Andras Daranyi reached across the table in one of the trendy cafes in Budapest’s old downtown Jewish district and fondly patted an unusual-looking object about the size of a bowling ball. Made of dark-gray concrete, the object had eight sides, each an equilateral triangle. Each triangle was perforated by an arrangement of between two and…
(JTA) — In a windswept parking lot near the North Sea shore, Klaas Zijlstra stands motionless as he admires his latest creation. It’s the first time he is testing the 36-foot menorah he has spent weeks designing and building in the shape of a Star of David in his metal workshop in the northern tip…
● Hanukkah in America: A History By Dianne Ashton NYU Press, 368 pages, $29.95 Hanukkah, I learned while attending a liberal Hebrew school in the 1970s, became an important Jewish holiday only in order to compete with Christmas. My teachers and, I imagine, many others said this with a mixture of sneer and pity: It…
Sending holiday greetings to loved ones for Hannukah? Skip the e-card. The U.S. Postal Service has just issued a “Hannukah Forever” stamp showing — what else? — a lit menorah. Created by Steven Bronstein, a blacksmith from Marshfield, VT, the menorah depicted on the stamp took almost a week to make. Bronstei had to forge 20 feet…
Christian Zionists in the Netherlands are building what they believe will be Europe’s largest menorah as a Hanukkah gift to the country’s Jewish community. The Hanukkah candelabrum, or hanukkiah, will be approximately 36 feet tall and made out of metal, Sara van Oordt of the Netherlands headquarters of the Christians for Israel organization told JTA…
Every week, Rabbi Yael Buechler paints her nails. Only, unlike most of us, she isn’t on the prowl for the new Essie obsession. Every manicure has a purpose: to represent that week’s Torah portion. “I started doing nail art designs back when I was in middle school, long before nail art was in fashion. One…
It has become something of a White House Chanukah tradition. For the second time, the Obama White House used a menorah from a hurricane-hit region to mark the holiday. This Chanukah, Rabbi David Bauman brought to the White House one of two 90-year-old menorahs that survived when Hurricane Sandy ravaged Temple Israel in Long Beach,…
Temple Israel of Long Beach, the Long Island synagogue damaged in Hurricane Sandy, will send a 90-year-old menorah that survived the storm to the White House for a Hanukkah party hosted by President Barack Obama on December 13, according to the New York Times. The shul lost six torahs, incurred ten feet of flooding and…
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