Menorah - ok for non-Jew?
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Anonymous
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If you learn just a tiny bit about Chanukah you would learn that a Chanukah menorah is 100% a symbol and a rallying point! It’s a symbol of Jewish resistance and survival against attacks from anti-Semites, since the very first one ever created.
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Anonymous
October 7 was an attack on the colonial state of Israel, not Judaism. |
Anonymous
Christmas trees are pagan. |
Anonymous
It only offends bigoted Jews, which is another reason that it’s great to do. |
Anonymous
Yule logs are pagan. |
Anonymous
Please keep your ignorance out of this. Menorah is a symbol of defense against people like you, evangelicals. |
Anonymous
As long as you buy the kit from a Jew, it’s all good. |
Anonymous
| I'm Jewish. I don't think it's "wrong" but I do think it's a bit weird. |
Anonymous
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I am sure some people consider it appropriation but I have several Jewish friends who don't and when my (totally secular) DD expressed an interest in the menorah and Hanukah, one of those friends bought her one with a book about the tradition and it's meaning so we've been doing it the last few years. I have not put it in the window but would be happy to do so as a form of solidarity with Jewish friends and neighbors.
Hanukah and Purim have always struck me as Jewish traditions that people are happy to share with non-Jews. It's not like trying to take yom kippur off of work and fasting -- they are festive holidays with seasonal implications, more cultural than religious. It doesn't seem that different from putting up a Christmas tree and exchanging gifts on the 25th, which my family also does even though we are not Christian. As with Hanukah, we taught DD where these traditions come from and why people do them (both the Christian and pagan Yule origins). Some of our ancestors were Christians, some pagans, perhaps even some Jewish -- we are both European mutts. None of this seems like appropriation to me because we aren't pretending to be anything we're not. |
Anonymous
It was also an attack on Jews (and on random nationals of other places who just happened to work near Gaza), but I guess you seem to think it was totally justified regardless. |
Anonymous
Has your friend confused Chanukah with being an important Jewish holiday? It's not. |
Anonymous
I'm jewish too and don't see anything wrong with this. Hanukkah is not in the torah, it's a celebration of a war victory. |
Anonymous
In American it is.... |
Anonymous
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I don't know, but I teach high school and several of my Jewish students were talking about their "Chanukah bushes" (Christmas trees) last week, claiming they have them every year.
One of my Jewish students also brought me a box of something he'd baked with his mom, which he called "Christmas crack", and seemed to be chocolate covered crackers with seasalt and crushed candycanes. It had a card with Rudolph on it and his mom had written "Merry Christmas" inside, so... |
Anonymous
No, it’s still not an important Jewish holiday, even here. It gets more attention here from a lot of Jews than it does elsewhere, because there’s another big holiday around the same time of year that a lot of us don’t celebrate but the wider culture does, but that doesn’t make it important. |