Kesher Talk

Is Hannukah the Jewish Christmas? No. The AP chronicles Jews trying to celebrate the holiday without reinforcing such notions:

Only one other Jewish family lives in Wendy Grosser's Minneapolis neighborhood, where the Christmas season arrived with twinkling lights and Nativity scenes on front lawns. Her son and two daughters, all under age 8, know their friends will soon gather with their families, ripping ribbon from piles of gifts. But Grosser, a Conservative Jew, won't compete by giving a bundle of toys to her own children as Hanukkah begins at sundown tonight.

Like many American Jews, she is resisting the pull of the holidays' close timing - an annual occurrence that has spread a misperception about Hanukkah, that its religious significance is nearly equivalent to that of Christmas.

"We are trying to emphasize its unimportance," Grosser said of the Jewish holiday, also known as the Festival of Lights. "I didn't want to do a big party because it glorifies it too much."

Hanukkah is the third-most observed Jewish holiday in the United States after Passover and Yom Kippur, according to surveys, but it is less significant under Jewish law than those two holidays and four others, including the weekly Sabbath and Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year.

And Aish.com has a cute explanation in cartoon form.

posted by William @ 12/22/2003 08:56:55 AM