Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
Hanukkah
The Latest
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Food Giant Bagel Menorah Gave Bethesda Toasty Glow
Chew on this: Our post-Hanukkah prize for the year’s best menorah goes to the “Bagel-Norah,” a 10-foot-tall model made from 400 bagels. Who came up with all the dough for this project? Chabad Bethesda in Maryland, whose previous Hanukkah extravaganzas have included giant menorahs of ice, Legos and jelly beans. “You can either just do…
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The Schmooze WATCH: These Grandmas Rolled Joints and Got High for Hanukkah
Talk about a lit Hanukkah. Elite Daily rallied together four grandmothers to sit down with so-called “weed smoker extraordinaire” Evan Jones and get the ultimate crash course in joint rolling — just in time for the Festival of Lights. Watch below for a whole lot of weed smoking, latke eating, Hebrew singing and a pretty…
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Community Inside the Jewish Community of Fort Smith, Arkansas
Have you seen the John Wayne film “True Grit”? It’s set in Fort Smith, Arkansas. This is how I explain my annual holiday vacation destination to anyone who asks. My wife and I have been coming here every Christmas for the past eight years to visit her family. In all the years of visiting this…
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Opinion ‘Jewish Youth, Learn To Shoot’?
In the communities I sing and pray with, Hanukkah is all about light, freedom and hope. Not so much about war. That was the choice of the ancient rabbis too. Instead of writing about the Maccabees’ war against the Hellenists, the Talmud chose to tell us only one thing: there was a miracle when oil…
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Community Dreideling Down in Dixie
A friend from Georgia once joked to me, “Everyone down here celebrates Christmas, even if you don’t celebrate Christmas.” The meaning of a Christmas tree in a Jewish home is different in a rural Southern town than it is in a Northern industrialized city. The story of Jewish assimilation and acceptance in the South has…
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Breaking News Hungarian Rabbi Rejects Far-Right Party’s Hanukkah Greetings
(JTA) – A prominent rabbi from Budapest rejected an unusual Hanukkah greeting from the far-right Jobbik party, citing its alleged anti-Semitism. Rabbi Slomo Koves, leader of the Orthodox Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation, in an open letter Wednesday spurned the greeting his office received earlier this week from the party’s chairman, Gabor Vona. “It’s a nice…
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Community WATCH: A Moving Yiddish Hanukkah Song For 2016
Among the numerous meanings Hanukkah has accrued over the centuries, the one that feels most urgent to me now is the opportunity to recall that bravery in the face of tyranny need not be confined to Jewish history. The tired, poor and huddled masses still yearn to breathe free, and Hanukkah is a reminder that…
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Fast Forward WATCH: When ‘Hanukkah Harry’ Saved Christmas
Christians have Santa Claus, but Jews got “Hanukka Harry”
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