Rabbis Hope To Ban Christmas Trees From Jerusalem Hotels
Image by Wikimedia Commons
By Naomi Zeveloff December 21, 2016
Two of Jerusalem’s chief rabbis have urged hotel owners in the holy city not to put up Christmas trees in their lobbies or to host New Year’s celebrations.
“As the secular year ends we want to remind you that erecting a Christmas tree in a hotel contravenes Halacha [Jewish law] and that therefore it is clear that one should not erect [a tree] in a hotel,” said a letter issued by the rabbis, according to the Times of Israel.
“It is also appropriate to avoid hosting parties to mark the end of the secular year,” they wrote.
Three religions — Judaism, Islam and Christianity — consider Jerusalem a holy city. Christians cherish it as the site of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection.
A rabbinate spokesperson told the Kipa website that this week’s letter was a “private initiative,” with no bearing on the kosher certification process. Last year, the Chief Rabbinate said that a hotel’s kosher certification could not be revoked if it displayed a Christmas tree.
In a separate incident, a rabbi at Haifa’s Technion Institute of Technology advised students against entering the student union building because there was a Christmas tree there.
“It’s not a Christian religious symbol, but even worse, a pagan one,” Rabbi Elad Dokow wrote on the Srugim website to explain his position.
Contact Naomi Zeveloff at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter, @naomizeveloff
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
