukiya. The story evolves when a peddler stops and discovers Mazel is his Goldie.

Again, in the press release, the myth of the jug of oil is repeated but at least it is not part of this very charming story for 3-to-8 year olds whose themes are hope and luck.

The author is Joel Stein, who began writing non-fiction articles, then fiction. This is his first children’s book. He and his family live in Florida.

The illustrations are by Elisa Vavouri, a Greek-born illustrator of children’s and other books who lives in Germany. She has been illustrating children’s books for the past 21 years. In this book, the illustrations have deep tones and special textures.

Hanukkah Delight! by Leslea Newman, Kar-Ben Publishing, $5.99 board book, $5.99 eBook, 12 pp., Fall 2016 Board books are so endearing, because they are small with rounded corners meant to be held in the hands of 1 to 4 year olds. I was surprised to learn there are 26 now available from Kar-Ben. In this book, all of the customs of Hanukkah are rhymed with delight as a darling family of bunnies practices each one. They are colorful and appealing, and the details are really well done. The male bunnies and other male animals are wearing yarmulkes and the drawings of dreydels, children playing with the dreidels, latkes and presents are quite appealing.

I have to say that the press release perpetuates the myth of the jug of oil, but at least it does describe the holiday as celebrating the miracle of the victorious fight of the Maccabees over the Syrians. Period. It should have ended there, but since the press release is not read to the children, at least the customs are accurate.

For any 1-to-4 year old, this is a sweet way to introduce the holiday of Hanukkah.

Leslea Newman, who lives in Massachusetts, is an award-winning author of more than 60 books. She is currently a member of Spalding University faculty.

Amy Husband is a British illustrator.

Continued from page b1 Enter Baltimore native and doughnut devourer, Elie Klein, who now lives in Israel where he created the Dough for Doughnuts campaign to raise money for charities around the world. In 2010, 2011 and 2012 -- from Rosh Chodesh Kislev until the end of Hanukkah -- Klein’s dedicated Facebook event page let friends, family and complete strangers track his progress and pledge dollars and shekels to their favorite charities for every sufganiya he ate -- caramel-filled being his favorite. Over those three Hanukkah seasons, Klein scarfed down a total of 300 sufganiyot and his cohort contributed over $40,000 for worthy causes. (Sponsors also earmarked tongue-in-cheek donations for the Israeli Diabetes Association and Overeaters Anonymous.) Klein hung up his bib in 2012 and continues to raise money for charity in other ways, deciding (as one wag put it) he no longer wanted to have people put their money where his mouth is.

In closing, a few more facts re: sufganiyot: • The average 3.5 ounce sufganiya packs 400 to 600 calories.

• An average-sized person needs to walk for more than two hours to burn off just one Hanukkah jelly doughnut.

• Dunkin’ Donuts offers sufganiyot, but if you’re far from a franchise, here’s an ersatz version to make at home.

Take some stale challah, cut into circles, dip into condensed milk, fry, sprinkle with sugar and inject jelly with a turkey baster. Please let me know how they turn out.

Happy Hanukkah to all, and b’tayavon -- bon appetit.

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Kalamata tapenade

t

Read it and eat

his cookbook will make your Hanukkah festive in many ways... as gifts for others or for yourself to use for gathering friends and family for celebrations. Light lois Friedman the candles, bless the wine, fry the latkes and spin the dreidel!

Breaking Breads by Uri Scheft (Artisan Books, $35) Mmmmm, the contents page is a bread fantasy... Challah, Babka, Flatbreads, A Few Classic & New Discoveries, Stuffed Breads, Sweets & Cookies and With... The Introduction starts, “My first love was bread” and true love was bringing people together around the able or at the kitchen counter.

The Israeli author walks you trough his mishmash of cultures and influences that led to a new-world family and modern Israeli food in the fusing of the old and new.

His bakeries are Lehamin in Tel Aviv and Breads Bakery in New York City where people go crazy for the bakeries’ debut of sufganiyot... the special yeasty, airy fried doughnut Hanukkah treat!

Bread making is carefully outlined... follow the recipes exactly the first few times, the fundamentals and techniques with notes, tips and tricks... be sure to get all the measured ingredients out of the cup or

Credit: alexlikestocook.com

Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups, pitted Kalamata olives 5 Garlic cloves, coarsely chopped 1 fresh thyme sprig, leaves removed and reserved 1 tbsp. plus 2 tsp. extra-virgin olive oil 1/2 tsp. fine salt Preparation: Combine the olives, garlic, thyme leaves, olive oil, and salt in a small food processor and process until semismooth. Taste and add more salt if needed (this will depend on how salty the olives are). Store in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

Makes 1 1/2 cups.

bowl...what’s left could be 10% of the volume. The goodies really do matter! Get it all!

You can almost smell the Friday Challah and eight versions. Detailed instructions and explanations (the windowpane test... stretching the sheet without tearing the dough in kneading is shown) and the most beautiful photographs inspire you to get in there and braid and bake.

Serve this recipe with one of the delicious breads you’ve learned to make... the author suggests adding to a simple cheese sandwich.

Lois Friedman can be reached at Read ItAndEat@ yahoo.com.

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Nine things you didn’t know about Hanukkah

3. The books of Maccabees, which tell the story of Hanukkah, JuliE WiENEr MyJewishLearning via JTA were not included in the Hebrew Bible – but they are in the Hanukkah, which starts at sundown on Dec. 24 -- Christ- Catholic Bible. mas Eve -- is among the most widely celebrated Jewish holiThere are different theories explaining why the first-cendays in the United States. But that doesn’t mean there is tury rabbis who canonized the scriptures omitted the Macnothing new to learn about this eight-day festival. cabees, ranging from the text’s relative newness at the time From the mysterious origins of gelt to an Apocryphal beto fears of alienating the Roman leadership then in control heading to Marilyn Monroe, we’ve compiled an item for of Jerusalem.

4. Marilyn Monroe owned a music-playing Hanukkah menorah each candle (don’t forget the shammash!) on the Hanukkah (the Marilyn Monrorah?). menorah.

1. Gelt as we know it is a When the Hollywood relatively new tradition -- and star converted to Judaism no one knows who invented it. before marrying the JewWhile coins – “gelt” is ish playwright Arthur Yiddish for coins, or Miller, her future mothermoney – have been part of in-law gave her a menorah Hanukkah observance for as a conversion gift. The centuries, chocolate gelt is Hanukkah lamp, which considerably younger. In the menorah’s current her book On the Chocolate owner says Mrs. Miller Trail, Rabbi Deborah brought back from Prinz writes that “opinions Jerusalem, has a wind-up differ” concerning the orimusic box in its base that gins of chocolate gelt: plays Hatikvah, Israel’s naSome credit America’s Loft tional anthem. The Maricandy company with crelyn menorah is featured in ating it in the 1920s, while Kids spinning dreidels at the Eldridge Street Synagogue in New York the Jewish Museum in others suggest there were City. The game of dreidel was inspired by a German game played at New York City’s exhibit Credit: Stephen Chernin/Getty Images “Becoming Jewish: European versions earlier Christmastime. that inspired Israel’s Elite candy company. Prinz notes, as Warhol’s Liz and Marilyn,” but sadly you cannot wind it up.

5. The game of dreidel was inspired by a German game played at well, that chocolate gelt resembles a European Christmas tradition of exchanging gold-covered chocolate coins “com- Christmastime that itself is an imitation of an English and irish one. memorating the miracles of St. Nicholas.”

Our Eastern European game of dreidel (including the He2. The first Hanukkah celebration was actually a delayed brew letters nun, gimmel, hey and shin) is directly based on Sukkot observance. the German equivalent of the British totum game: N = The second book of Maccabees quotes from a letter sent Nichts = nothing; G = Ganz = all; H = Halb = half, and S = circa 125 BCE from the Hasmoneans, the Maccabees’ deStell ein = put in. In German, the spinning top was called a scendants, to the leaders of Egyptian Jewry describing the “torrel,” or “trundl.”

6. Oily food (think latkes and sufganiyot) isn’t Hanukkah’s only holiday as “the festival of Sukkot celebrated in the month of Kislev rather than Tishrei.” Since the Jews were still in caves culinary tradition. fighting as guerrillas on Tishrei, 164 BCE, they had been Traditionally, Hanukkah has included foods with cheese unable to honor the eight-day holiday of Sukkot, which rein recognition of Judith, whose liberal use of the salty treat quired visiting the Jerusalem Temple. Hence it was postfacilitated a victory for the Maccabees.

7. On Hanukkah, we celebrate a grisly murder. poned until after the recapture of Jerusalem and the rededication of the Temple. Many scholars believe it is this The aforementioned Judith had an ulterior motive for – not the Talmudic legend of the cruse of oil that lasted plying the Assyrian general Holofernes with salty cheese: eight days – that explains why Hanukkah is eight days long. See Things you didn’t know about Hanukkah page B6

The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | B5

hanukkah

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The Israel-Diaspora Hanukkah divide Donniel Hartman The Hartman Institute efore the rebirth of the modern State of Israel, and the unprecedented success of Jews in North America, Jews had very little to celebrate. After our triumphant Exodus from Egypt, it was more or less downhill, and in the competition between monotheistic faiths, we were always on the losing side. The God who chose us, to quote Woody Allen, was a consistent “underachiever,” at least when it came to looking after our interests.

One of the few exceptions in this tragic tale was Hanukkah. For a moment, we won. Who we defeated and what we achieved are debated. Were the Maccabees fighting a foreign, occupying force which wanted to deny the Jewish people their freedom and liberty, or was the war essentially a battle against Hellenization and assimilation? Was the miracle the military victory or a spiritual one? Before the 20th century, it didn’t really matter. We had won at something. Dayenu. The light of Hanukkah illuminated the darkness which engulfed much of Jewish history, and gave hope that one day we would again prevail.

That hope came true in the 20th century, and both Israel and North American Judaism embraced Hanukkah as the paradigm for their success. Each, however, tells a very different Hanukkah tale and sees itself as combating a very different darkness.

Now, differences alone are not a problem, as long as they complement each other. In the case of Hanukkah, however, these differences express a deep schism between Israel and North American Jewry. It is not hyperbolic to argue that unless we learn how to share a Hanukkah story, our shared enterprise and

common identity are at risk.

In Israel, Hanukkah is primarily a story of our military victory over an oppressive enemy that sought to destroy us. Zionists who wanted to reform the Jewish psyche and heal it from its Diasporic defeatism and powerlessness saw the foundation for the new Jew in the Maccabees of old: A Jew who was brave. A Jew who was willing to bear arms, and most significantly, a Jew who was victorious.

The Maccabean victory of the few over the many continues to serve as a dominant theme in Israeli discourse. In our experience, we continue to encounter forces of darkness who seek to destroy us. We are the light that they yearn to extinguish, and as we cele-

Credit: James Emery via wikimedia commons

brate Hanukkah we recommit ourselves to the heroism and sacrifice that our survival requires and demands.

If in the past our tradition commanded every Jew to see themselves as coming out of Egypt, in modern Israeli society, the demand is that every Jew commits himself or herself to being a modern Maccabee.

In North America, a very different Hanukkah story is told. As paragons of religious tolerance, the United States and Canada have created an unprecedented environment for Jews to live and thrive as a powerful and beloved minority. There is no perceivable physical danger and no war of survival. Consequently, North American Jews have little personal use for the warrior Maccabee.

Through the North American lens, Hanukkah cele-

brates the constitutional rights of all to religious freedom and to the fostering of religious tolerance. The war of the Maccabees was a battle against religious oppression, and the Maccabees were liberal warriors against the darkness of religious oppression and fundamentalism. Through the Menorah, which stands proudly side-by-side with the Christmas tree, Jews pledge to lead the fight to preserve the religious freedoms of liberal democratic life. The Hanukkah light is the torch leading their way.

The beauty of religious symbols is that they have no inherent meaning, and the history on which they stand is but raw material to be molded by each generation and community in search of meaning and relevance. People in different times and circumstances will inevitably develop diverse understandings. The problem arises when these differences become expressions of value systems which are positioned as mutually exclusive.

A community is a collection of individuals who do not merely share common symbols. A strong and vibrant worldwide Jewish community is only possible if we share as well a set of common values. For North American and Israeli Jews to walk hand-in-hand, we cannot be alienated from each other’s values, but quite to the contrary, must respect and seek to embody them. In short, we must not only light the same candles, but strive to illuminate and overcome the same darkness.

Israelis must begin to fight against the darkness of religious intolerance. Religious freedom must be the foundation of Israel’s democracy, and Israelis must cease to vote primarily for the Maccabean leader who will lead us to victory against external foes, and See Hanukkah divide pages B6

From my family to yours, we wish you a happy Hanukkah.

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Things you didn’t know about Hanukkah

b6 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

hanukkah

t

Latkes: It’s a tradition sybiL kapLan hey’re sometimes greasy, sometimes salty and soggy, and they are fried in oil.

They’re high in calories-sometimes; high fat -sometimes; high cholesterol -- sometimes. But they’re oh, so good!

What are they?

They are Hanukkah potato pancakes, otherwise known as latkes, in what we think is Yiddish, or as levivot in Hebrew.

With all the oil used for frying, latkes may be considered an unhealthy food. Yet, each Hanukkah, many of us, who are staunch-hearted and old-fashioned, spend time grating potatoes by hand, always accidentally suffering at least one scraped finger. The more modern among us risk coming out with liquid mush by using a food processor or blender.

Why do we keep making these little pancakes year after year? Why do we eat them for Hanukkah in the first place? As Tevye says, “it’s tradition!”

But there are some real origins.

An old folk proverb does say: “Hanukkah latkes teach us that one cannot live by miracles alone.”

Joan Nathan, Jewish food writer and cookbook author, contends the word latke is not Yiddish as everyone presumes but stems from “a Russian word, latka, and a pastry, from obsolete Russian oladka or flat cake of leavened wheat dough.” This, in turn, probably came from a Middle Greek word, eladion, or oil cake, stemming from elaion, meaning olive oil.

Potato pancakes do seem to have originated among poor Eastern European Jews, but potatoes did not become a staple until mid-19th century.

John Cooper, in Eat and Be Satisfied--A Social History of Jewish Food, com-

My MoM’s CLassiC Latkes

Ingredients: 6 peeled potatoes 1 medium onion 2 eggs 1 ½ tsp. salt ¼ tsp. pepper ½ cup flour oil Preparation: 1. Grate potatoes and onion into a bowl or

chop with blender or food processor.

2. Add eggs, salt, pepper and flour and blend.

3. Heat oil in a frying pan. Drop batter by tablespoon around pan. Fry until brown on both sides. Drain on paper towels.

Note: This recipe can also be used to make potato kugel by pouring batter into a greased casserole and baking in 350 F. degree oven for 45 minutes.

Makes 6 servings.

ments that Jews from Lithuania ate pancakes made from potato flour for Hanukkah and had borrowed the idea from the Ukrainians who made a potato pancake dish with goose fat called kartoflani platske, which they ate for Christmas. Since Hanukkah fell about the same time, and there were plenty of geese to provide goose fat or schmaltz, we could conclude that schmaltz became a substitute for oil. Jews living in

the Pale of Settlement in the 17th century probably adapted it for Hanukkah as a way to dress potatoes differently for the holiday. Cooper also states that many Eastern European Jews ate buckwheat latkes for Hanukkah, while Polish Jews made placki, pancakes, from potato flour and fried them in oil.

Here are some recipes you might want to try this year. see Latkes for more recipes page b7

H A P P Y

Continued from page b4 making him thirsty so he would drink lots of wine and pass out, enabling her to chop off his head and bring it home with her. The beheading – particularly the fact that a woman carried it out – was said to have frightened Holofernes’ troops into fleeing the Maccabees.

8. the next “thanksgivukkah” (sort of), is only 55 years away.

In 2013, the convergence of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah on Nov. 28 inspired everything from turkeyshaped menorahs to a giant dreidel float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. While experts say a full day of Hanukkah won’t coincide with the fourth Thursday in November for thousands of years, the first night of Hanukkah will fall in time for Thanksgiving dinner (assuming you have the meal at dinnertime rather than in the afternoon) on Nov. 27, 2070.

9. the largest menorah in the world, according to the Guinness book of World Records, is 32 feet high and weighs 4,000 pounds.

The Shulchan Aruch stipulates that a menorah should be no taller than about 31 feet. Incidentally, Guinness lists at least three other Hanukkah-related records: most dreidels spinning simultaneously for at least 10 seconds (734), most people simultaneously lighting menorahs (834) and largest display of lit menorahs (1,000). We’d like to know the most latkes ever eaten in one sitting.

Julie Wiener is the managing editor of MyJewishLearning.

Hanukkah divide

Continued from page b5 instead seek a Maccabee who is devoted to creating a Jewish society where all forms of Judaism and all religions are supported and treated with equal respect. No North American Jew will in the long run have a relationship with Israel which does not strive to embody these values.

At the same time, the generation of North American Jews for whom the survival and power of Israel are a given, must learn to recognize and respect the real threats and dangers which their people in Israel experience every day. The time has not yet come when we no longer need the warrior Maccabee. While we share the same values of justice and peace, in the realities of the Middle East, their implementation is challenging at best. Israelis will not feel connected to a North American Jewry which does not appreciate the complexity of this reality.

As a people, we share the same Hanukkah. To be a united people we must learn how to share each other’s stories, share each other’s needs and values, and together fight to embody them in our lives.

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Latkes

Continued from page C6

LoW-fat Latkes

Ingredients: 3 pounds coarsely grated potatoes 1 coarsely grated onion 1/3 cup flour ½ tsp. baking powder 1 cup egg substitute or 2 eggs plus 4 whites salt and pepper to taste olive oil spray Preparation: 1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Place nonstick

baking sheets in oven to heat.

2. Drain off as much liquid as possible from bowl with grated potatoes and onion.

3. Add flour, baking powder, eggs or egg substitute, salt and pepper and blend.

4. Spray baking sheet with oil. Spoon small mounds of potato mixture onto baking sheets. Bake until brown on one side then flip to other side, making sure to place them where there is oil.

Transfer to a platter and serve at once.

Makes 8-10 servings.

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Preparation: 1. Squeeze dry the potato-onion mixture after grating. Add egg, flour, baking powder, salt and pepper.

2. Heat oil in a frying pan. Drop tablespoons of the mixture around pan and flatten with the back of a spoon. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

Drain on paper towels and continue with remaining batter.

3. In a bowl, combine sour cream, dill, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Sprinkle with chives. Arrange pancakes on a platter. Serve with dill cream, and smoked salmon. *In place of or in addition to salmon, you can also serve with 2 ounces caviar.

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What every grocery store gets wrong about Hanukkah Stacey ZiSook RobinSon The Christmas push is on. Red and green and bits of tinsel are being crammed into an aisle or two in many stores.

An almost infinite variety of Christmas wrapping paper is popping up everywhere. Last week, I was treated to a host of heavenly angels doing an easy-listening rendition of some carol or other while I shopped for peanut butter and cat food.

And in the spirit of multiculturalism, here come the Hanukkah displays: matzah, kosher grape juice, and yahrzeit candles.

Every Jewish holiday. Every time.

With the exception of grocery stores in the more Jewish neighborhoods, every Jewish holiday seems to mean a single aisle endcap display of matzah, grape juice, and “jelly glass” candles. I’m 55 years old, and this has always been the case.

I’m long past the days of yearning for a tree or a visit from Santa. I take great joy in lighting the several menorahs we have -- some bought, some made. I finally learned to make latkes from scratch and give my dad grief when he douses them in salt and ketchup rather than apple sauce. I still love Christmas carols, still hate egg nog, and I have no problem with mall Santas and cashiers who wish me “Merry Christmas!” as they hand me my change.

Here’s where I get stuck: matzah, grape juice, and candles.

You’d think, after all this time, after the science that marketing has become -- where advertising and manipulation and cash go hand in hand -- these grocery stores would at least learn to distinguish which Jewish holiday requires matzah, which require menorah candles, and when to lay out the yahrzeit candles (hint: people die year-round). I won’t even get into the major retailers who refuse to carry any Hanukkah merchandise in their glut of holiday paraphernalia. Refuse. It’s 2016. for crying out loud. I’ve called corporate offices. They all have a policy. That’s fine; I have money to burn and other stores in which to burn it.

I’m not calling for a Marketing and Merchandising Symposium to ensure we Jews have a place at the tchotchke trough. This time of year, as thoughts of good cheer and family dance in my head, it would be nice if my family and I were considered a part of that dance, regardless of our religion.

And while we’re at it, let’s hear it for the Muslims, Buddhists, Wiccans, and Zoroastrians, too. Yes, I said Zoroastrians. Invite them all to the party. If I matter, surely they matter as well! This isn’t a war on holidays, it’s a celebration.

Because it’s not The Stuff. It’s what The Stuff represents: that we are Outsiders. Still. It would be nice to feel as if my “stuff ” matters.

It would be nice if the matzah stayed in its crates in the warehouse, waiting for spring to come.

JERUSALEM | JTA The son and a granddaughter of the late Israeli President Shimon Peres reportedly will join the first family to mark Chanukah at the White House.

Nechemia “Chemi” Peres and Mika Almog will join President Barack Obama and wife Michelle for their last traditional Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony at the White House, Ynet reported Monday. Almog is an

Israeli screenwriter and satirist.

Peres and Almog will visit the White House next week, when the ceremony will be held, according to the report. Christmas and Chanukah coincide this year.

They will bring with them a menorah passed down through the Peres family since the Holocaust, Ynet reported.

Shimon Peres’ son, granddaughter to light Hanukkah candles at White House

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The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | b9

hanukkah

O

Around the world in 8 days: Hanukkah here and there

Gabby blair h, Hanukkah, Oh, Hanukkah...

With your decorative Menorahs and hand-dipped, beeswax, all organic candles... Your festive white and blue twinkling lights, fancy donuts and savory latkes... Your giant car topper menorahs and catchy songs... You have become THE high profile “cool” and “fun” Jewish winter holiday that Jews of all walks of life and levels of observance celebrate. Hanukkah is, hands-down, the most recognizable Jewish holiday in America, and perhaps the world. As such, this relatively newer minor holiday has become a major celebration. Although Hanukkah has absolutely nothing to do with it, many nonJews in the U.S. equate it to being “The Jewish Christmas,” since it often coincides with mid-December’s most popular holly jolly holiday. The Hanukkah hype in this country comes in large part because of its often shared timing with Christmas and as a result, Hanukkah has come to include it’s own branding of decor beyond the traditional menorahs, candles and dreidels.

Hanukkah marketing has expanded to now include “Hanukkah bushes”, and “gingerbread shuls”, garlands of silver and blue, the “Mensch on the Bench”, star and dreidel covered gift wraps, and even “ugly” Hanukkah sweaters. Of course, not to be forgotten, is gift giving. Here, in the U.S., eight nights of gifts has become a standard tradition for many families. While presents, especially for

Credit: iStock children, have always played a minor role in this holiday, there has been a shift away from what would be considered traditional Hanukkah gifts such as dreidels, money, chocolate gelt and other small confections, to more fashionable and mainstream toys, clothes and technology. Hanukkah in America is perhaps best epitomized in a verse borrowed from Adam Sandler’s Chanukah Song: “So much fun-akah... to celebrate Chanukah!

Chanukah is... the festival of lights!

Instead of one day of presents...

We have eight crazy nights!”

The way Hanukkah is celebrated in America shares many similarities with the festivities that occur in Israel and elsewhere, however, holiday celebrations include quite a few differences as well. It is rather interesting to examine the variations and evolution of cultural traditions in the way Hanukkah is celebrated throughout the diaspora. In all settings, Hanukkah activities include the kindling of lights over eight nights, and the consumption of some amazingly delicious fried foods -- some savory, some sweet -- as a nod to the Oil, of miracle. However, from here, things start to diversify, often deli-

ciously, for the most part.

Starting with the most iconic symbol of Hanukkah, the menorah, we find the first of many variations. Menorahs can be made of silver, or other metals, glass, wood, or china.

In Israel, however, the nine branched candelabra we use during Hanukkah and refer to here as a ‘menorah’, is actually called a ‘Hanukkiyah’. In Israel, a menorah refers exclusively to the seven branched candelabra usually found in synagogues. While touring the Old City of Jerusalem in the past, I found it really interesting to see that many homes had actual Hanukkiyahs or Hanukkiyah boxes crafted right into the outer walls of the house, adjacent to the door post. This is a really cool way to display a family’s Hanukkah lights to every passerby that is unique to some homes in Israel! While candles are by far the easiest and most widely used item for kindling the lights of Hanukkah today, there are many in Israel, and beyond, who opt for a more traditional medium, choosing to use cups that can be filled with oil along with floating wicks made of cotton, wool or linen.

Olive oil is the preferred choice for these types of Hanukkiyahs, as that is what would have been used in the Temple, but paraffin or any oil, in solid or liquid form, that burns with a clear, clean flame is acceptable. It is also not unheard of to find oils indigenous to a geographical location being used. For example, Jews in India often use coconut oil as a popular alternative.

See Hanukkah here and there page b11

B10 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

hanukkah

H

Christmas “Light” EmiLy GiLLEr anukkah is upon us and you know what that means, right?

It’s time to break out The Mensch on a Bench™ and find those blue colored Santa hats. Do you remember where you stored your Hanukkah bush from last year? If not, just buy a Christmas tree and decorate it in blue and white ornaments and put a Star of David on top. Of course you need your traditional Hanukkah equipment, i.e. your menorah and dreidels, but don’t forget your Hanukkah stocking as well. After all, that truly represents the Maccabees, the Second Temple, and the miracle of the oil burning for eight days, right? Maybe?

As many Jews are aware, Hanukkah is a minor holiday compared to others, yet it has been amplified throughout recent history due to the fact that it occurs around Christmas. Since these two holidays occur around the same time, Hanukkah has been assimilated into many Christmas traditions. For instance, as mentioned above: Hanukkah tree ornaments, The Mensch on the Bench™, and Hanukkah stockings. The crossover of cultures and traditions has even led some people unfamiliar with the story of Hanukkah to ask: “Is Hanukkah the Jewish Christmas?”

This is a question I am sure many Jews have been asked at some point in their lives, and may have even found offensive. I myself have been asked this and when confronted

with such a question, various thoughts have crossed my mind: Should I explain the long history of Hanukkah? Do I mention that in reality it is a minor holiday compared to other holidays such as Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah? Do I explain that Jews don’t celebrate Jesus’ birthday so therefore Hanukkah is not the “Jewish Christmas?”

Or do I simply let the generalization go?

Before we pinpoint an answer, maybe we, as Jews, need to take a step back and analyze how we got to this point in the first place.

Does turning Christmas items into Hanukkah-themed items or referring to Hanukkah as the “Jewish Christmas” evoke a benign appreciation for the history of Hanukkah? It may be possible that we have allowed this convergence of Hanukkah and Christmas to take place in an effort to be culturally included. Or, maybe, just like our Christian friends, we have been sucked into the world of American commercialism.

There’s some validity in the commercialism theory, right? Take one of Christmas’ biggest and most cherished symbols, Santa Claus. I did a bit of research on Santa Claus and learned that the legend of Santa Claus can be traced back to a monk named St. Nicholas, who was born around 280 C. E..

St. Nicholas was known for helping the poor and the sick, and later, after widespread popularity, he became known as the protector of children and sailors. Around 1774, St. Nicholas’ story came to New York as Dutch families would gather and honor the an-

niversary of his death. Then, around 1804, the New York Historical Society began distributing wood carvings of St. Nicholas at their annual meeting. By the 1840s Christmas shopping became more prevalent and newspapers would create separate sections for holiday advertisements, many of which featured images of Santa Claus. It wasn’t until 1881 that Americans got to see the image of Santa Claus that we know so well today. It was that year that Thomas Nast, a political cartoonist, drew Santa Claus based on Clement Clarke Moore’s 1822 poem An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas. Nast’s Santa, which was printed in Harper’s Weekly, portrayed Santa as a round, cheerful man with a white beard, who held a sack of toys.

This image became our modern Santa Claus. (information from www.history.com) Although St. Nicholas has nothing to do with the story of Jesus’ birth, he has become a recognizable symbol for Christmas.

Clearly, Christmas has been commercial-

ized much longer than Hanukkah has, and I think we live in a world now where we’re starting to see Hanukkah assimilate into that American, commercialistic culture.

I sat down with my fiancé, who is Catholic and asked him to explain Christmas commercialism to me. He simply stated that people want the holiday to be bigger, better, brighter. There’s no rhyme or reason to it necessarily. Take for instance Christmas lights. He doesn’t understand why Christmas has the monopoly on lights.

After all, Hanukkah is the Festival of Lights.

So do Jews accept transculturation? Do we give into commercialism? As long as the true sentiments behind the holidays don’t perish, I believe a little convergence isn’t bad. Heck, I myself bought Hanukkah decorations and a Hanukkah stocking, because I’ll be damned if I don’t get to display my culture and religion proudly alongside our Christmas wreath.

Just remember that the true spirit and sentiments of Christmas are: peace on earth, goodwill to all mankind. And the true sentiments behind Hanukkah are: hope, faith, and perseverance. So, even if someone asks whether Hanukkah is the “Jewish Christmas,” you can explain that the histories are very different, but both holidays instill strong sentiments of hope and goodwill, and that is why they are both beloved and celebrated holidays.

Source: http://www.history.com/topics/ christmas/santa-claus

The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | B11

MID-CITY

Hanukkah here and there

J E W E L RY & L OA N

Happy Hanukkah Continued from page B9 Hanukkah just wouldn’t be Hanukkah without some delicious fried foods! Around the world, Jews everywhere celebrate this holiday by breaking out the cooking oil and frying up many sweet and savory delicacies.

Quintessential Hanukkah foods in the U.S. include the ever popular potato latke, sometimes slathered with sour cream or apple sauce, and of course, jelly donuts. Almost every Jewish population has some twist on these foods. In place of the Ashkenazi tradition of potato latkes, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews instead fry up a wide variety of fritters.

Some of these delicacies include an Iranian egg fritter known as Kuku Savri; Kibbet Yatkeen, a Syrian pumpkin patty; Keftes de Prasa, a Sephardic leek fritter; and an Italian

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Credit: allrecipes.com rice fritter known as Frittelle de Riso Per Hanukkah. Moroccan Jews, which constituted a very large wave of immigration to Israel, brought with them the traditional Ma’akouda, a.k.a. the “Moroccan french fry”, which is simply thinly sliced potatoes, dredged and coated in a flour and spice mixture and fried in oil. Moroccans also make sweet couscous dishes consisting of a fried up mixture of caramelized onion, almonds, fruit and spices and crisply fried pastry roll-ups called pastillos, that maybe be filled with either savory meat and potatoes or a sweet almond paste which are then drenched in honey. With Israel being home to such a wide range of Jews who have immigrated or been displaced from their See Hanukkah here and there page B12

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Continued from page B11 countries of origin over time, there are many traditional Hanukkah foods that are now fused together in one place.

The number one Hanukkah food of Israel, however, is not the aforementioned savory latkes and fritters, but the oh-sotasty- sufganiyot. Believed to have originated in Eastern Europe, sufganiyot, the iconic hole-less doughnut of Hanukkah has become a serious business and art form in Israel. One of the largest, and best known bakeries in Israel -- Angel Bakery -- bakes a minimum of a quarter of a million sufganiyot everyday day over the eight days of Hanukkah. You read that right. 250,000 donuts, are made by just one bakery daily. An estimated 24 million sufganiyot are consumed during the Hanukkah holiday in this country of approximately eight million, and its is estimated that at least 90% of all Israelis indulge their sweet tooth with sufganiyot. There are contests and competitions all over the country clamoring for titles of best sufganiyot. These doughnuts, traditionally plain dough stuffed with red jelly and dusted with powdered sugar, have become increasingly extravagant, sophisticated and expensive, with fancy designs, toppings and exotic custard fillings derived from arak, dulce de leche, orange blossom, lemon zest, and cinnamon creme; some are even injected with shots of liqueurs. Israeli sufganiyot are usually made with yeast,

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Credit: bonappĂŠtit.com rather than baking powder, and are typically lighter and more airy than their U.S.cousins. Aside from the trendy designer sufganiyot, there are other traditional Hanukkah ones that are popular in Israel, such as the Turkish burmelo and the Polish pacziki. Another rustic favorite of many Israelis is the Moroccan Sfenj. Sfenj is a fried dough ring that has a crunchy texture on the outside, but is airy and light on the inside. Sfenj, which is translated from Arabic as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;spongeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, are a popular street food and is the traditional doughnut of Moroccans, Jews and Muslims alike. Sfenj are usually served plain, sprinkled with a pinch of sugar and citrus zest, or a drizzle of honey, and should be eaten fresh and hot, as their texture does not keep long. As such, sfenj is typically a homemade food for Moroccan Jews during Hanukkah. As a child, I recall visiting Morocco with my father to see where he grew up before he journeyed to Israel, and we stopped at the stall of an old sfenj-maker whose cooking space was literally a hole carved out of the stone wall of the souk in Fez. He sat cross-legged on a ledge swiftly forming dough rings that he would quickly fry for a few moments before stringing a dozen on to a length of palm frond he would neatly tie into a loop so that we could carry them around without getting burned. They were simple, and delicious.

While Hanukkah celebrations around the world are See Hanukkah here and there page B13

Burger King Israel introduces doughnut burger for Hanukkah JTA NEWS STAFF JERUSALEM | JTA Burger King restaurants in Israel have introduced a doughnut burger for the Hanukkah season.

The SufganiKing is a Whopper with savory doughnuts in place of buns. Its name is a play on the Hebrew word for doughnuts, sufganiyot, which are ubiquitous on every Israeli street corner

in the weeks leading up to Hanukkah.

The burger “proves that miracles still happen,” Burger King Israel said in a Facebook post, a reference to the miracles at the heart of the holiday story.

The SufganiKing will be sold for about $4. It will be available through Jan. 1, the last day of Hanukkah, according to reports.

The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | B13

hanukkah Hanukkah here and there

Azerbaijan’s embassy to co-host Hanukkah party at Trump’s DC hotel

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JTA NEWS STAFF WASHINGTON | JTA zerbaijan’s embassy is hosting a Hanukkah party at a hotel owned by President-elect Donald Trump and his family.

The party will take place Dec. 14 and will celebrate “freedom and diversity,” said the invitation, obtained Friday by JTA, a signal of closer ties between the west Asian nation and Israel and some of its supporters in the United States. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations is co-hosting the event.

Israel and Azerbaijan, a mostly Muslim nation on the Caspian Sea, have strengthened relations in recent years.

Azerbaijan, which is reportedly Israel’s biggest oil supplier and a key purchaser of Israeli arms, sent a firefighting plane to Israel last month as fires swept the country.

The Conference of Presidents, made up of the leadership of over 50 Jewish organizations, is a consensus body representing the organized Jewish community to the executive branch.

A number of other embassies have booked space in the Trump International Hotel for events around Trump’s

inauguration next month, and a range of experts on government ethics have raised questions about the propriety of diplomats paying to stay at the hotel when they have separate business with the U.S. government.

Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice-chairman of the umbrella body, told JTA that the Azerbaijani embassy had rented the location because of its proximity to the White House, where President Barack Obama’s final Hanukkah Party will be taking place the same evening.

Trump has said he will shut himself off from his businesses, although he has not said whether his adult children, who are co-owners of the hotel, will do the same.

He plans to outline how he will separate his business and government affairs on Dec. 15 at a press conference.

The choice of venue was criticized in a statement issued by Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, which is a liberal member of the Conference of Presidents and has been critical of Trump.

Given Trump’s own ongoing efforts to resolve potential conflicts involving his businesses, Jacobs said, it would have been “far preferable” to choose another location in downtown Washington.

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Continued from page B12 typically festive and joyous, celebrating Hanukkah in Israel is very special. Just as we are reminded with every spin of the dreidel, Ness Gadol Hayah Sham; A Great Miracle Happened There! Dreidels in Israel are unique in that the Shin is replaced by a Peh, because in Israel, ‘The Great Miracle Happened Here... Ness Gadol Hayah Po! Hanukkah allows many families to enjoy a holiday break from work and school, during which time many make pilgrimages to those famed places detailed in the Hanukkah story. It is common to visit Jerusalem and Modi’in, and attend many of the big community celebrations in various towns across Israel over Hanukkah. Children spend the weeks leading up to the hol-

Credit: shutterstock iday making small crafts and gifts for friends and family in school and practicing for musical and theatrical performances.

There are many large scale traveling Hanukkah concerts and public candle lightings, the most famous of which take place in front of the Kotel, in the Holy city of Jerusalem. While we all have differences in the gifts we give, the foods we eat, and the way we celebrate, wherever Hanukkah is celebrated, it is a holiday of bringing light to the darkness and friends and families together. There is no better way to honor and remember the Miracle of the Oil, along with the many miracles we are blessed with today, than gathering around a Hanukkiya to kindle the lights and say, Amen.

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B14 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

hanukkah Friedel Hanukkah Show rehearsals

Students at Friedel Jewish Academy are busy learning about Hanukkah and rehearsing for their annual Hanukkah Show. The community is invited to the performance in the JCC Theater on Tuesday, Dec. 20 at 6:30 p.m. Sufganiyot reception follows in the JCC Auditorium.

Eggnog Doughnuts SHAnnon SArnA The Nosher via JTA Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sufganiyot season, and there are few things that make me as enthralled as legitimate, cultural/religious reason to eat copious amounts of freshly fried donuts.

Sufganiyot, or donuts, are traditionally round fried donuts filled with raspberry jam and dusted with powdered sugar. But in Israel, much like

Eggnog DougHnuTS

Ingredients: For the dough: 2 tbsp. dry yeast 1/2 cup lukewarm water 1/4 cup plus 1 tsp. sugar 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 2 eggs 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon 1/4 tsp. nutmeg 2 tsp. salt 2 tbsp. butter, softened Vegetable oil for frying Special equipment: wooden skewer, piping bag, round piping tip For the glaze: 1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar 1/4 tsp. nutmeg 2 tsp. dark rum (optional) 2-3 tbsp. eggnog For the filling: 1 package vanilla pudding mix Directions: Prepare the vanilla pudding according to directions on the box. Place in refrigerator to set and chill.

To make the dough: In a small bowl combine yeast and warm water. Sprinkle sugar on top and mix lightly. Allow to sit until foamy, around 10 minutes.

When yeast mixture is ready, in a large bowl combine it with flour, cinnamon, nut-

here in the States, beautiful, diverse flavors increasingly take over in abundance each year. I love seeing photos from friends in Israel chronicling the beautiful displays of sufganiyot.

This year, the first day of Hanukkah falls on Christmas, and so of course I wanted to mash-up the holidays and celebrate with one glorious, spiced hybrid: eggnog donuts. I added dark, sweet rum to the glaze, but of course you can leave it off and just

use store-bought eggnog. Or even plain milk.

Shannon Sarna is the editor of The nosher. The nosher food blog offers a dazzling array of new and classic Jewish recipes and food news, from Europe to Yemen, from challah to shakshuka and beyond. Check it out at www.Thenosher.com.

This piece was published originally on The nosher, a 70 Faces Media property.

temperature. If it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bubble at all, heat needs to be higher. If the oil splatters or the doughnut starts browning too quickly, heat needs to be turned down.

Using a slotted spoon, place three to four doughnuts into the oil. Allow to fry on each side, around 40 seconds or until golden brown.

Credit: Shannon Sarna Remove from oil and place onto a plate lined with paper meg, salt, eggs and butter, using a wooden towel. Once excess oil has been removed, spoon until a sticky dough forms. place doughnuts on a drying rack to cool.

On a floured surface, knead dough until it When all the doughnuts have been fried is smooth, shiny and bounces back when and cooled, begin to fill. touched, around 8 to 10 minutes. Place in an Fill pastry bag with prepared vanilla pudoiled bowl and allow to rise 1 1/2 to 2 hours, ding. If you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a tip, you can just snip or until doubled in size. the corner of the pastry bag with a scissor.

To assemble: On a lightly floured work surUsing a wooden skewer or toothpick, make face, roll dough to 1/4-inch thickness. Using a a hole in the side of each doughnut. Fit the 2 1/2-inch round cutter or glass, cut rounds. pastry tip into a hole, pipe about 2 to 3 taYou may have to roll out the dough a few blespoons worth of pudding in each doughtimes. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise nut. Repeat with remaining doughnuts. another 20 to 25 minutes.

In a medium bowl, whisk together confecHeat oil in a pot on medium heat until a tioners sugar, rum, if using, nutmeg and 2 thermometer measures 370 degrees. If you tbsp. eggnog. If the glaze is too thick, add addonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a thermometer, raise the heat to ditional eggnog, 1 tsp. at a time. Dip each low-medium heat and test one of the dough- doughnut in the eggnog glaze. Allow to set. nuts. If the oil immediately starts bubbling Fresh doughnuts are best eaten the same and the donut begins browning, it is the right day they are fried.

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The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | B15

Size matters: How a ‘largest menorah’ tiff landed two rabbis in Jewish court

BeN SaLeS City mayors and New York State governors NEW YORK | JTA have ascended in an electrician’s cherryach year in Brooklyn, Chabad picker to light the Fifth Avenue menorah -Rabbi Shimon Hecht ascends 33 though former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and-a-half feet to light the tallest and current Mayor Bill de Blasio have lit menorah in the world. candles at both locations.

But he’s not allowed to call it that anymore.

By decree of a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbinical court, Hecht must cede the title of “World’s Largest Menorah” to another candelabra, this one also erected by a Chabad rabbi, also in New York.

That menorah is, in fact, six inches shorter than Hecht’s, but because it used the “tallest” moniker first, the court said it owns the title.

“Every Hanukkah The World’s Largest Hanukkah Menorah being lighted by then-New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg with Rabbi Shmuel M. Butman, Director operation is meant of the Lubavitch Youth Organization, in 2013.

Credit: PR Newswire for publicizing the miracle in a way that sanctifies God’s name In 2006, the Fifth Avenue menorah scored and the name of Chabad, and not, God fora coup -- it got Guinness World Records to bid, the opposite,” the judges wrote in the certify it as “World’s largest menorah.”

Dec. 1 decision. “So when another organi“The prominence of the menorah carries zation in the same city uses the same dean additional message,” Butman, who scriptor without permission from the wouldn’t comment to JTA, said in a 2014 plaintiff, it could cause the opposite of repress release. “The Rebbe teaches that soon spect to Lubavitch.” there will be another light, an eternal light, Each Hanukkah since 1984, Hecht’s meno- the eternal light of Moshiach, the eternal rah has stood at Grand Army Plaza, a public light of the Great Redemption.” plaza at the main entrance to Prospect Park But until the rabbinic ruling on Dec. 1, in the upscale Brooklyn neighborhood of the Brooklyn menorah hadn’t let go of its Park Slope. Across the river in Manhattan, claim to the title. Standing opposite a milithe other Chabad menorah, erected by Rabbi tary memorial in the center of Grand Army Shmuel Butman, stands on Fifth Avenue at Plaza, it rises from a single gold-colored the southeastern corner of Central Park. stem that widens into an angled candelabra.

The bases of both menorahs reach 32 feet, Last year, Hecht drew 2,000 people to the the maximum allowed by Jewish law. But first candle-lighting and expects a similar Hecht’s central candle, called the shamash, turnout this year. pokes half a foot higher into the sky than To promote the menorah, Hecht runs the Butman’s. website www.largestmenorah.com and -“The whole spirit of the holiday is to spread until the court decision -- advertised it on the miracle” of Hanukkah, said Rabbi Moshe the Facebook page World’s Largest Menorah.

Hecht, Shimon Hecht’s son. “Putting menoBoth the website and Facebook page feature rahs out in the public garners attention.” a logo of a menorah rising from a globe.

Both rabbis lead institutions within the The dispute, said Schneerson biographer vast Chabad infrastructure. Shimon Hecht Samuel Heilman, exemplifies Chabad’s is rabbi of Chabad of Park Slope and Butdilemma since its leader’s death in 1994. man is the director of the Lubavitch Youth Decades ago, Hecht and Butman would Organization. have appealed directly to the rebbe, whose In the mid-1970s, former Chabad leader word was final. But now, a variety of someRabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson times competing Chabad institutions can began encouraging his emissaries to build operate independently of one another. public menorahs to increase awareness of “Chabad is now no longer led by a single the holiday and to inspire Jews to light their authority, and today is really in a situation own menorahs. More than two decades where each emissary or each territory is its after his death, Chabad rabbis put up large own independent operator,” said Heilman, menorahs every year in cities around the who co-wrote the biography The Rebbe, world -- one of the most visible signs of the published in 2012. global Hasidic Jewish outreach movement.

In this case, the court became the acting Each New York menorah has staked its authority. In the ruling, the judges ordered claim to being the world’s largest -- and Hecht to change his promotional materials or each has used that distinction for all the surrender them to Butman, and to instead publicity it’s worth. use a descriptor like “The central menorah of The Manhattan menorah, first set up Brooklyn.” Moshe Hecht said he and his faabout a decade before its Brooklyn rival, ther are still working on a re-branding. stands between the posh Plaza and Pierre “We’re Jews, so we have to follow the rulHotels on Fifth Avenue. Designed by Israel ing of the beis din [rabbinic court], and no artist Yaacov Agam, the menorah’s candlefurther comment on that,” he told JTA. “It’s sticks rise from a rectangular base and going to be the same menorah it’s been for shoot off diagonally. A string of New York the last 30 years.”

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section3

HANUKKAH

Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel: A Spinning story Sybil Kaplan â&#x20AC;&#x153;I have a little dreidel, I made it out of clay, And when itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dry and ready, then dreidel I shall play!â&#x20AC;?* Sâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;veevon, sov, sov, sov (spinning top, turn, turn, turn) Hanukah hu chag tov (Hanukkah is a good holiday).

Both of these songs underscore the most popular game for Hanukkah -- dreidel (Yiddish) or sâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;vivon (Hebrew), which means spinning top.

In Hanukah: Eight Nights, Eight Lights, Malka Drucker writes that the game evolved 2,000 years ago when the Hanukkah story took place, at a time when Antiochus ruled over Judea in ancient Israel. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Groups of boys who had memorized the entire Torah would secretly study together until they heard the footsteps of the Syrian soldiers. Then they would quickly pull out spinning tops... and pretend to be playing games,â&#x20AC;? she writes.

Whether this is true or not, we do know that by the Middle Ages, the game became more complicated, as rules were borrowed from a German gambling game. According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, during the long nights of Hanukkah, while the lights were burning, it became customary to pass the time by spinning tops and playing the ancient â&#x20AC;&#x153;put and takeâ&#x20AC;? game. This was in fulfillment of the commandment that the Hanukkah lights should not be used for any utilitarian purpose; â&#x20AC;&#x153;they are only to be seen.â&#x20AC;?

Playing cards and games were prohibited by the rabbis over the years and were deplored as frivolous because they took away from Torah study; however, the custom continued.

In Medieval Germany, dice were used for the

FACE PAINTING

Dreidel Games

Put and Take On the sides of the dreidel are four letters. They stand for Nes Gadol Hayah Sham â&#x20AC;&#x201C; A great miracle happened there.

To play the game, each player puts in one or more nuts or coins as agreed.

Spin the dreidel.

If it falls on N, the player does nothing.

If it falls on G, the player gets all.

If it falls on H, the player takes half.

If it calls on S, the player takes the whole pot.

Endurance All players spin the dreidel at a given signal. The player whose dreidel spins the longest is the winner.

Play for Score Each Hebrew letter of the dreidel has a numerical value.

N = 50 | G= 3 | H = 5 | S = 300 Players agree on a definite score or definite time in which to play. Each player spins the dreidel. Score keeper credits each player with numerical value of letter on which his dreidel falls until score is reached. game, and they were inscribed with N, G, H, and S. N stood for nichts or nothing; G stood for ganz or all; H was for halb or half; and S meant stell ein or put in. All players would hold an equal number of nuts, raisins or coins. Each player put one in the middle, and the first player would spin the dice. Each letter stood for a move in the game--putting in or taking out nuts, raisins or coins, according to where the dice landed.

Later, boys carved tops or dreidels out of wood or poured hot lead into a form to make a spinning top. The letters were then changed to Hebrew and said to stand for nun, gimmel, hey and shin. The rabbis were less reluctant for boys to play because the letters were interpreted to stand for the phrase, Nes Gadol Hayah Sham--a great miracle happened there.

In modern Israel, the Hebrew letter shin is replaced by a peh, standing for poh, meaning here-a great miracle happened here.

The rabbis felt even more comfortable about the game when it was also realized that when the Hebrew letters, which had numerical value, were added together, they totaled 358, the same number of letters as the word for Messiah. (Nun is 50, gimmel is three, hey is five and shin is 300.) The letters of the word Messiah or mashiach in Hebrew are mem which is 40, shin which is 300, yud which is 10 and chet which is eight. Since the Jews are still waiting for the Messiah, this would show the way for a miracle.

Another mystical interpretation of the Hebrew letters is described by Philip Goodman in The Hanukkah Anthology. He writes that nun stood for nefesh (Hebrew for soul); gimmel stood for guf (Hebrew for body); shin stood for sechal (Hebrew for mind); and hey stood for hakol (all) implying all the characteristics of man. â&#x20AC;˘ The origin of the song was the subject of an interesting article a few years ago in the Hadassah Magazine by Melanie Mitzman. She wrote that Professor of Music and Jewish Studies at Northeastern University, Joshua Jacobson, See Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel page C2

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dreidel, dreidel, dreidel

C2 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

hanukkah

T

Read it and eat

his cookbook represents what’s been billed as the “hottest Silver Lake cafe.” it’s fresh, trendy, and very Californian. One of the most atrtactive things about this book is that the recipes are designed for ease. You can actually do this at home, which makes it a great gift idea. everything i Want to eat by Jessica Koslow (Abrams, $40) Sqirl, one of the best restaurants in L.A., a mythical neighborhood food gathering spot that began as a tiny jam company, where waiting in line is part of the experience, features the bounty from local farmers and

Aioli

Ingredients: 1 to 2 cloves garlic 1/2 tsp. fine sea salt, or more to taste 1 large egg yolk 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil 1/2 cup non-GMo canola oil 1/2 lemon (optional) Preparation: Using a mortar and pestle, smash the garlic and salt together until smooth. Add the egg yolk, then pound with the pestle to break up the yolk.

Combine the olive oil and canola oil in a measuring cup that has a pouring spout. While stirring the garlic-egg mixture with the pestle, slowly drizzle in a few drops of the blended oil. Keep stirring in the same direction as you add another few drops. You’ll notice the aioli will begin to emulsify; it will thicken

evolved from Koslow’s early experiences and her rise “from Shady Lady to stardom.”

Koslow shares 100 of her favorite Sqirl recipes featuring options for Vegetarian, Vegan and Glutenlois FriedMAn free. Detailed ingredients, many steps with notes and ideas to modify these recipes to suit your taste make this a book full of surprises. This schmears and that... garlic, smoked whitefish and ricotta, visions “of and get sticky. Once it gets ribbony and tight, you may want to add a squeeze of lemon juice to loosen it up, although you don’t have to.

Stay with this tempo, stirring and very, very slowly adding the oil, until you’ve added it all. It’s important to stir continuously but not too fast. It helps if a friend holds the mortar so that it doesn’t move around on your countertop. You can also put a damp towel underneath.

Once you’ve added all the oil, taste the aioli and add a bit more salt, if it needs it. You can squeeze in a little lemon juice to give it some acidity, or you can just leave it as is.

Aioli is best the day it is made.

Makes about 3/4 cup (Gluten-free, Vegetarian)

your zaftig grandmother,” the Zen art of making Sqirl jams, a Dr. Suess toad in the hole egg recipe and a hazelnut torte evolved into a “leaning tower of torte.”

There are chapters for Eggs & Toast, Vegetables, Meat, Fish, Jams, Desserts and Larder with recipes listed. Fantastic photographs of cooks cooking, farmers farming and everyone eating plates of creative food.

Add some panache to your meal and come along on this new California cooking journey! Aioli is used in several recipes... try it!

Lois Friedman can be reached at Read ItAndEat@ yahoo.com.

Continued from page C1 claimed the song was originally in Yiddish and the opening line was “I made it out of lead.”

Samuel Grossman is said to have penned the English lyrics, and Samuel Goldfarb, a Jewish liturgical composer employed by the Bureau of Jewish Education between 1914 and 1929, wrote the melody for the English version. Goldfarb’s granddaughter, Susan Wolfe, recalls telling her public school class that her grandfather had written The Dreidel Song, but they did not believe her.

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Hanukkah gift ideas for newcomers to the tribe

Julie Wiener Challah covers MyJewishLearning via JTA FairTradeJudaica offers an array of Judaica items Do you have friends or family members who are produced by artisans in developing countries. These new to the tribe? Maybe they recently converted, certified fair trade items are not just beautiful, you married a Jew or became newly interested in their can rest easy knowing the workers received fair pay Jewish roots? Or maybe you’re the newbie and are in safe conditions and that no child labor was used. wondering what to put on your wish list.

Whatever the particulars, MyJewishLearning has you covered, with Hanukkah gift ideas designed to please the Jewish newbies in your life.

Cookbooks Amelia Saltsman’s The Seasonal Jewish Kitchen ($20.23), Leah Koenig’s Modern Jewish Cooking ($23.33) and chef/restaurateur Michael Solomonov’s Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking ($21) all offer traditional Jewish and Israeli standbys adapted to contemporary tastes and sensi- What better gift to give to a newly minted Jewish person at Hanukkah bilities. Each was published than a menorah -- unlit, of course.

Credit: Yair Aronshtam/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0 recently (reducing the possibility that your recipient already owns it) and gar- Shabbat candlesticks nered positive reviews in mainstream and Jewish For something traditional and inexpensive, try some publications. pewter ones (Amazon has them) that come with a Meatballs and Matzah Balls ($27.95) is not quite plate for catching the wax drippings. as new -- it came out in 2013 -- but will be of partic- Mezuzahs ular interest to Jewish newcomers since its author, We like these two on Amazon (www.amazon.

Marcia Friedman, is a Jew by choice who combines com/gp/product/B00TQ65uQ8/ref=as_li_tl?ie= Italian (she is half Sicilian) and Jewish cuisine in cre- TF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creative ative and tasty ways.

ASin=B00TQ65uQ8&linkCode=as2&tag=my Other kitchen goodies jewishlearn-20&linkid=B6WBXrVnD3HHYn3 Maybe your Jewish newbie wants to make challah T): a simple blue metal one and an intricate one decobut is a bit intimidated by the braiding. A silicon chal- rated with a Jerusalem scene. Bear in mind that the lah mold ($14) simplifies the process. Meanwhile, Jerusalem one does not come with a scroll, so you (or someone making the transition from Christmas cook- your recipient) will need to purchase that separately. ies to Hanukkah cookies might appreciate a set of Jewelry Hanukkah-themed cookie cutters ($1.60).

A silver Star of David is simple and matches everyHanukkiyahs, or menorahs thing. And a custom-made Hebrew necklace is a great What’s more fitting for Hanukkah than a menorah? option for a Jew by choice who wants to show off Just make sure you give this one early in the holiday, his or her new Hebrew name (and newfound Hebrew so the recipient gets to use it this year. A convenient literacy). option is a compact travel menorah, perfect for some- Clothing one who wants to celebrate the holiday outside the The “Not In the Tribe, But I Dig the Vibe” T-shirt ($48) home. is perfect (albeit a bit on the pricy side) for someone Kiddush cups who is married to a Jew or simply likes hanging out For something flashy and unique -- or for someone with them, while dreidel-print leggings ($28) allow who is a bit germ-phobic -- try a Kiddush Fountain, Jews and non-Jews to subtly (and comfortably) which pours the wine or grape juice into individual demonstrate their Hanukkah spirit. cups. Amazon and other retailers have a wide variety Julie Wiener is managing editor of MyJewishof styles and price points.

Learning.

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Why Whoopi Goldberg designed a Hanukkah sweater

A

Josefin Dolsten lthough she isn’t a Member of the Tribe, Whoopi Goldberg may have been feeling inspired by her Jewish-sounding last name when she designed her holiday sweater capsule collection for department store Lord & Taylor.

The actress’ line of cheeky sweaters features a multicultural, multi-species cast of characters, including a kippah-wearing octopus fashioning itself into a menorah.

Another design depicts a black Santa and a white Santa preparing to kiss; yet another shows a Chrismukkah celebration, with a skullcapwearing, dreidel-holding boy decorating a Christmas tree.

“You can’t call them ‘ugly.’ Mine are kind of ‘funny Christmas sweaters’ or ‘Christmas sweaters with a twist,’” Goldberg told Vogue of the collection. “They are actually quite wonderful, and they feel good.”

In designing the sweaters, Goldberg said she thought of her Jewish friends who felt left out during the holiday season.

“Most of my Jewish friends are like, ‘The holiday thing is okay, but we are here too!’” she said, adding that she plans to include Kwanzaa- and Ramadan-themed sweaters in next year’s collection.

In creating her inclusive designs, Goldberg probably wasn’t aware that octopus imagery can be associated with antisemitism; in the Nazi era, Jews (and those allegedly influenced by Jews) were depicted as octopuses with their tentacles encircling the globe. More recently, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung came under fire in 2014 for publishing a caricature of Mark Zuckerberg as a hook-nosed cephalopod that controls social media.

But we believe Goldberg’s unisex designs - which retail for $139 -- come from a desire for inclusivity. Maybe it takes a silly sweater to defuse an ugly image.

“The holidays, regardless of what you believe -- it should be a day, a week, a month of let’s all be together,” she said. “Silly sweaters can unite us and what is better than that?”

Ten tips for an accessible Hanukkah party

JenniFer LaszLo mizrahi and stairs and accessible bathrooms. Most public cause sensory overload for anyone, but for a aLie KrioFsKe maineLLa places are equipped for people with disabili- person with autism or a sensory processing WASHINGTON | JTA ties. Just check with the venue ahead of time. disorder, a party can be really overwhelming.

With Hanukkah on the way, it’s easy to hold If you have someone coming who uses a Offer opportunities for guests to take a break, a party where all guests – disabled and not – wheelchair, you should also put the menorah perhaps in a quiet room away from the crowd. feel welcomed, respected and have fun. All it on a table low enough for them to reach the Some venues may have options for turning takes is some planning. Here are some tips to candles. down music or minimizing stimulation. Latex ensure you are being inclusive, thoughtful and 4. accommodate special diets. You don’t allergies (balloons) and chemical sensitivities welcoming to all. know if guests have allergies, celiac disease (use of highly scented cleaners or staff wear1. don’t be afraid. People with disabilities or lactose intolerance if you don’t ask on the ing perfumes) are real issues. Solutions: Use have their disabilities 24/7, so they know how invitation. Making sure there are food options alternative Mylar balloons, ask people to not to create workarounds that wear strong scents and choose make them feel comfortable. If unscented cleaning products. you know someone has a dis8. Learn to communicate. ability, use a simple strategy: There are lots of ways to inAsk them what they need to clude guests who are nonverbe fully included. All too often, bal or communicate in other people with disabilities are not ways, such as American Sign invited to events or don’t go Language or a communication because they are embarrassed board. Free software can be into “put someone out” by askstalled on a tablet computer ing for a simple accommodathat instantly transcribes tion. By telling them their speech into text. An interpresence is valued and asking preter could be hired, which what they need, you will build has the added benefit of leta new level of trust and affecting other guests learn a little tion. One of the biggest things Kindergarten teacher nirit Yakov lighting a menorah with a student at sign language. Remember to Credit: Tehiyah Day School speak directly to guests, that aging loved ones need is a Tehiyah day school in California. ride, so help them find a carpool or send Uber for everyone can be as simple as picking up a whether they are verbal or not. to pick them up and return them home. gluten-free cupcake to serve with the regular 9. Be visual. For those with cognitive dis2. ask in advance. Not all disabilities are cake. Many times people with food allergies abilities or vision impairments, reading a menu visible. By including a line about accommoda- bring their own food. If you keep kosher and or following instructions for a scavenger hunt tions in the invitation’s RSVP, you are letting they don’t, you could ask them to bring some- or keeping a game score sheet can all be chalguests know that everyone is welcome – in- thing vegetarian and offer paper plates and lenging. Pictures and verbal instructions are cluding those you might not even know have plastic utensils. If you don’t keep kosher, but useful, as is pairing disabled children with special needs. It could be as simple as this: your guests do, this may be the time to bring those who can help. It’s always great to have “Please let us know if you have dietary re- in trays of food from a kosher caterer. Let your an extra pair of reading glasses around if you strictions or require other special accommo- guests know in advance that dietary laws will are inviting seniors. You can always tell somedations to attend. We will do our best to meet be followed. one who can’t see or read what they will need special needs.” Note that you aren’t promising 5. have a good attitude. People of all or what to know. to meet all needs. But, for example, if you are ages can be daunted when encountering 10. have fun. Parties are awesome. Don’t unable to find a sign language interpreter, you someone different from them. If it’s a chil- let inclusion stress you out. If you are reading will be able to let your guest know in advance. dren’s event, try talking to the group before this list and considering these tips, you’re alIndeed, they may be able to help you find a the party starts about kindness and respect ready doing more than most. Stay positive, solution. for differences. A party is a great opportunity smile and throw that party.

3. ensure physical access. Religious in- for kids to learn about one another.

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi is the president stitutions are exempted from the Americans 6. involve parents. Parties can be ex- of RespectAbilityUSA, a nonprofit workwith Disabilities Act, so many of them are not hausting for the hosts. Asking a parent or two ing to ensure that Jews of all abilities are fully accessible. If your event is at a venue to help out – particularly if it’s a big group – able to have a full Jewish life. Alie Krithat is not physically accessible, move it to a can lighten the load. Parents may feel more ofske Mainella is the lead youth independplace that is. Sometimes that can be as simple comfortable, especially if their child has social ent living services coordinator at as choosing a different room in a synagogue anxiety issues, if they are invited to stay or IndependenceFirst, a Milwaukee-based building. Venues should have a ground level en- help as an option. organization working for inclusion of peotrance or ramp, an elevator if the event is up7. avoid sensory overload. Parties can ple with disabilities.

WISHING YOU A HAPPY HANUKKAH

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hanukkah Read it and eat

orange, Lavender & Figs by Fanny Slater (Atria, $18) After winning the Rachel Ray National Great American Cookbook Competition, Slater developed recipes that reflected her childhood tastes, the stories, people and her favorite ingredients. She hopes you’ll laugh out loud, enjoy her food memories and Lois Friedman ignite your creativity. Fanfare Tips, Kitchen descriptions, and FlippityDoos (a made up word for recipe creativity). The eight chapters are Rise and Scramble, Soups and FANwiches, The App Store, EntreePreneur, Going Green, Sideways, There’s Always Room and Awesomesauce. Here’s a namesake recipe to serve with elegant crackers and several varieties of artisanal cheese.

Lois Friedman can be reached at ReadItAndEat@ yahoo.com.

orange Lavender Fig Jam

Ingredients: 1 pound fresh figs, stemmed and halved (or 1/2 pound dried figs, stemmed) 1 tsp. grated orange zest 3 tbsp. orange juice (or 1/2 cup if using dried figs) 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar (or 1/4 cup if using dried figs) 1/2 tbsp. fresh lavender or 1 teaspoon dried Pinch of kosher salt Preparation: In a medium sauce-pan, combine the figs, orange zest, orange juice, brown sugar, lavender, and salt.

Bring to a boil over Credit: rachelray.com medium-high heat. If using fresh figs, mash with a potato masher. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 10 minutes. If using dried figs, now you can mash with a potato masher or pulse in a food processor for a very smooth spread.

Refrigerate the jam for at least 20 minutes before serving.

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Sufganiyot for Hanukkah

C6 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

hanukkah When Jesus came to the Hanukkah party

Ron KampeaS Sure, his birthday usually falls around the same time as Hanukkah, but Jesus and the Jewish holiday generally don’t mix.

In 2014, however, two Jesus-Hanukkah juxtapositions received a lot of social media attention.

First, there was Bud Williams, the Springfield, Mass., city counselor who said “Jesus is the reason for the season” -- at a menorah lighting.

And there was the morning host of St. Louis’ Fox affiliate, Kim Kelly Hudson. who sported a T-shirt bearing an image of Jesus on the cross while she interviewed a local rabbi about Hanukkah.

Asked about the T-shirt

by Jim Romenesko, via Twitter, Hudson explained that she routinely wears Tshirts promoting local events -- this one was for a Christian rap concert the same evening. “No insult was intended,” she said.

Williams seemed surprised at the ruckus, telling MassLive that when folks speak of a “bright light” from 2,000 years ago -- as did rabbis at the ceremony -- Jesus naturally comes to mind.

“I thought it added something to the service; it didn’t take away,” he said.

Sybil Kaplan ewish law does not prescribe any special feasting or elaborate meal for Hanukkah as it does for other holidays.

Maybe this is because the origin of Hanukkah is not in the Bible but in the Apocrypha, the books of literature written between the second century BCE and the second century CE that were not incorporated into the Hebrew Bible.

The Books of Maccabees, of which there are actually four separate books, only say that the hero, Judah, “ordained that the days of dedication of the altar should be kept in their season from year to year by the space of eight days from the first and twentieth day of the month Chislev, with mirth and gladness.”

So where do we get all the food we eat? It is in the Talmud where the so-called miracle of the oil burning for eight days is written which was inserted to deemphasize the miracle of military triumph and replace it with a more palatable idea, that of the intervention of G-d, which somehow would seem more a miracle of man against man, according to the sages of the time.

By the way, it is only within the past few years that children’s books about Hanukkah dare say the oil story is a legend or a myth.

Practically every ethnic group has the custom of making and eating a form of food prepared in oil as a reminder of the so-called miracle of the jar of oil.

Judy Siegel once wrote in the Jerusalem Post that people gain average of two kilos from eating sufganiyot, latkes and other fat foods during Hanukkah!

From Israel have come two popular foods for Hanukkah-sufganiyot or jelly doughnuts and ponchikot, which are ball-shaped or resemble a doughnut hole.

A Fitting Place

Gil Marks (z”l), in The World of Jewish Desserts, wrote that doughnuts fried in oil, ponchikot, were adopted by Polish Jews for Hanukkah. The name is taken from the Polish word, paczki [poochkey] which led to the nickname, ponchiks, the Polish name for jelly doughnuts.

I noticed in our Overland Park, Kansas newspaper one day an ad for paczi [poonchkey or poochkey] and a photograph of a plate of what looked to me to be sufganiyot. The ad explained poonchkey are similar to jelly doughnuts only larger and more rich tasting and are traditionally served on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent.

They were made to use up shortening and eggs which were prohibited during Lent.

Sufganiyot have a more interesting history. In The Jewish Holiday Kitchen, Joan Nathan, an acquaintance of mine from our Jerusalem days and noted cookbook author and maven of American Jewish cooking, said she learned the origins of sufganiyot from Dov Noy, dean of Israel folklorists.

Noy relates a Bukhharian fable, which says the first sufganiya was a sweet given to Adam and Eve as compensation after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. He says the word sufganiya comes from the Hebrew word, sof (meaning end), gan (meaning garden) and Ya (meaning Gd). Thus the word means, the end of G-d’s garden.

According to Noy, this fable was created at the beginning of the 20th century, since sufganiya is a new Hebrew word coined by pioneers.

Some say sufganiyot, which means spongelike, are reminiscent of the sweet, spongy cookie popular along the Mediterranean since the time of the Maccabees. Hebrew dictionaries say the word actually comes from the Greek word, sufgan, meaning puffed and fried.

See Sufganiyot page C7

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Wishes our community a Happy Hanukkah!

Eight ways to celebrate Hanukkah that aren’t about the presents

Home Technology Tutor • Learn all about email and sending • attachments.

Rebecca Rosenthal much it can add up to. Instead of Kveller via JTA presents every night, ask your famWe love Hanukkah. The ily and friends to make a donation message that the rabbis in the in your child’s honor.

4. carve out time together.

Talmud give about the holiday is that we light candles each Commit to turning off your night in order to increase the phones and being present. Sing as holiness in the world. many silly Hanukkah songs as What a beautiful idea -- one you know, play competitive dreithat can be completely lost on del, and eat some latkes and jelly children. doughnuts.

5. Read hanukkah books.

We don’t expect them to be immune to the culture in which There are so many fun chilwe live, but we want to help them dren’s stories about Hanukkah. s ong the fun book understand that the miracle of Both PJ Library and Amazon kkah Match is am nu Ha ’s bi Ko er e. tim ay Hanukkah is about bringing more Farm are great sources for finding books lid ho at n read together House that will appeal to your child and light into the world, not filling their families ca Credit: Behrman rooms with more stuff. the whole family.

6. Invite friends over.

So here are some ideas for celebrating Hanukkah with kids that aren’t 2. Do something for others.

Bonus points for inviting those The best way to publicize the mirajust about the presents that have friends who have never celebrated cle is to help others see the light in the worked for our families.

Hanukkah. Make sure you brush up on 1. Decorate. world. Find a project that you can do the story before they arrive.

7. Watch lots of hanukkah parody videos.

The mitzvah of Hanukkah is to pub- as a family that helps others in your community or in the world. licize the miracle, both that the small This is a personal favorite in my 3. Donate your tzedakah.

Jewish army defeated the large Greek family, where we watch videos from Search your house for those coins army and that the small jar of oil lasted groups like the Maccabeats to Six13 to that have been hiding in the couch all for eight days. Get the message out by videos people made in their own year. Find a cause that your family is decorating your house. Turn it into a homes (or offices, like we did). Feeling passionate about and donate all that family project by making your own brave? Make your own. see eight ways to celebrate page c9 loose change. You’d be surprised how decorations.

Sufganiyot

continued from page c6 John Cooper, author of Eat and Be Satisfied--A Social History of Jewish Food, has another theory. He says Christians in Europe ate deep-fried pastries on New Year’s Eve, and Christians in Berlin ate jelly doughnuts. From them, German Jews started eating apricot-filled doughnuts. When they immigrated to Palestine in the 1930s, they encouraged the population to eat the jelly doughnuts for Hanukkah.

One of my favorite pieces of research is the characteristics which sufganiyot are said to have: 1) they are round like the wheel of fortune; 2) they have to be looked at for what is inside, not for their external qualities; and 3) they cannot be enjoyed the

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same way twice.

In Israel, sufganiyot have gone through a major revolution. For years, they were injected with strawberry jelly and dusted with confectioners’ sugar.

According to an article which appeared in the Forward in 2005, one could find fillings with these flavors: pina colada, coffee liqueur, caramel, bittersweet chocolate, flaked chocolate, white chocolate, crème café, nougat, chocolate orange, pear, crème brulee, grapefruit, vodka, crème espresso with cardamom, bittersweet chocolate and rum, passion fruit, walnut crunch, coconut milk, chocolate liqueur, coconut liqueur, vanilla cream.

In 2008, a Jerusalem Post article related a contest that was held on seven

bakeries, judging sufganiyot for flavor, freshness, consistency and aesthetics.

The winning bakery was La Paneria in Katamon which offered fillings of ganache chocolate, white chocolate cream, halva and pistachio, butterscotch toffee and strawberry.

According to Judy Siegel of the Jerusalem Post, the average sufganiya contains 500-600 calories. She also suggested cutting a sufganiya in half to eat at two sittings rather than consume the minis. Those baked in the oven contain 125-150 calories.

My research on the internet shows the calories from 93 to 276 and gluten-free with rice flour is 166 calories.

Whatever their origin, sample the real thing and you won’t forget it!

Happy Hanukkah

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Hanukkah and Jewish diversity

be annulled!” - a rather stunning response, even hinting at irreverence JoNathaN Garb Among the numerous fine points of Jewish law and ritual debated by toward rabbinic law. But Rabbi Yosef has the final word: “Hanukkah difthe rabbis of antiquity was the question of public fasting. According to fers, because its miracles were made famous.” a text known as Megillat Ta’anit, there were 35 joyous historical occaIn the event, over the centuries, many of those 35 happy days of sions upon whose dates authorMegillat Ta’anit were trumped by ities could not ordain a one-time tragedy time and again, and pubfast. Like drought or other public lic fasting was declared. Mere calamity. Such festive dates historical memory carried no ranged from the eight days of legal weight, and yet Hanukkah, Hanukkah, beginning on the as Rabbi Yosef had insisted, was 25th of Kislev, to the 7th of that considered immune. same month, which marked the In the Middle Ages, comdeath of Herod, master builder menting on this intricate Talmuof the Second Temple but an indic debate, Rashi spoke of the sufferable despot nonetheless. promulgation of the Hanukkah In the Babylonian Talmud miracle by means of candle-light(Tractate Rosh Hashanah 18b), a ing: “It is already known to all of tale is told of the residents of Israel, by their observance of its Lod who proclaimed a fast on mitzvot as their custom, and Hanukkah, thus abrogating they have upheld it like the fesMegillat Ta’anit. Two prominent tivals of the Torah, and it would Credit: Yoninah via wikimedia commons not be correct to annul it.” In rabbis, Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi No fast for us Yehoshua, promptly canceled the fast, and went so far as to order the fasters to fast on another day in order to atone for violating the festivity of Hanukkah! Whereupon Rabbi Kahana seeks to generalize from their intervention, and preserve the festive nature of all the designated dates commemorating events of salvation or relief, concluding that one cannot ordain a fast on any of these days. But Rabbi Yosef disagrees, arguing that “Hanukkah differs, because a commandment is involved.”

Thus Hanukkah’s special status stems not from the historical event involved, but rather from the ceremony of lighting candles - the commemorative ritual itself. Even if Megillat Ta’anit were overruled in other cases, Hanukkah, in Rabbi Yosef’s view, should remain sacrosanct. At which point the Talmudic sage Abbayeh retorts: “Let Hanukkah and its mitzvah

other words, Hanukkah’s unique and lasting status stems from the historical and sociological fact of its uniform acceptance by the ritually observant Jewish community.

Such unity was normative in Rashi’s day - but what about our own time, when “all of Israel” is far too fragmented to concur on the observance of the laws of the Torah, let alone later ritual practices? Many Jews, of course, live according to the Shulhan Aruch,the famous code of law authored by Rabbi Yosef Karo, which achieved widespread acceptance in the Jewish world in the 16th century. Much as we may sympathize with this loyalty to the past, we must today also consider alternatives that accommodate the spiritual and practical reality of See Jewish diversity page C11

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How I learned to give up Christmas and love Hanukkah for what it is RandI SkaggS Kveller via JTA

also attracted to Judaism.

So, back to Christmas. hen people find out I’m a Jew by Choice My first Christmas as a Jew was incredibly difficult. All (otherwise known as a convert), one of the traditions that had, at one point, been my traditions, the first questions I get is, “Was it hard to were others’ now, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to give up Christmas?” do. Although I’d never been too vigilant about decorating The short answer is yes. Christmas seeps my tiny New York City apartment for Christmas throughinto your soul and is a primary part of every Christian perout my 20s, I suddenly found myself yearning for a tree son’s happiest childhood and lights. I wanted to blast memory log. Could I give up the carols throughout the a tree in the corner of the apartment. I needed to house? Red, green and gold make a batch of Alton presents heaped on a velvet Brown’s eggnog -- stat! skirt under the limbs? The So I did what every good adorable ornaments? Stockconvert does -- I clung onto ings hung on the chimney Hanukkah like a life premantle (or, in my childhood server. If I couldn’t have chimneyless home, on the Christmas, by God, I’d make wood paneling)? The carols! the most out of this other The mistletoe! The gingerholiday. bread houses! How could I And frankly, that’s how I give all that up? viewed it -- the “other” holiIt was a process, and one day, the substitute Christthat I wasn’t too happy mas. No tree? Well, then, I’d about at first. I won’t get hang some blue and white into my reasons for chooslights around the window. ing to be a Jew, mostly beNo stockings? That’s OK, I’d cause I consider spirituality find the most beautiful deeply personal, and I by no menorah in town. No holly? means consider my choices An assortment of dreidels to be the “true” ones or the would have to suffice. only path. But please rest We ate homemade latkes Credit: Steve Wilson/Flickr, CC BY 2.0 with applesauce and sour assured, before I go any further, that this choice came after years and years of soulcream every night. I demanded we play dreidel all eight searching, an intensive class taught by a wonderful rabbi, days -- even though it was just Dave and me and no kids prayer after prayer, symbolic dreams, and a happy heart. It - and we ate the chalky gelt that I picked up at the nearby had nothing to do with my husband, who happens to be a drug store humorlessly. I wanted to give eight gifts, but Jew. I just happened to mostly be attracted to Jewish guys, Dave told me that was a bit extravagant for just two See Love Hanukkah for what it is page C10 which I later found out is fairly common for those of us

The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | C9

hanukkah Eight ways to celebrate

Continued from page C7 8. Make a new family tradition.

Are there things you always wanted to do in your city?

Make a Hanukkah bucket list and do one each night. Or have a latke contest to see who can add the most creative ingredients to the traditional potato pancakes. Add something fun that you can do together as a family and share it with others.

And since we know that kids (and grown-ups!) still love to get presents, you can participate in a “get one, give one” plan so that each time your child is given a toy, they have to choose a gently used one to donate. Make it even more meaningful by taking your child to deliver his/her donation to a shelter or a hospital.

Happy Hanukkah!

Rabbi Rebecca Rosenthal is the director of youth and family education at Central Synagogue in New York City.

This piece was written in conjunction with Erin Bouchard, the family engagement project director at Central Synagogue.

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C10 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

hanukkah Read it and eat

Ultimate appetizer ideabook

by Kiera & Cole Stipovich (Chronicle, $19.95) Nibbles, Dips/Spreads, Crostini/Breads/Grains, Fruits/Vegetables, Seafood/Eggs/Poultry/Meat, Sweets and Building Blocks are covLois Friedman ered with 225 recipes with photographs in paragraph format. Recipes with color coded dots for make ahead, vegetarian, dairy and gluten-free are listed on the contents pages... a very well organized book.

This husband and wife duo share passions for good food, dazzling photography and cocktail hour from light and refreshing to rich and decadent! Think seasonal, hot/cold, and a touch of something sweet ending. Three fritters: Zucchini-Green Onion, Cauliflower, and Sweet Potato, Salmon Sliders, Shredded Chicken Tostados on round tortilla chips, many mini crustless quiches, mini new potato bites, Thai Spring Rolls, Yukon Gold Blini with Smoked Salmon and mini bites of this and that. Try this delicious potato dish.

Lois Friedman can be reached at ReadItAndEat@ yahoo.com.

roasted BaBy GoLd Potatoes

Preparation: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Cut 12 baby gold potatoes in half lengthwise and place on a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with 1 tbsp. melted duck fat (or vegetable oil), sprinkle with 1 tsp. kosher salt and 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper, and toss to coat. Roast for 15 to 20 minutes, or until golden and crisp. turning after the first 7 or 8 minutes. Let cool completely. Use right away or refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Makes 24 pieces.

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Love Hanukkah for what it is Continued from page C9 people, so we just gave one gift the first night. We sang the only two Hanukkah songs we knew -- The Dreidel Song and Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah -- on an endless loop and always at my request. I was trying to get that same Christmas feeling throughout it all, and it just didn’t happen.

Finally, I gave up, bought a peppermint mocha latte at Starbucks and locked myself in the bathroom to sing Deck the Halls while weeping like an idiot.

mas because it’s not our major holiday. And it doesn’t have to be. And now I absolutely love that about it.

Which doesn’t mean I don’t have fun with it. We bought a cheesy electric menorah this year because Dave mentioned he had one as a kid and always loved it. We bought both of our kids eight gifts each and even have theme nights (book night, chocolate night, art supply night, etc.). We plan to eat latkes most if not all the nights, and I went to a local chocolate store to buy the “good gelt” (i.e. the stuff that actually tastes like chocolate). We’ve already finished decorating our house, an effort led with seriousness and dedication by my seven-year-old and composed mostly of handmade crafts.

And we have more meaningful activities planned. Like going to our local nursing home to light the menorah and sing Hanukkah songs with our older neighbors. (We discovered, after some work, that there are more than two Hanukkah songs, and Dave can play them beautifully on his guitar.) We’ll meet up with our Jewish chosen family here for a few different parties -- one at our beloved synagogue. Stella’s going to invite over her best friend, a sweet Catholic girl, to teach her about Hanukkah. And every single night, when I light the shamash candle, I will Credit: Scott/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0 say a prayer that will have great meanAs the years went on, it got easier to view Christmas as ing to me. belonging to others, but my love for Hanukkah was stagIt will be wonderful, fun and festive, and it won’t be nant. Every year in December, I’d watch the evergreen go Christmas. And while I’ll always treasure my childhood up, I’d hear songs about peace and joy in every store, and memories of Christmas, I’m relieved to be released of it now.

I’d resignedly polish our menorah and buy those tiny bags My heart swells with love and gratitude at the coming of of overpriced gelt. the holiday season. The carols in the stores make me smile When our daughter Stella came along, I had a newfound and fill my head with sweet memories that I’ll treasure fordesire to make Hanukkah more meaningful, and I really put ever. One night, we’ll pile the kids in the car to look at the my back into it. We bought her eight gifts -- one for each gorgeously decorated homes in our neighborhood, and night -- and the house was an explosion of Stars of David we’ll drink some hot chocolate when we return. We’ll even and dreidels. I plugged “Hanukkah songs” into Pandora and gather with my Christian family around my mom’s sweet heard every instrumental version of The Dreidel Song you tree and watch our cousins’ faces beam with joy at the gifts could imagine. And while my husband and my daughter we gave them. seemed delighted by my efforts, I wasn’t as pleased. I still But what I’m most looking forward to is my two-year-old felt incomplete. I still yearned for that Christmas feeling, son’s look of wonder when all eight candles are lit, at and I just couldn’t conjure it up via Hanukkah. watching my daughter hug an elderly woman who’s missOver time, I grew to like Hanukkah more and more, but ing her own grandchildren, and singing Matisyahu’s Mirait wasn’t until this year -- 11 years post my conversion -cle and really meaning it when I belt out the words: “Eight that I find myself yearning for Hanukkah, grateful for it, nights, eight lights, and these rites keep me right, so bless beyond happy that I’m a Jew during the Christmas season. me to the highest heights with your miracle.”

What changed? I stopped trying to make Hanukkah into Randi Skaggs is a middle school language arts teacher Christmas, that’s what. I started to look at Hanukkah as the and mother of two in Louisville, Kentucky. She is an avid holiday it is -- a minor one meant to light a spark in our storyteller and has won the Louisville Moth Grand Slam, hearts during this dark time of year and to reignite our and has performed in New York City’s Moth Ball honoring pride in our Jewish heritage. It’s not as big a deal as ChristLouis C.K.

The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | C11

a Hanukkah state of mind: Art and rededication

M

RObeRT KRigelMan any centuries ago, in l65 BCE, the Temple in Jerusalem was rededicated by a small band of guerrilla fighters called the Maccabees who forced the Syrian army out of Jerusalem and restored the Temple, which had been defiled.

Throughout history, synagogues, heirs of the Temple in Jerusalem, have The Ohr Kodesh Synagogue in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Credit: Farragutful via wikimedia commons been central to Jewish community life. “Even tiny deeds called hiddur mitzvah -- which litersynagogues in houses or in nondescript ally translates as the beautification of physibuildings -- congregants always tried to cal objects that are used when performing make them beautiful,” points out Samuel good deeds -- to express that very human Gruber in his new illustrated book on syna- impulse. Today, through the revival of handgogue art and architecture, Synagogues. crafted ritual art, artists and lay people are “Religious experience is more commonly rededicating themselves to Jewish tradition absorbed through the senses than through by discovering the connection between spirthe intellect,” writes Dr. Abram Kanof in ituality and the work of their hands.

Jewish Ceremonial and Religious Observance.

Many people, some of who have never The rabbis understood the sensual aspects of sewn a stitch, use their hands in art projects religious observance, and to that end estabthat bind them inextricably to the rituals for lished a whole category of mitzvot or good See Hanukkah state of mind page C13

Jewish diversity

Continued from page C8 millions of Jews who do not live by any strict code of Jewish law.

Rashi’s interpretation of the Talmudic position on ritual in Tractate Rosh Hashanah showed the difficulty inherent in founding ritual on the consensus of the community in today’s fragmented world. The first step is to accept the obvious fact that there is no one “Jewish world.” Yet this does not preclude the possi-

bility of the wide revitalization of Jewish practice through a sense of fresh revelation.

Should that happen, many Jews who are either distant from any communal ritual, or participate in it in a stale, unenthusiastic manner, might find new excitement in the observance of any number of the commandments -- just as many Jews, in Israel and abroad, have found a sense of commitment and connection through new forms of textual study.

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Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a Hanukkah menu with a healthy flair -- and latkes

H

MEGAN WOLf JTA anukah is a celebration, a joyful holiday with delicious food and family memories. I remember lighting our menorah as a little girl with my bubbe. Now, raising my daughter, I hope to create special memories with her.

Food is typically at the center of our celebrations, and this Hanukkah I have created a spinach-focused menu for a delicious and festive meal.

Starting with creamy white bean soup, inspired by my motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s love for soup served in large mugs, this dish sets the tone for a deliciously healthy meal. Warm and satisfying, this dish is topped with jewel-toned sauteed spinach and is pretty enough to serve to company. And itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s easy enough to make on a weeknight.

Most people think about traditional potato latkes on Hanukkah. My Spinach, Broccoli and Scallion Pancakes with Poached Eggs are just as delicious -- you can serve without the eggs, if you like.

Growing up, we would enjoy sour cream and applesauce with our potato latkes. Sour cream (or greek yogurt!) would be a perfect pairing for these light, vegetable-filled pancakes. I like mine with hot sauce.

Spinach Salad with Quinoa, Toasted Pistachios and Cranberries is among my favorite recipes from my cookbook Great Meals with Greens and Grains, with its interesting textures, bold flavors, and a bright and balanced dressing. It could not be easier to make and is sure to be a hit on your holiday table.

Here are the recipes for these winning dishes.

See Hanukkah menu for more recipes page C13

SPINACH, BROCCOLI AND SCALLION PANCAKES WITH POACHED EGGS

Ingredients: For the pancakes: 1 1/2 cups chopped broccoli 4 cups packed baby spinach 3 tbsp. olive oil, divided 3 eggs 1/2 tsp. baking soda 1/4 cup all-purpose flour 1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese 4 scallions, thinly sliced, divided For the eggs: 4 cups water 4 large eggs 1 tbsp. white vinegar Preparation: Preheat the oven to 375 F. Place a rimmed baking sheet in the oven to heat.

To make the pancakes: Steam the broccoli until tender but still crisp, about 3 to 5 minutes. While the broccoli cooks, saute the spinach in 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a skillet until wilted, about 3 minutes, then remove from the heat and roughly chop.

In a large bowl, scramble the eggs, and then add the baking soda, flour, panko and Parmesan cheese; stir to combine. Add the broccoli, spinach and half the scallions. Mix to combine.

Remove the hot baking sheet from the oven and grease with the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil.

With an ice cream scoop, place pancakes evenly on the baking sheet. Gently press the top of each pancake to flatten. Bake for 10 minutes, then flip and bake for another 2 minutes, or until the centers of the pancakes are cooked through.

To make the poached eggs (start with about 8

Credit: Megan Wolf minutes remaining on the pancakes): Boil the water in a large high-rimmed skillet. Once the water comes to a boil, crack each egg into its own ramekin. Add the white vinegar to the boiling water, reduce the heat to medium-low and drop each egg into the hot water. Cover the skillet and let the eggs cook for 3 minutes.

Remove the pancakes from the oven and serve 2 or 3 to a plate depending on their size. Top each plate with a poached egg and a sprinkle of the remaining scallions. Serve immediately.

Tip: If poaching all four eggs at once feels too daunting, try two at a time. Eggs cook quickly and this wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t greatly delay your meal.

Serves 4.

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Hanukkah menu

The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | C13

hanukkah Hanukkah state of mind

CREAMY WHITE BEAN SOUP WITH SAUTEED SPINACH

Continued from page C12 Ingredients: 1 head garlic, top quarter sliced off and discarded 1/4 cup olive oil, divided, plus more for garnish 1 tablespoon butter 1 medium Vidalia onion, sliced 2 1/2 cups low-sodium vegetable stock, divided 1 dried bay leaf 2 cans (15 ounces each) white beans, rinsed and drained, divided 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese Salt to taste 5 ounces baby spinach Preparation: Preheat the oven to 375 F. Place the garlic on a piece of aluminum foil and drizzle with 1 tbsp. of the olive oil. Wrap into a pouch and roast for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the garlic is soft and golden brown.

In a large stockpot, heat 2 tbsp. of the olive oil and the butter over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until soft, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes. Add 2 1/4 cups of the vegetable stock, the bay leaf and 1 can of the white beans to the onions.

Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and let simmer for about 20 minutes.

Once the garlic is roasted, add it to the soup by popping each clove out of its protective paper. In batches, transfer to a blender or food processor and puree until smooth, then pour the soup back into the stockpot.

Add the remaining can of white beans, remaining 1/4 cup vegetable stock and the Parmesan to the pureed mixture and heat through, about 10 minutes.

Season to taste with salt.

In a saute pan, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil, then add the spinach. Cook until completely wilted, about 4 minutes.

To serve, pour equal amounts of the soup into each of 4 bowls and top with the sauteed spinach and an extra drizzle of olive oil.

Tips: Make sure you are constantly scraping the bottom of the stockpot -- that’s where so much flavor lives!

Use the best olive oil you can find; it really makes such a difference, especially when used as a garnish.

Serves 4.

See Hanukkah menu for more recipes page C14 Credit: Megan Wolf

Continued from page C11 which they have been created. Parents and their children choose the colors and the fabrics for a bar or bat mitzvah tallit or prayer shawl, and weave the fibers that will envelop them in prayer.

The revival of handcrafted ritual art has drawn Jews seeking a spiritual center in a world where the power of ritual and ceremony is often absent. Three decades ago, Ruth Hefter sat at a table-sized loom at the Jewish Community Center in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The room was a modern setting for an ancient craft, where Hefter and seven other women learned to weave tallitot-prayer shawls-for their sons and grandsons, who were soon to celebrate their bar mitzvah. After taking turns weaving several rows of their own tallitot the boys then tied knots into fringes, transforming the fabric into a ritual garment of remembrance. The Wilkes-Barre project anticipated two current trends: Jews seeking to rededicate themselves to ritual as well as to finding spiritual fulfillment in art.

When eight new hand-painted and handstitched silk Torah covers are dedicated this winter at Ohr Kodesh Congregation in Chevy Chase, Maryland, the congregation will see a unified design created from tiny pieces of fabric stitched together by 25 volunteers from the congregation. Inspired by the idea of a community project, member Julia Weller succeeded in selling the idea to the executive committee.

Project director and artist Shirley Waxman of Potomac, Maryland, assured potential volunteers that they had to make only one commitment: to attend two embroidery-training sessions. At the first session each volunteer was given a letter, a packet of thread and told to choose his or her own stitch. Waxman made the kits, dyed the fabric, cut the multi-colored pieces which the members helped sew, supervised attaching the pieces to a larger fabric and did the final finishing. Weller carried her precious small bag of embroidered letters with her everywhere over the past year. She worked on planes and trains, answering curious questioners, growing more involved in the why of her tradition and the meaning of the letters she was embroidering.

The project was also special because it was intergenerational. Weller involved her teenage daughter, Anat, who worked on the rays of the sun, sewing swatches of orange on a silk background. “Now I can go to the synagogue and look up and know I had a part in the Torah covers,” she says. Another member, Barbara Garlock, brought her teenage daughter, who was comfortable mingling with the adults at the first embroidery session. “A little piece of me [and my daughter] now lives in the synagogue,” says Garlock.

“The handmade things form a link between the heart of the person who made it and the person who uses it,” wrote Japanese See Hanukkah state of mind page C14

C14 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016

Hanukkah menu

hanukkah

sPinACH sAlAd WiTH QuinoA, ToAsTed PisTACHios And CrAnBerries

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Hanukkah’s penumbra Andre MoussAli ast December, I received an email from a close friend, a woman active in her synagogue, who wrote: “I’ve finally gotten over wanting to be Christian, but I still want to wake on a December morning to a pile of presents.”

I empathize. The approaching holidays always give me pause. Hanukkah seems like the season’s poor relative knocking on the door without much more to offer than a few candles, and potato latkes or pancakes.

Of course, Hanukkah also offers us the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of materialism and spirituality, of plenitude and austerity, of belief and doubt, and on the fact that most of us spend our time negotiating the high wire that’s strung between these poles. I used to think religion was about finding answers, but now I think it’s

about asking questions -- about learning to be comfortable with doubt, of finding ways to transmute doubt into a creative rather than a crippling presence.

It’s hard to live with doubt and ambivalence in the everyday world. In order to accomplish our busy schedules we have to be assertive, and act as if we know the answers. Holidays, and ritual celebrations whether weekly, yearly, or once-in-a-lifetime rites of passage allow us to excuse ourselves from linear time and step onto a balcony, or into a little shack that I envision as a sukkah, where we entertain ambivalence. If genius is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at once, then celebrating ritual makes us geniuses, because we are thinking about paradox: Hanukkahs past present and future, about growing old and staying young, about see Hanukkah’s penumbra page C15

Continued from page C13 artist Hiroshima Kazuo. Allan Abrams of Rockville, Maryland, a retired IBM engineer and programmer who creates Judaica out of metal and wood, recalls the painstaking hours that went into the creation of a silver atara collar for a tallit. He carefully cut out the silver Hebrew letters that spelled, “It is a tree of life to them that hold fast to it.”

“I began to bond with the letters, singing the words of the prayer over and over again as I worked,” he says. When he completed the letters, he found he could not part with the atara. It now adorns his tallit. “It was probably the deepest connection I ever

made to something I worked on,” he says.

And for the first time he feels that his work is personal and enduring.

The lights of Hanukkah remind us how the Maccabees made the Temple pure, worthy of becoming once more the center of ritual and prayer. Yet the Torah also reminds us that God dwells in the sanctuary only if the people themselves remain holy.

Art is one path towards that kind of spiritual renewal and rededication.

Helen Belitsky is a Maryland-based writer. She wrote this article for the on-line magazine-Jewish Family & Life!-www.jewishfamily.com.

Hanukkah state of mind

EST.

Continued from page C13 Ingredients: For the lemon vinaigrette: 1/4 cup olive oil juice of 1 lemon 2 cloves garlic, pushed through a garlic press or very well minced 1/4 tsp. salt (or more to your taste) For the salad: 1/4 cup quinoa 1 cup water 1/2 cup shelled pistachios 10 ounces baby spinach 1 medium Anjou pear 1/2 cup dried sweetened cranberries 1/2 cup pitted and sliced Cerignola olives salt to taste Preparation: To make the lemon vinaigrette: Whisk the ingredients together.

To make the salad: Combine the quinoa and water in a pot and bring to a boil. Once the water is boiling, turn down the heat to low, cover the pot and cook another 10 minutes, or until the quinoa has softened and the water has evaporated; set aside.

Toast the pistachios in a small skillet over low heat until they are just golden brown and fragrant, 3 to 5 minutes; set aside.

Place the spinach in a large bowl. Thinly slice the pear and add it to the bowl along with the cranberries and olives.

Just prior to serving, add the toasted pistachios and cooked quinoa, toss with the lemon vinaigrette

HERZL CAMP experience it

For more information, visit herzlcamp.org

Credit: Megan Wolf

and season to taste with salt.

Serve family style or in individual bowls or on plates.

Tip: Getting the garlic really finely minced or crushed will help the flavor dissipate, so that instead of biting into a piece of raw garlic, the salad is nicely seasoned with a garlic essence.

Serves 4.

1946

The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016 | C15

Hanukkah’s penumbra Continued from page C14 lighting candles and anticipating darkness, being together and being alone with God. It’s a mistake, though, to equate ritual with routine. Ritual is rooted in our paradoxical need for both consistency and adaptability; it asks us to not only preserve that which shouldn’t change from year to year, but also to acknowledge all that has changed. And once we recognize this, the holiday comes alive. I realized recently that my entire concept of Hanukkah has undergone several huge shifts.

When I was a girl I concentrated on the miracle associated with Hanukkah -- how the oil could last for eight days instead of just one. When I had my own children, and moved to a non-Jewish community, I reflected more on the political meaning of the holiday, and on the power of conviction in the face of long odds.

My husband and I have also experimented with gift giving which can be as spiritual a part of the holiday as lighting the candles. When my sons were little, we gave them one gift a night. Then we began to notice that they cared only about presents, and not about the holiday, so we gave them all their presents on the first night. Then we tried giving them one big gift. I hope we are teaching them that ritual means experimentation. Ritual challenges us to bravely reinvent, to reconstruct, rather than proceed as usual.

For in truth, a ritual is less an event than a process.

Hanukkah, for example, begins the first moment, sometime in late fall, when you ask yourself: “I wonder when

Hanukkah comes this year?” Then the exhausting preparations start .You buy gifts, wrap them, schlep them to the post office, polish the menorah, grate the potatoes-and in the middle of straining the apple sauce or finding a gift for your child’s Hebrew school grab bag, you realize that you’re not preparing for Hanukkah, you’re celebrating it, right now. Ritual’s gifts are serendipitous, bestowed on us when we least expect them. The key to the treasure is the treasure, as my former writing teacher, John Barth, likes to say.

What’s our Jewish version of abundance? Not presents under the tree. We share the strength of our convictions; a certain slant of understanding; a gift for empathy, the capacity to understand, to walk in another’s shoes, to welcome strangers, to make a home wherever we find ourselves and somehow, against all odds, fill it with light which seems on the verge of extinguishing itself, but never does. These gifts can’t be wrapped up and placed under a tree, but they are real, and portable, and they illumine our way.

To you and yours, happy Hanukkah, one filled with light and song, one that’s different and ever the same.

Roberta Israeloff’s monthly column, Traveling Light appears on Jewish Family & Life! www.jewishfamily.com. Her books include: Kindling the Flame: Reflections on Ritual, Faith and Family and Lost and Found: A Woman Revisits Eighth Grade. She lives on Long Island, New York with her husband and two sons.

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Shalom

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C16 | The Jewish Press | December 16, 2016