c. 1998 Religion News Service

NEWTON, Mass. _ Fed up with the”Christmas-ization”, or commercialization, of Hanukkah, one large Massachusetts synagogue is fighting back.

Even as many American Jews ascribe an inflated importance to Hanukkah to give their children a Jewish alternative to Christmas, Newton’s Temple Emanuel, the largest Conservative synagogue in New England, is bucking the tide and downplaying the holiday.

Other synagogues may stage major congregational celebrations, but Temple Emanuel’s 1,400 member families mark the holiday with low-key, private commemorations at home. Congregational celebrations have been restricted to Judaism’s major biblically mandated holidays, such as Passover.”Children who celebrate the richness of the Jewish year at other times will not feel left out,”said Temple Emanuel’s Rabbi Andrew Warmflash.

Hanukkah begins at sundown on Dec. 13 and runs eight days, each one marked by the lighting of a corresponding number of candles in a special candelabra called a”menorah”or”Hanukkiah.”The holiday celebrates the purification of the ancient Jerusalem Temple following the victory of traditionalist Jews _ the Maccabees _ over the Syrian Greeks who occupied Palestine some 2,200 years ago and sought to eradicate Judaism.

Until recently, Hanukkah celebrations were mostly low-key in keeping with the holiday’s minor religious status. Holiday highlights included traditional fried foods associated with the oil used to rekindle the Jerusalem Temple candelabra and a childrens’ game played with a”dreidel,”or spinning top, that recalled the Maccabees’ victory. Gifts were generally restricted to small amounts of money given to children.

But no more. Today, Hanukkah is a merchandiser’s dream. Even synagogues have jumped on the bandwagon, offering”Hanukkah gift sales”that have become major fundraising opportunities.”People are going to spend money,”said Rabbi Alan Rabishaw of Stephen S. Wise Temple, a Reform congregation of 3,000 families in Los Angeles.”The temple is going to make money or Macy’s is going to make money. I’d rather the money go to the temple.” Many American Jews have taken to decorating their homes with blue and white Hanukkah bunting or lights in the manner of Christmas decorations. Hanukkah cards have also become hugely popular.

Hallmark spokesman Michelle Buckley said an estimated 11 million Hanukkah cards will be exchanged in North America this season _ an increase of 1 million compared to five years ago. Buckley said Hanukkah has equalled Rosh Hashanah _ the Jewish New Year and one of Judaism’s holiest holidays _ in the number of Jewish greeting cards sold.

Gift giving has also exploded. In some Jewish homes, children receive another present on each of Hanukkah’s eight days.

Temple Emanuel may turn its back on such grand displays, but other Jews _ including those who run Jewish-interest retail operations _ say fighting Hanukkah’s commercialization is a fruitless rear-guard action.

Offering no apologies, retailers for whom Hanukkah has become a leading source of income insist that failing to cater to the ever-growing Hanukkah market would be financial suicide.”From a retail point of view, we must cater to trends _ otherwise we’d be nuts,”said Ronna Weinstock, a marketing official at”The Source for Everything Jewish,”a mail-order company based in Niles, Ill.”It (Hanukkah) is an area appealing to interfaith families, interested Christians, as well as traditional and not-so-observant Jewish families … Hanukkah is one of the major highlights in the American setting … We try very hard to accommodate all tastes,”said Weinstock, whose company catalogue features menorahs with sports, mah jongg and feline themes.

But some who profit from holiday sales also say they try to keep Hanukkah’s religious theme paramount.

Meyer Eichler, owner of a three-store chain of Jewish-item shops in New York, said he tries not to contribute to trivializing Hanukkah’s message of Jewish religious particularism.

Eichler said he sells only those Hanukkah products that do not cross the often fuzzy line separating the holiday’s true meaning from secular America’s shop-till-you-drop holiday season mindset.”We try to enhance the religious aspects of the holiday,”he said.

That means Beanie Babies are out at Eichler’s stores. But because they have some connection to Judaism, menorahs decorated with Disney characters are in. Likewise, Eichler rejects Hanukkah window lights he thinks too closely resemble Christmas lights. However he does sell electric Hanukkah mobiles that resemble a string of lit dreidels.

America Online’s Jewish Community Online also tries to keep Hanukkah commercialism within limits, while acting as an Internet clearing house for an extensive array of holiday-connected gift and ritual items.

Nora Contini, Jewish Community Online’s associate publisher, said her site’s broad approach to Jewish life helps combat rampant holiday commercialism. In addition to books, videos, toys, food items and gifts, the site also offers Jewish-themed discussions, news, recipes, holiday background and rabbinic advice.

At the same time, Contini defends at least some of Hanukkah’s commercialization.”We need to have revenue streams to support that community center,”she said.”We see this as a way of providing a service to Jews who, either because of where they live or time constraints, can’t get to a Jewish store.” Both Contini and Eichler said Hanukkah is one of the three busiest periods of the year for selling Jewish-themed items, along with Passover and Rosh Hashanah. Weinstock said Hanukkah accounts for one-third to one-half of The Source’s annual sales.

Hanukkah is”the season of seasons,”she said.”This is the time for us.” But others within the American Jewish community cringe when they consider what has become of a holiday ironically based on the notion of Jewish resistance to the norms of a dominant culture.

Among them is Susan H. Kahn, assistant editor of the weekly Cleveland Jewish News. In a recent column, Kahn decried what she called Hanukkah’s exploitation by business interests.”The elevation of Hanukkah into the major holiday it was never intended to be may stem, in part, from some odd notion of parity in our multicultural,politically correct society,”she wrote.”Mostly, however, the engine fueling these attempts to Christmas-ize Hanukkah is crass commercialism, pure and simple.” But Rabishaw, the Los Angeles rabbi, said Jewish leaders must come to terms with Hanukkah’s elevated status.”It’s a big holiday in our people’s lives,”said Rabishaw, whose synagogue stages an annual Friday night Hanukkah celebration featuring candle lighting, a children’s chorus and an 80-voice adult choir.”It’s a fun holiday, it’s an easy holiday to celebrate, it falls in December when everyone else is celebrating.” Simply telling Jews not to make a big deal of Hanukkah won’t work, said Rabishaw.”I can’t think of a quicker way and a better way to turn people off and let them know I am out of touch,”he said.

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If there’s any one part of the 5.6-million member American Jewish community that best resists the temptation to commercialize Hanukkah, it’s ultra-Orthodox Jews, the community’s smallest but most traditional segment.

In ultra-Orthodox families, where children go to school and generally socialize only with other Jewish children, pressure to make Hanukkah a Jewish version of Christmas is absent, said Rabbi Chaim Prus, eastern Massachusetts director of Chabad-Lubavitch, a Hasidic organization based in New York.”It would not enter into their minds that the holiday celebrated by the general society has any meaning to them,”Prus said of Chabad children.

Chabad families give their children small amounts of money or small gifts on Hanukkah, but nothing elaborate, he added. At the same time, Chabad, known for trying to get non-observant Jews to become Orthodox, also stages public menorah-lighting ceremonies, including one on the Ellipse adjacent to the White House in Washington. The events are attended mostly by non-Orthodox Jews.

But not just ultra-Orthodox Jews appear able to resist Hanukkah’s commercialization.

Rabbi Stephen Karol of the Reform Congregation Sha’aray Shalom in Hingham, Mass., said he recently polled 10th-graders in his synagogue’s religious school about the role Hanukkah should play in public-school holiday celebrations.

Given the choice between totally ignoring Hanukkah, putting it on an equal footing with Christmas or treating it as a minor Jewish holiday, a majority of the students _ to Karol’s delight _ selected the third option.”That’s the kind of approach we have taken,”he said.”I try to encourage people not to make it more than what it is.”

IR END KRESS