Shoutout to my girl Magdalena Gudzińska-Adamczyk, a Jewish doctor, who was the only person fighting with a disgrace of a human Grzegorz Braun while he was using fire extinguisher on chanuka candles in Polish Parliment. In response he hit her and told her she is not a woman.
Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, begins in six days at sunset at December 7th.
As in past years we invite all of you to share your Chanukah celebrations with us and with all of tumblr!
Starting December 7th at sundown, I'll post a picture of my menorah in the stage of lighting for each night of Chanukah! Post your Menorah for the world to see! Tag it #chanukahproject if you want me to see, and I’ll reblog a bunch of them! Can’t wait to see how you’re celebrating this year!
so far the antisemites are handling the “colonizers tried to destroy us but even in diaspora we remain connected to our culture and indigenous homeland” holiday about as well as i thought they would
During Hanukkah 1932, just one month before Hitler came to power, Rachel Posner, wife of Rabbi Dr. Akiva Posner, took this photo of the family Hanukkah menorah from the window ledge of the family home in Kiel, Germany. The photo looks out on to the town hall building across the road, upon which hangs Nazi flags.
On the back of the photograph, Rachel Posner wrote in German (translated here):
Chanukah 5692 (1932)
"Death to Judah" So the flag says
"Judah will live forever" So the light answers
“Architectonic Menorah”, Hanukah lamp, Richard Meier (American, b. 1935), United States, 1985, tin-coated copper
Richard Meier designed each candleholder of the Hanukah lamp to represent an architectural style from various moments of persecution in Jewish history. The holder for the first night depicts an Egyptian obelisk; the last one evokes watchtowers from German concentration camps. Meier writes that the candleholders are "reminders of the common past and struggles that Jewish people have suffered and their resilience and strength" which the Hanukah story embodies.
As a Pokemon baker, I love adding my own nerdy twist to Jewish foods! ✡️ Latkes are fried potato pancakes we eat to commemorate the miracle of the oil in the story of Hanukah. These have got to be one of my favourite parts of the Festival of Lights 🤤
Greetings, friends. Several people have posted this today, and I sincerely appreciate the spirit of good will in which it was offered. But it’s really not an appropriate way to remark about Hanukah, and I want to explain why.
Jewish tradition absolutely prays for and aspires to peace. A prayer for peace is part of the core set of prayers recited at every service and traditionally said three times every day.
But Hanukah is actually a commemoration of a military victory. And the war itself was specifically fought to resist assimilation and the melding of Jewish practice into the practices of the larger surrounding population.
So the values represented by Hanukah aren’t peace, but determination to maintain our separate traditions and identity. By force if necessary.
It’s great that everyone gets to celebrate their own holidays! And it’s nice that several faith traditions have holidays this time of year. But this just happens to be a good example of the fact that different traditions’ holidays aren’t the same.
Christmas celebrates Jesus and the message of peace and goodwill to all. But Hanukah is about being true to ourselves and putting up resistance against anyone trying to not let us do that. It’s about celebrating our differences, not about how we can make it all feel the same.
So it would be better to wish everyone a happy holiday and offer specific greetings to those you know celebrate a particular holiday. May we all have the peace and freedom to be true to our faith and traditions.
Merry Christmas, to my Christian friends!
Chag sameach, to my Jewish friends!
Happy solstice, to all who mark the relative movements of the Earth and Sun!