The War on Hanukkah is Real — Your Chocolate Maccabees are Really Santas
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Lior Zaltzman November 12, 2015
Dear friends, winter is coming. And with the cold wind comes the war on Hanukkah. It’s real, and it’s Santa shaped.
When Jennie Rivlin Roberts, owner of , ordered these cute maccabees made out of chocolate — the very same chocolate used to make their seasonal gelt coins — to sell to her Jewish customers, she probably thought: They’re adorable, Jewish, kosher and delicious. What could possibly go wrong?
Little did she know.
In fact, those cute maccabees are but a chocolaty Trojan horse! Inside the wrapping of proud foil Jewish warriors, an army of Santas is hidden, ready to remind unsuspecting Jewish children their holiday is so second-rate, it can’t even afford its own Maccabee-shaped chocolate molds.
Observe:
Image by Modern Tribe
When Rivlin Roberts found out about this deception, she was obviously shocked: “The next thing I did was call our supplier, who are way more observant Jews than I, who basically said, ‘Yeah, what of it?’ They said they couldn’t afford to purchase a new chocolate mold and chose, instead, to use the chocolate company’s Santa mold. His question to me was, “is this blasphemous or offensive to someone, what’s the big deal”?”
Blasphemy! Hanukkah, the festival of lights, one of the greatest Jewish holidays that has no basis in the Bible, deserves better than second hand Christmas molds!
My friends, it’s time to take on this battle against our beloved holiday. Others are already massing on the front lines, and we must join them. Only we can make Hanukkah great again!
Perhaps if we all pool our gelt together, we can help the company purchase new molds.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
[H/T Heeb]
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
