The Festival of Lights at the Jewish Center of the Moriches

This year, the Jewish Festival of Lights, also known as Hanukkah, begins at sundown on Dec. 25 and ends on Jan. 2, 2025. 

With its focus on family and its connection to the past, Hanukkah continues to reinforce Jewish identity and its place in our communities, a celebration of connection to their neighbors, as well as their distinctly unique traditions.

Steven Schwarz, former ritual committee leader at the Jewish Center of the Moriches, explained that today, there is hardly any difference between Reform and Conservative celebrations. 

“Everyone has a good time,” he said. “We all give gifts. We all light the nine-candle menorah.  Some Conservative Jews might prefer to call it a Chanukia to distinguish it from the seven-candle menorah of the ancient temple.  We all eat donuts and latkes—potato pancakes—both cooked in oil, in commemoration of the miracle of the one day’s supply of holy oil that lasted eight nights.  We all say, ‘A great miracle happened there,’ but in Israel they say, ‘A great miracle happened here.’”

Hanukkah is, after all, a celebration of survival and triumph over conflict.

Recorded in the Apocrypha, Maccabees I and II, the story takes place in 168 BCE when Antiochus Epiphanes, then King of Syria, sent an army to Jerusalem, where his soldiers desecrated the Temple, the holiest place for Jews.  He then abolished Judaism and outlawed both its rituals and circumcision, installing instead altars to Zeus and other Greek deities. Under his harsh edicts, Jews who did not convert faced death.

A rebellion led by Judah Maccabee rose up and, despite being outnumbered, defeated the Syrian king, overcoming tremendous odds.  Then they reclaimed the temple and relit the ner tamid, a feature of current synagogues.   The light burned long after its supply of oil should have run out.

Over time, as Jewish families migrated—sometimes under threat—across Europe and North America, they continued the tradition of lighting the menorah, but with less emphasis on earlier traditions associated with the holiday.  Exposure to Christian holiday traditions at Christmas saw many Jewish families incorporating gift-giving and other practices into their celebrations, so that by the 1920s, most of these additions were a well-established part of the holiday, too.

Of course, in these fraught times, the conflict in the Middle East is on the minds of many in this community.  Tracy Kolsin, president of the board at The Jewish Center of the Moriches, remarked that there is concern within the community over a conflict that has brought devastation to both sides.

“The congregation wants to see peace and equality return,” he said. “There has to be a better way.”

But, as Schwarz observed, how conflicts play out is often a matter of opinion, as in “two Jews, three different opinions.”  And that, he said, applies to Hanukkah as well as the Israeli response to the Oct. 7 attack.