In 1656, Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jewish community excommunicated Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza for heresy. Today, the same community banned world-renowned Spinoza scholar trying to make a film about the philosopher.
How I would teach Hanukkah to Palestinian school children, or indeed to their parents? Robert Cohen asks. How comfortable would I find it to tell this story of Jews denied the right to express their culture, identity and history? What would go through the children’s minds as I explained our annual celebration of an armed Jewish revolt against an occupying power? And could I convey convincingly the idea of on-going Jewish vulnerability in Israel, the United States, or anywhere else?
This holiday season come shop with Mondoweiss — we’ve done the digging so you don’t have to! Here are our staff picks from gorgeous ethically sourced clothes, to Palestinian handicrafts, to hand-dipped Hanukkah candles, to books and Zoom cooking classes with one of our favorite chefs.
A coalition of Jewish organizations’s lead by the American Jewish World Service and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, invited “concerned Jews across the U.S. to unite in solidarity against the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people of Burma” by dedicating the 6th candle on the 6th night of Chanukah to the Rohingya people. Howard Horowitz asks when will these organizations also call on American Jews to honor Palestinians in a similar way.
The Hanukkah story is also a religious-political one from its beginnings – and it still is. It poses the question of how we view religious fundamentalism and separation of church and state. We need no more proof than Sheldon Adelson’s aptly named Campus Maccabees crusading against the BDS movement by way of free trips to Israel.
Soliders in the Israeli military celebrate Hanukkah. (Photo: IDF Spokesperson Facebook page) Every year since…
With the dual emergence of new trends in the modern period of Jewish life; Jewish nationalism in the form of Zionism and the increased attention paid by Jews to assimilation, the holiday of Hanukkah, a relatively minor part of the Jewish liturgical calendar has taken on a newly significant role.