Images of Hanukkah from Around the World

The global Jewish community may not seem like it is growing larger these days, but it is growing richer.

The international Jewish outreach organization, Shavei Israel recently posted a video comprising images from some of the world's "newest" Jewish communities.

In truth, some of these communities have been around much longer than Jews have lived in North America, the UK, or many other parts of the world. But their reconnection to the "tribe" offers a new and broader understanding of what it means to be a Jew.

Video courtesy of Shavei Israel.

Hanukkah is also a special time for olim (immigrants) to make aliyah to Israel. This year, 76 olim from North America made the leap - just hours before they were to light the first candle for Hanukkah.
 

Eden, Mia and Hila arrive with their handmade hanukkiahs ready for lighting.

 

Olim from North America, upon their arrival Dec. 20 

Photos by Yonit Schiller and courtesy of Nefesh B'Nefesh.


Here in North America, the Occupy Judaism movement continues to explore new aspects of celebrating unity. Participants reunited on the chilly streets of New York City to light the Hanukkah candles. A sampling of photos from the third night of Hanukkah can be seen by clicking on OccupyJudaism's Facebook page.

May the last nights of this year's Hanukkah be the brightest for all!

Newt Gingrich: Invented People and the Search for the Jewish Vote

Newt Gingrich - Gage Skidmore

Newt Gingrich’s comment that the Palestinians are an “invented people,” last week brings to mind dark memories for Jews as well.

Old stereotypes die hard, and so do political generalizations that serve only to rally votes. The Jewish people’s right and worthiness to claiming a nation for itself is continually being challenged, as is its right to return to a land that Jews have lived in for thousands of years.

Yet to be straight about Gingrich’s ill-timed remark, there is validity in his statement. All peoples and all nations are contrived. We are all invented peoples.

We all hail from the either the destruction of or the championing of political and cultural conquest. Whether we claim the United States, France, Japan, Spain or South Africa as our home, we all have been transformed by history and the migration of previous generations.

Bhutanese refugees in Beldangi Refugee Camp, Nepal - Alemaugil

Does that mean then, that today’s North American Jews should not be able to claim a home anywhere but where their ancestors lived? And which ancestors do we turn to for validation? Those that lived within Judea, or those who created the Ashkenazi and Sephardic kingdoms that influenced contemporary Jewish tradition?

Jewish boy in a tallit, East Side New York, 1911 - Bain News Svc

First Thanksgiving at Plymouth (1914) - Jennie A Brownscombe

Does it mean that Christians have no place on the shores of the Americas, since their ancestors migrated from another continent?

Does it mean that only Jews and Muslims who can definitively trace their heritage to the ancient inhabitants of what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories should be allowed to “return” to their homeland?

Pioneers in Israel, between 1930 and 1940 - PikiWiki Israel

It is interesting that Gingrich feels that he must underscore Middle East conflict in order to win Jewish votes. The dispute was never really a question about the Palestinians’ legitimacy as a people, but whether Jewish Israelis would be allowed to live in peace with their neighbors.

Within its doctrine, Judaism accords recognition to all peoples, be they Jewish or not. Maimonides points out in Hilchot Melachim that the Jew is commanded “to visit the sick of the stranger and to bury their dead with the dead of the Israelites … for the ways of peace (mipnei darkhei shalom)”.  The fact that they are non-Jewish strangers does not lessen our obligation to recognize them as neighbors. 

Elie Wiesel builds on this point in his book From the Kingdom of Memory (Simon and Schuster, NY, 1990), with a story about the patriarch Abraham’s visit among strangers, by noting that there are several different words and meanings for “stranger” in Hebrew . Yet recognizing one as a stranger does not necessarily mean that he is outside of God’s protection. What determines that is not their status as a Jew or a non Jew, but their intent, and their actions.

Palestinian children - Tarek

Events in history may set us apart from the nochri, the stranger, but we are defined as much by their humanity, their needs and their legitimacy, as they are by ours. As Wiesel says, “Man needs the other to be human – just as God needs man to be God.” How we regard the stranger’s status says a lot about the importance we place in how others view our own.

Abraham Journeying Into the Land of the Canaan - Gustave Doré