Probably my only holiday post I'll make ...

[quietprofanity]

Sometimes, in the Jewish community, there is a lot of talk about the meaning of Hannukah and whether its too commercialized. Also about its kind of shady origins. Daniel Radosh has a good argument for the prominence of Hannukah in American life here. Also, he disses that sexist, idiot jackass Christopher Hitchens, which is always fun.

Yeah, it's a year old. I still like it.

Comments

[sasha-bee.livejournal.com]

i like that argument, about how hanukkah has evolved to become a major holiday. there are a lot of mixed feelings about that at the temple where i work- it manifests itself for me in the library by the fact that hanukkah has by far the largest number of kids books written about it- like ten times that of rosh hashanah, let's say, and about double that of purim, the next biggest in terms of volumes of kids books. (a weird way to measure the importance of a religious holiday, i grant you.) on the one hand the kids love it, and the school makes a big deal of it for the kids, but then there are always the parents who say, "oh it's not a major holiday, it's just a minor feast day..." etc. Even the cataloguing system I use to assign call numbers to the books lumps it in "minor festivals". And I've always felt that that kind of judgement was inappropriate for a classification system, but who cares what I think. Anyway thanks for posting that; it's given me some food for thought and a way to explain the signficance it's taken on for our members.

[quietprofanity.livejournal.com]

You know, I like to be all laisse-faire about Hannukah, but I was totally distraught when I realized I had forgotten about it and had no candles. So I really should admit it DOES have importance. It was the only major link to Judaism for much of my early life.

I think Hannukah may have a lot of kids books because it's the most story-worthy, too. (So is Purim.) A Yom Kippur book isn't that fun. "We're not going to eat. We're going to feel bad about everything bad we did. Isn't that GREAT?"

But anyway, I'm glad you liked it, as well.