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Chanukah Continued from Page 19
“It is good to remember that (Chanukah) is not a major holiday,
but it has caught on because everybody has a winter festival that’s
related to light, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with cele-
brating ours,” said Rabbi Leah Berkowitz of Congregation Kol Ami
in Elkins Park.

“If we’re celebrating (Chanukah) and not acknowledging other
Jewish holidays, then that’s a problem. But if you’re doing Sukkot
and Passover and Shavuot and the High Holidays and Shabbat — if
you’re doing all of those things and you want to make a big deal
out of Chanukah, then that’s fine.”
Ah, but what of that semi-queasy irony — a New York Times
op-ed from this time last year went so far as to call it “hypoc-
risy” — in how most secular American Jews have come to cele-
brate Chanukah, a holiday born out of resisting assimilation?
Hypocrisy’s probably a bit extreme; many families are trying simply
to safely shepherd their children through the minefield of holiday
season Christmas envy without suffering righteous admonishment.

Still. “There is a certain irony to how Chanukah is celebrated because
if we look at the historical, biblical origins of Chanukah, it’s very
much about not assimilating,” Berkowitz confirmed. “It’s this small
group of Jews that fought because they didn’t want to assimilate,
because they wanted to keep observing Judaism in a strict way.

So ... that (Chanukah) is the holiday that’s become the Jewish
Christmas is the biggest irony.”
Religious school students light up the darkness at
Congregation Kol Ami in Elkins Park.  Photo by Rabbi Leah Berkowitz
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1969-2019 The Maccabees fought and killed to avoid being absorbed into
the Hellenized world all around them. They adhered to a strict
interpretation of what it meant to be Jewish and literally would’ve
rather died than become the Hellenized Jews they reviled, who ate
pork and didn’t circumcise their male children and participated in
pagan rituals.

Many see it as just another battle in the age-old war between
fundamentalism and cosmopolitanism — conservatives and tradi-
tionalists versus the reform-minded. Throw in a megalomaniacal
king in Antiochus IV who, by most historical accounts, was far
more hostile to observant Jews than his dynastic predecessors, and
you’ve got ready-made bellicosity. Just add oil ... or take it away.

But perhaps the question shouldn’t be whether the Maccabees
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would’ve approved of what Chanukah’s become, primarily because
the answer is too obvious. Of course, they wouldn’t have. How
most American Jews celebrate Chanukah today would’ve terrified
Judah and company, and these weren’t men who scared easily.

But so what? So what if how we celebrate their most unlikely
victory, and the miracle that followed, isn’t necessarily in keeping
with their highest ideals? So what if while our Hebrew school
kids sing Mattathias bold, five brave sons had he: Eliezer, Simon,
John, Jonathan and Judah Maccabee, we’re out buying and wrap-
ping the latest must-have iteration of PlayStation, attending to our
most unseemly consumerist compulsions just like all the other
Christmas-celebrating Americans?
According to clergy on both sides of the aisle, Chanukah and
Christmas, despite very real differences, both exist to light up the
darkness. And the way to make sure that Chanukah has not lost
its power to illuminate — literally, spiritually, existentially — is
not by abandoning it’s celebration; it doesn’t even necessitate a
cold-turkey approach to the arguably maladjusted Chanukah
Frankenstein that we hath wrought.

It’s just by using Chanukah for some good, too. Addition by
addition. Keeping the frivolity, keeping the fun, and injecting some
meaning, too. Clergy in the know say the power of Chanukah is all
in how you use it; you know, motion in the ocean type stuff.

“One thing that I do to bring meaning into the season is I do
a tzedakah menorah,” said Berkowitz about a custom born out of
family Chanukahs that she’s exported to Kol Ami’s religious school.

“So every night, I do light a candle. But instead of giving a gift for
each candle, I give tzedakah to a certain cause. And I try to pick
causes that would be connected to people I’d be giving gifts to.”
But the clerics agree: living your best Chanukah isn’t about
extremes. Avoid the baby and bathwater scenario.

“You don’t have to do (your version of the tzedakah menorah)
instead of gifts,” Berkowitz clarified. “Because, while we don’t want
to compete with Christmas, we want to make Chanukah as beau-
tiful as any other holiday so that kids have warm memories of it
and don’t feel deprived.

“So I wouldn’t say don’t get your kids gifts, I would say while
you’re giving gifts, also consider tzedakah and giving your kid the
opportunity to give tzedakah and letting them know that that’s a
gift also.”
See Chanukah, Page 22
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