US Jews plan smaller Hanukkah celebrations amid virus

Jewish Americans from a variety of branches of the faith are celebrating Hanukkah with smaller-than-usual gatherings this year, in hopes of keeping the year-end holiday safe but still joyful as coronavirus cases spike across the country.

Many Jewish Americans are already accustomed to more intimate celebrations of a holiday focused more on the home than on the synagogue, including Haredim or ultra-Orthodox communities. So the recent successful Supreme Court challenge to New York restrictions on in-person worship by some Orthodox groups won't mean much as far as their Hanukkah plans.

A family watches the display of Hanukkah menorah in New York. AP

But celebrating Hanukkah during a pandemic still poses a challenge to some Jewish Americans, for whom the holiday has risen in prominence in part because its social elements and timing line up with non-Jewish holidays such as Christmas.

That has often provided a reason to host get-togethers, said Rabbi Avi Shafran, director of public affairs at Agudath Israel of America, a plaintiff in the court case.

The eight-day holiday beginning Thursday at sunset, also known as the Jewish Festival of Lights, honors the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem during the second century BC following victory over the Syrians. Celebrated with the nightly lighting of the menorah, it usually falls in December but sometimes in late November.

Hauer linked Hanukkah's underlying message of the Jewish people's endurance, “the triumph of the spirit against tremendous odds,” to the present-day coronavirus crisis.

An oversized Christmas ornament sits in a dry fountain near what’s described as the world's largest Hanukkah menorah, in New York. AP

“There’s been a tremendous power of the spirit to continue to practice and continue to worship and celebrate, and find new ways to celebrate,” he said.

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Hanukkah is more of a minor holiday in Israel, though it is still a festive occasion marked by communal candle-lighting gatherings, school vacation and the consumption of deep-fried, and often elaborately decorated, doughnuts known as sufganiyot.

With confirmed coronavirus cases quickly rising, the Israeli government this week announced plans for a nighttime curfew to prevent large public gatherings but subsequently backtracked. Instead, it has encouraged people to celebrate at home with their immediate families.

Rabbi Hara Person, the chief executive of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, urged celebrants everywhere to remain “very cognizant about what our home gatherings look like” in the pandemic context.

Hanukkah is “about spreading light and spreading joy,” Person said, and “we need to maintain that idea of spreading light by not spreading infection.”

Associated Press