local
Fun Activities Available for
Local Jews on Christmas
Jarrad Saff ren | Staff Writer
nachos and breakfast fried rice, among
other items.

Lee How Fook has a 4.3 out of fi ve
rating from 224 Google reviews. In
that Instagram post, Middle Child
Clubhouse called it “hands down, my
favorite restaurant in Chinatown.”
Y ou’re Jewish. It’s Christmas. Few
places are open, so what to do? It’s
the annual question.

Th is year, you can just stay in and
celebrate Chanukah, since the fi nal
night is on Christmas. But what if you
want to go out? Locally, there are more
answers than just getting Chinese food
and seeing a movie, though that is
always a good option.

Here’s a brief guide to what you
can do in the Philadelphia area on
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

In the late 2010s, the museum changed
the name of this event from Being Jewish
at Christmas to Being__at Christmas.

It wanted to make it more inclusive
to Christians looking for something
to do later in the day, to people from
other religions and to the non-religious,
according to Dan Samuels, the muse-
um’s director of public programs.

And the activities on the schedule
are fun for the whole family. At 10:15
a.m., there’s an interactive kids con-
cert with bubbles, balloons and pup-
pets. An hour later, the Philadelphia
Suns will perform a “1,000+ year old
Chinese lion dance” that takes place
during the Chinese New Year, accord-
ing to an email about the event. And
in the aft ernoon, kids and parents can
take workshops on hip-hop dance and
percussion instruments.

If you buy tickets in advance, your
kids can get in for $10, and you can pay
$15. Th e price goes up to $20 for both
groups on the day of the event, unless
you’re a museum member, in which
case you can get in for free.

Find a Light Show
Light shows are oft en defi ned not
just by resplendence, but by long car
lines, too. Avoid those by rolling up on
Christmas Eve or Day to displays that
remain open despite the holiday.

8 The Being __ at Christmas event at the Weitzman National Museum of
American Jewish History event for families.

Israeli restaurant Zahav’s “tradi-
tional Jewish Christmas celebration
returns with dinner and a movie at
Lilah,” according to an Instagram post
promoting the gathering. Th is event is
actually on Dec. 22, but its Christmas
theme qualifi es it for this list. Lilah is a
venue on North Front Street.

Th e evening will begin with a “four-
course feast,” as the post explains, that
includes fi ve salads, dim sum dump-
lings, hot and sour soup, Peking duck,
steamed buns and sesame sugar donuts.

Th e movie, which will start a half hour
aft er the dinner, “is a surprise.”
A $150 ticket is for a pair and covers
food but not drinks.

Watch “The Fabelmans”
The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History welcomes
everybody to its Christmas Day event for families.

Th ere are plenty of options in that
category. And those include some of
the best, like the Holiday Light Show
at Shady Brook Farm in Bucks County,
which features millions of lights, the
Deck the Hall Light Show at Dilworth
Park, which illuminates City Hall, and
the West Chester Griswolds, or the
local family that imitates the Chevy
Chase-led unit in National Lampoon’s
“Christmas Vacation” by brightening
its home with “more than 100,000
computer-controlled lights,” according
to a Visit Philadelphia listing.

Visit Philly also has a full list of light
shows that you can visit during the hol-
DECEMBER 22, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
iday season: visitphilly.com/articles/
philadelphia/top-holiday-lights-attrac- tions-in-philadelphia/.

The Christmas Eve Chinatown
Dinner Middle Child Clubhouse, the bar and
restaurant on Front Street, and Lee
How Fook, the Chinese restaurant on
North 11th Street, are co-hosting an
event at which you can pay $55 a per-
son and “get everything,” family-style,
according to an Instagram post pro-
moting the evening. “Everything,” in
this case, means a lot of really good
Chinese food, like crab Rangoon
Steven Spielberg’s “Th e Fabelmans” has
not done well in theaters since com-
ing out on Nov. 11, making just $8.7
million despite its $40 million bud-
get. It’s the worst-performing movie in
the 50-plus-year career of Hollywood’s
“most commercially successful director
of all time,” as Spielberg’s Wikipedia
page describes him.

Yet despite the poor box offi ce per-
formance, the Jewish director’s com-
ing-of-age fi lm based on himself is
acclaimed by both viewers and critics.

It has a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes,
an 82% rating on Fandango and a 7.9/10
on IMDb. Time’s Stephanie Zacharek
called it the best fi lm of 2022. Th e
New Yorker’s Anthony Lane wrote that
it was “touched with the madness of
love.” You should be skeptical if only the
audience or only the critics like a
movie. But if they both like a fi lm, it’s
probably worth your time. JE
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
Photos by Mario Manzoni
Go to the Weitzman National
Museum of American Jewish
History’s Being__at Christmas
Event The Jewish Christmas Dinner
and a Movie Event



local
Local Organizations
Receive State
Security Grants
Andy Gotlieb | JE EDITOR
G ov. Tom Wolf announced on Dec.

15 nearly $4 million in funding to
support security enhancement proj-
ects for 93 nonprofits, including several
Jewish institutions in the Philadelphia
area. “While it’s a shame this has been
necessary, I’m proud to have secured
nearly $20 million over the past three
years to protect Pennsylvania’s diverse
and vulnerable communities from
hate-driven violence,” Wolf said in a
prepared statement. “I look forward to
the day when the goodness of human-
ity prevails.”
tion category for single bias hate crime
incidents,” as identified by the FBI’s
Hate Crime Statistics publication, such
as race/ethnicity/ancestry, religion,
sexual orientation, disability, gender
and gender identity.

Applicants could apply for grant
awards ranging from $5,000 to
$150,000 for security enhancements.

The money can be used for safety and
security planning, safety and security
equipment and technology, training,
building upgrades, vulnerability and
threat assessments, and other security
enhancements. Local organizations receiving grants
include: THE UNWANTED
BY PETER CLENOTT
AVAILABLE ON
AMAZON AND
BARNES & NOBLE
“Germany has just invaded Poland; 14-year-old Hana Ziegler, the product of
an illicit affair, is being driven by her grandfather and her psychiatrist to a
euthanasia center; 16-year-old Silke Hartenstein graces the covers of Nazi
propaganda magazines; Avi Kreisler is a Munich police detective rounded
up for Dachau; David McAuliffe’s patrician father wants his eldest son
elected first Catholic president of the United States. In the aftermath of war,
revenge brings these four people together in ways unimaginable.”
Learn more at: https://peterclenott.squarespace.com or Level Best Books:
https://www.levelbestbooks.us/ or purchase at Amazon or Barnes & Noble
Bucks County
Mid-States Habonim Camping
Association, Inc., $24,000
Delaware County
Judith Creed Horizons for Achieving
Independence, $75,000
Montgomery County
Brotherhood Temple Brith Achim,
$24,814 Congregation Beth Am Israel,
$25,000 Kaiserman Jewish Community
Center, $40,000
Kohelet Yeshiva, $108,419
Governor Tom Wolf licensed under CC BY 2.0
Gov. Tom Wolf
Wolf signed House Bill 859 to create
the Nonprofit Security Grant Program
in November 2019, one year after the
Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue com-
plex shooting.

Administered by the Pennsylvania
Commission on
Crime and
Delinquency, the program supports
grants to nonprofits that principally
serve individuals, groups or institu-
tions included within “a bias motiva-
Philadelphia County
Drizin-Weiss Post 215 Jewish War
Veterans of the United States Of
America, Inc., $84,333
Penn Hillel, $25,000
PCCD plans to release another
Nonprofit Security Grant Fund
Program solicitation in January. More
information about PCCD’s Nonprofit
Security Grant Fund Program and the
application process can be found on
PCCD’s website at pccd.pa.gov/. JE
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