Searching for the Soul of Hanukkah

listen:

intro - “Ready, one, two, three… Oh Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah, come light the menorah…”

At Temple Beth Abraham's Hebrew School, these six graders join their teachers to light the Hanukkah candles and recite the first prayer…

“Baruch atah adonai…”

After they sing traditional Hanukkah songs, the kids get treated to ice cream and fried potato pancakes, called latkes.

“I think Hanukkah is about spending time with your family.”

“I think Hanukkah is about remembering when we found the oil a long time ago.”

“I think Hanukkah’s about the presents [class laughs].”

When Jews talk about Hanukkah, they tend to speak about the things that appeal to children. There’s the greasy food, the eight days of presents, the songs and the games played with a dreidel, a four-sided spinning top.

“To me, the holiday is for kids.”

That’s Shirley Lilchuk, one of the teachers at the synagogue.

“You should see their eyes light up when they get a little gift every night or when they play the dreidel and somebody wins and somebody puts in half, and they’re just delighted with it, you know?

Lilchuk left Poland in 1936 to escape the Holocaust.

That winter she moved to Nashua, and heard about Santa Claus for the first time.

So she turned to her grandfather, an Orthodox Jew, and asked, who is this guy, Santa Claus?

“And he said, oh my child, that’s the man who, if you write to him, asking something that you really want, and you’re a good kid, he will give it to you. And so he said you write it down and I’ll send that letter to Santa Claus and I’ll bet you’ll get your things for Hanukkah. And so I did, and we got up in the morning and everything we wanted was there.”

This quaint story sounds a little unusual.

But talk to some American Jewish kids and you'll find that mixing up Hanukkah and Christmas is pretty much everyday stuff.

“Even though we’re Jewish, Santa still comes down the chimney at night and we write notes to him and he writes notes to us and we leave him cookies and milk, and we leave carrots for the reindeers.”

“We do that too!”

“Well I just remember once when I went and I was celebrating Christmas with my grandpa, when Santa gave me a gift, inside he wrote a little note and it said ‘Happy Hanukkah.’”

The mixing of cultures and religions at this time of year may have been inevitable, especially since both involve children and gifts.

But Rabbi Mark Finkel says Hanukkah should also make American Jews think about how they observe their faith in a majority Christian country.

“One of the underpinnings of Hanukkah is that it’s a story about identity. Just as in the first Hanukkah, the question was, would Jews be able to be viable as a people for another generation, with the overwhelming influence of Greek culture? The parents can ask the same question: is my Jewish identity strong enough for me to impart it to another generation or maybe one generation beyond that?”

While there may be some mixing of cultures and religions among these Hebrew School students, the more profound lessons about survival don't seem entirely lost.

“Like, we’re lucky that we can read the Torah, and like, when there was a Holocaust going on if people were seen reading the Torah or studying Judaism, they’d probably be killed, so we’re lucky.”

“If what happened didn’t happen, then we wouldn’t be talking to you right now.”

outro – students singing “I have a little dreidel…”

For NHPR News, this is Avishay Artsy in Nashua.