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Commercial Success

At Universal Studios, all the usual characters -- Spider-Man and the Rugrats -- were out in force on Sunday, Nov. 24. But they weren\'t just there for photo ops with children, instead they were lighting menorahs, spinning dreidels and eating the world\'s biggest latke at the Chanukah celebration in Universal City. \"We thought that Chanukah was one of the best Jewish holidays that lent itself to the fun family entertainment, and so we worked with a consultant and spoke with a number of rabbis from a variety of groups to create this event,\" said Brian Pope, Universal vice president of marketing services, who said he hopes that the event -- attended by Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn, the Dodgers\' Shawn Green, and actor Justin Burfield from \"Malcolm in the Middle,\" -- will become an annual one.
[additional-authors]
December 5, 2002

At Universal Studios, all the usual characters — Spider-Man
and the Rugrats — were out in force on Sunday, Nov. 24. But they weren’t just
there for photo ops with children, instead they were lighting menorahs,
spinning dreidels and eating the world’s biggest latke at the Chanukah
celebration in Universal City.

“We thought that Chanukah was one of the best Jewish
holidays that lent itself to the fun family entertainment, and so we worked
with a consultant and spoke with a number of rabbis from a variety of groups to
create this event,” said Brian Pope, Universal vice president of marketing
services, who said he hopes that the event — attended by Los Angeles Mayor
James Hahn, the Dodgers’ Shawn Green, and actor Justin Burfield from “Malcolm
in the Middle,” — will become an annual one.

That Chanukah has gotten its own event at Universal Studios
shows how far it has come: The little-known Jewish holiday –which once had to
fight for display space next to Santa — is now a major event on its own, even
when it comes a month before Christmas.

From movies to malls, from sitcoms to shopping, Chanukah has
gone mainstream; and while some see it as a sign of the resurgence of Jewish
identity and the acceptance of Jews in American society, others wonder if the
holiday’s success has come at the expense of its spirituality.

This Chanukah, if you head down to your local multiplex you
can see Adam Sandler belching his way through “Eight Crazy Nights,” an animated
Chanukah comedy (see story, page 10).

On television, Chabad’s “Chanukah, the Miniseries,” will be
broadcast on KCAL-TV each night at menorah-lighting time (between 4:15 and 4:30 p.m.). Two Chanukah shows will be presented on KCET-TV: a special Chanukah
episode of “Alef…Bet…Blastoff,” followed by “A Taste of Chanukah.” They
will be shown on Dec. 1 starting at 8:30 a.m.

You might also see Chanukah pop up on some sitcoms. Last
season on “Friends,” for example, an episode had Ross trying to teach his son,
Ben, about Chanukah. For children, Disney has a Chanukah book out, “Winnie the
Pooh and the Hanukkah Dreidel,” and there is “A Rugrats Chanukah” video.

Reminders of Chanukah abound: Every Ralphs supermarket will
display a large menorah, courtesy of Chabad, and most banks will put a small
plastic menorah in their windows. Chabad is also sponsoring a number of public
menorah ceremonies, such as the lighting of a 35-foot menorah in Beverly Hills Gardens,
the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica and at the Nixon Library in Yorba
Linda.

For shoppers there is an abundance of Chanukah items.
Hallmark offers 119 different Chanukah cards. Online flower sellers, such as
proflowers.com or 1800-Flowers, offer Chanukah bouquets for $39.99 and gift
baskets, complete with dreidl cookies, for $69.99. For those who have the urge to
splurge for Chanukah, Neiman Marcus has a $4,000 Steuben crystal menorah with
silver-plated candle cups.

The proliferation of Chanukah products has led retailers to
focus less on the fact that the holidays are solely about Christmas. “I have
noticed over time that it has gone from being the Christmas season to holiday
season,” said Tom Holiday, president of the Retail Advertising and Marketing
Association, a division of the National Retail Federation, which represents 100
trade organizations. “In retail, there is always a conscious effort to be aware
of the dates of Jewish holidays, but I see a more ecumenical approach in
general.”

All of this has taken Chanukah out of the Talmud and into
the mainstream.

Jews started celebrating Chanukah 2,000 years ago, when a
small band of Jewish fighters led by Judah Maccabee emerged victorious in their
battle with the Hellenists, who, led by King Antiochus, wanted to sway the Jews
away from God and turn them into idol-worshipping hedonists.

After the battle, the Jews found their Temple desecrated,
with only one vial of pure olive oil remaining, enough to light the menorah — a
daily ritual in the Temple — for one day. A miracle occurred when the oil
lasted eight days, which provided enough time for new oil to be pressed.

Since then, every year beginning on the 25th of the Hebrew
month of Kislev, Jews have been commemorating the occasion by making a blessing
and lighting a menorah for eight nights and by eating foods that are cooked in
oil, such as latkes.

Today, while many people don’t know the details of the
correct way to light the menorah (halacha dictates that the candles/oil must be
the same height and lit from right to left, using a shamash servant candle, and
that the lights must burn for at least half an hour), thanks to the the
ubiquity of its symbols, Chanukah has become a significant holidays on the
Jewish calendar, and one that Jews can easily identify with.

The fact that Chanukah usually occurs around Christmastime —
although this year it coincides with Thanksgiving — means that Jews don’t have
to co-opt another religion’s holiday as an excuse to give each other gifts
(although traditionally gelt — money — is given on Chanukah), and they don’t
have to feel left out during the holiday season.

Chanukah is not the only Jewish holiday or practice that has
over time accreted aspects of the larger culture.

“Jewish tradition has generally been responsive to the
various cultures that Jews live; that adds up to the idea of minhag (custom)
that varies from locale to locale,” said UCLA professor David N. Myers, who
teaches Jewish history. “[Jewish] language, culinary habits, dress norms all
change according to the different environments that they find themselves [in].”

“In the modern period,” Myers said, “the forces of
acculturation are very powerful, and one of the reasons Chanukah has been so
malleable is because it is not a major festival, and therefore the ritual
stakes not as high when you modify its meaning or significance.”

Rabbi Alan Flom of Burbank Temple Emmanuel said, “Most
rabbis think that Chanukah is a very minor holiday, but in our culture we have had
to make it a bigger holiday to compete in the marketplace. If we didn’t, I
think that Christmas would be so overwhelming, it would be even more difficult
to keep our people Jewish in this kind of an environment.”

However, many see the mainstreaming of Chanukah not as a de
facto response to Christmas but as a positive resurgence of Jewish identity.
“Chanukah has become front and center in Jewish life, and it’s a way for a lot
of people to discover a bridge to their heritage,” said Rabbi David Eliezrie of
Chabad of Orange County. “The subjective message in the mainstreaming of
Chanukah is that its OK to be Jewish, and I think that’s good.”

Others think that having Chanukah symbols everywhere
actually does have a religious significance, and not just a Jewish feel-good
one. “The Talmud says that one of the key ways to observe Chanukah is through
pirsumei nissah, publicizing the miracle,” said Rabbi Chaim Cunin, public
relations director for Chabad-Lubavitch on the West Coast. “That means lighting
the menorah, spreading the beautiful message of Chanukah. And thank God, you
can open your newspaper now and find that everyone is helping to publicize this
beautiful miracle.”

However, others believe that Chanukah has become a kind of
Jewish Christmas — a holiday whose religious significance has been almost
overshadowed by its commercial possibilities and universal appeal.

“The commercialization of Chanukah is particularly tragic,”
said Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, director of Project Next Step of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center. “Commercializing Chanukah is a contradiction of its very
essence. If you take Jesus out of Christmas, you have a holiday where people
are nice to each other, feel upbeat. Although it’s missing the point, it is not
a violation of what Christmas is.

“Commercializing Chanukah is the opposite of the point.
Chanukah is not a liberation story — [under Antiochus] the Jews could have
lived in their country as free people without any other problem, other than
being asked to renounce their faith. The story of Chanukah is not one of being
asked to throw off the yoke of a foreign oppressor, but it is the issue of the
spiritual prevailing over the might of the decidedly unspiritual.”

“Chanukah is the story of the spark of Judaism striving to
be united with its God and its Torah and its mitzvot,” Alderstein added. “It is
not a substitute for the gift-giving of prevailing culture. Chanukah is about
the resistance of Jews to the prevailing culture of modernity and aesthetic
beauty.”

Claudia Wolf, an educator and program director for the
Shalom Nature Center in Malibu, holds a similar view. “It is bad that Jews feel
like they have to compensate by becoming almost like Christians,” she said.
“One student at my program told me that she was going home for Thanksgiving/Chanukah,
and her mother told her that she was not going to get any gifts until
Christmas, because that is really the gift-giving season.”

Rabbi Shlomo Holland, the director of development at Los
Angeles Kollel, agreed. “When we portray Chanukah in a superficial, shallow and
trivial way, in a sense we are ingraining in ourselves a new version of
Chanukah that was never meant to be, and we celebrate a holiday that is not the
essence of that holiday,” Holland explained.

“When we commercialize it, we don’t portray that, we just
portray a cute holiday where we light the menorah,” he continued. “Which, in
the eyes of the world, is not too different than a cute holiday where you light
up a tree-and you give presents here, and you give presents there, and rather than
looking for the obvious difference, one is looking for the similarities and the
sameness.”

Holland said that the essence of Chanukah is the message of
the light of Torah. “That light could break through what appeared to be the
wisdom of the Greek Hellenists, but was truly the darkness of illusion,” he
said. “The only thing that shines so powerful a light, that shows you what is
real, and what isn’t real, is the light of the Torah. If anything, that is
really the essence of Chanukah.”

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