Why Chanukah matters

How a ‘minor’ holiday unites us, warns against assimilation and helps us feel American

by Jared Sichel for JewishJournal

 There’s a certain narrative about Chanukah that has become near conventional wisdom among American Jews, and it goes like this:

Chanukah is a fun holiday that is big in America, thanks to its proximity to Christmas. But really, it’s a “minor” holiday that is more impactful culturally and sociologically than religiously, and it can’t really compare to the “big” ones of Yom Kippur and Passover.

And that’s all true. But it’s also too simple.   

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Where Chanukah Is Really Big

Hilary Danailova for The Jewish Week   

A little light is nice — but since everything is on a grander scale in Houston, winter truly is a festival of lights, thousands of them, for Chanukah and beyond. You’ll find them twinkling from the windows of houses; illuminating trees and streetlamps in the city’s many characteristic neighborhoods;

the Ann and Stephen Kaufman Jewish Book & Arts Fair at the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center, where 10,000 Houstonians annually attend two weeks of literary talks, films, performances, and other cultural programs. Only this weekend, alongside three films, you can catch a concert of Mediterranean folk music by the Berlin-Tel Aviv band Baladino; a culinary demonstration for “The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook”; and an evening with New Yorker cartoonist Bruce Eric Kaplan exclusively for 20- and 30-somethings.
   
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For more great Hanukkah ideas, check out our    page.

For even more great ideas, visit our Hanukkah Holiday Spotlight Kit

Mike Nussbaum, the Oldest Working Jewish Actor, Tells All

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

Laura Hodes for The Jewish Daily Forward   

At 91, Mike Nussbaum has been called the oldest professional actor in theater. He’s currently playing the role of Gregory Solomon in Arthur Miller’s 1968 play “The Price” at the Timeline Theatre in Chicago. After spending about 17 years in the exterminating business, Nussbaum got his acting start with playwright David Mamet, eventually appearing in Broadway productions of “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “American Buffalo.” In Chicago, Nussbaum is a theater legend, and the role of Solomon — a Russian-American furniture dealer — seems almost as though it was written specifically for him.

“In brief, a phenomenon,” Miller wrote of Solomon in his notes for the play. “(He is) a man nearly ninety but still straight-backed and the air of his massiveness still with him. He has perfected a way of leaning on his cane without appearing weak.”

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Deaf star of new ‘Spring Awakening’ explains how her bat mitzvah led to her Oscar

 With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

By Curt Schleier for JTA.org

When the rock musical “Spring Awakening” premiered on Broadway, it was a critical darling and financial success. It won almost every major award possible, including eight Tonys, four Drama Desk Awards and even a Grammy.

So perhaps it’s not so surprising that it’s been revived on Broadway, even if it’s only been six years since it ended its successful run.

Certainly more startling, though, is that the current production of “Spring Awakening” features a cast of deaf actors signing their lines — and songs.

Even one of the show’s most high-profile stars, Marlee Matlin, concedes that people might consider the idea — deaf actors performing a musical — a bit strange.

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Author Interview // Jennifer Weiner

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

Moment Magazine

That’s No Way to Treat a ‘Lady Book’

What makes great literature? Do Jeffrey Eugenides and Stephen King write beach reads or books worthy of the canon—or both? And where do women writers fit in? One of the biggest advocates for breaking down barriers between popular and critically revered books is a writer whose trademark is creating quirky Jewish women who worry about their weight and eventually find true love—and themselves in the process. The author of 12 novels that have sold more than four and a half million copies, Jennifer Weiner has leveraged her fame—and her 100,000-plus Twitter followers—to lead the charge against what she sees as a bias against fiction written by and for women. Even people who don’t read her books know her as a thorn in the side of the publishing world.

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Fred Savage: Child star-turned-director returns to acting in ‘The Grinder’

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With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

by Gerri Miller for JewishJournal

He looks almost as boyish as when he played Kevin Arnold on “The Wonder Years,” but Fred Savage is now 39, a married father of three, and three decades into a TV and movie career that has kept him steadily employed as an actor and director. Working mostly behind the scenes in the last 10 years, directing series such as “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “Modern Family” and “2 Broke Girls” while doing animation voiceovers, Savage unexpectedly finds himself back in front of the camera this season in Fox’s comedy “The Grinder.”

Sent the script by executive producer and friend Nick Stoller, Savage was surprised to learn he wasn’t wanted as a director. The job: playing attorney Stewart Sanderson, whose older brother, Dean (Rob Lowe), returns home to Idaho and thinks he can join the family law firm without passing the bar just because he’s played a legal eagle on TV. Dean’s faux expertise proves to be invaluable, much to Stewart’s bewildered exasperation.

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Sofia Mechetner, the new face of Dior, is a 14 year old Israeli from Holon

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

By ck for Jewlicious

How did someone with no modelling experience go from caring for her siblings and helping her Mom clean homes and offices to being THE face of Christian Dior? 14-year-old Sofia Mechetner’s meteoric and unprecedented rise to the pinnacle of fashion modelling is a modern day fairy tale featuring ups and downs, twists and turns, culminating in a very happy ending. Bear with me, this is a crazy story as documented in a video (Hebrew) by Channel 2.

Sofia’s Russian born parents divorced and her father left the family 4 years ago. Sofia’s mother was forced to work at all hours as a cleaning woman, earning a paltry 4000 shekels a month (just over $1000). This was barely enough to keep her 3 children fed and housed in a one bedroom apartment in Holon, a suburb just outside Tel-Aviv. Sofia stood 5’8″ and on an almost daily basis, people told her to try her hand at either basketball or modeling.

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