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The part of the Hanukkah story we ignore — and why it matters to converts like me
Converts to Judaism are often treated as rare exceptions — surprised looks, intrusive questions, comments like “who’s the lucky girl.” Yet conversion is no anomaly. It is now more common than at any point in the last 2,000 years. You see it in synagogue pews. You see it in rabbinical leadership.
As Hanukkah approaches, with its call to make Jewish identity visible, I keep returning to what happens when people choose Judaism — and to the parts of our tradition that do not fit the story we usually tell.
We often repeat that Judaism doesn’t seek converts. But clearly, people are seeking Judaism. Hanukkah forces us to ask what kind of Judaism they are finding by looking at the holiday’s own complicated history with power and conversion.
We usually tell Hanukkah as a straightforward story of good and evil: a small band of Jews defends their faith against an empire, and a miracle in the Temple affirms that steadfastness can overcome adversity. The holiday’s defining commandment, pirsum ha-nes — publicly proclaiming the miracle — seems equally simple. We put the menorah in the window for all to see. Judaism doesn’t hide.
But if you look more closely at the history behind that beloved story, Hanukkah is also about force, conversion and the question of what kind of Judaism we choose to embody when we’re no longer powerless.
John Hyrcanus, a later Hasmonean ruler and direct descendant of the Maccabees, is rarely mentioned in Hanukkah celebrations. Yet his legacy haunts the holiday. A generation after the revolt, Hyrcanus used the political power of the Hasmonean kingdom to forcibly convert the neighboring Idumeans to Judaism. A movement that began as resistance to assimilation ended in the coerced assimilation of others. The people whose story we tell as a fight for religious freedom became, in time, the ones taking that freedom away.
It’s an uncomfortable truth, especially for those of us who, like me, chose Judaism. I didn’t convert to marry in or reclaim distant ancestry. I converted because I saw in Judaism a faith worth choosing: a tradition grounded in human dignity and a God who seeks relationship. For years I was told Judaism was always a non-proselytizing, purely voluntary faith, the opposite of traditions that sought converts — including Jews — through coercion.
But our own texts complicate that narrative. Near the end of the Book of Esther, in a verse most Purim spiels rush past, we read: “And many of the people of the land professed to be Jews, for the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them.” That is not a story of seekers drawn by theology, but of people compelled to join the Jews out of fear.
When Judaism welcomed seekers
Those coercive moments sit alongside a very different strand of Jewish history — one in which Judaism didn’t force, but attracted. In the late Hellenistic and early Roman era, Christian and Jewish sources describe synagogues filled not only with those born Jewish but with converts and “God-fearers,” people drawn to Jewish ethics, study and monotheism. As a convert drawn to Judaism by faith alone, I came to see myself not as an anomaly, but as part of that long line.
Centuries later, a similar universalist voice resurfaced in 19th-century America, especially in the early Reform movement. Rabbis such as Isaac Mayer Wise preached Judaism’s mission not as an inward inheritance but as a message about human dignity meant for the world.
In 1870, laying the cornerstone of Columbus, Ohio’s first synagogue, Wise told a largely non-Jewish crowd that Judaism’s purpose was to remind humanity that “God hath made man upright,” A direct rejection of the Christian doctrine of Original Sin. Synagogues etched Isaiah’s verse — “For My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples” — onto their facades and welcomed neighbors of every faith inside. Converts were welcomed as a natural extension of that conviction.
That confidence, too, was battered by history. Mass immigration of Eastern European Jews, the Holocaust, and the urgent work of supporting refugees and the new State of Israel all pushed the universalist voice to the background. Yet, more people are converting to Judaism than at any point since Roman times.
Meanwhile, religious identity in North America has become unusually fluid. Many people describe themselves as spiritually seeking but institutionally unaffiliated, brushing against Jewish life through family, friendships or personal study.
And yet, the gatekeeping persists. Converts are asked to defend their legitimacy. Jews-by-choice face skepticism in Israeli bureaucracy and suspicion in American Jewish spaces. I’ve been told I “don’t look Jewish,” and once, at a community film screening, another attendee — a fellow Jew — grabbed my name tag and publicly questioned whether I was really Jewish.
Those moments aren’t just rude; they reveal a deeper anxiety about boundaries: the fear that if Judaism is too open, it will lose itself. It’s a fortress mentality, one that sees every door as a potential breach.
What Judaism we reveal now
Hanukkah offers another possibility. The holiday asks us to present Judaism so that others can see it. It remembers a moment when Jews refused to disappear, and it also reminds us that Jews have sometimes used political power in ways that betrayed our deepest values. To take Hanukkah seriously in our time is to recognize that Jewish history, like the histories of all faiths, holds moments of both coercion and holiness — and that we have a choice about which lineage to lean into now, when seekers are again at the door.
The question is not whether Judaism should send out missionaries. Rather, it is whether we will live as if Isaiah’s verse still says what we claim it does: that our house is meant to be a house of prayer for all peoples, including those who, in every generation, find their way to our door.
This Hanukkah, as we place our menorahs in doorways, balconies and windows, the question beneath pirsum ha-nes is sharp: What kind of Jewish confidence are we proclaiming — a brittle confidence that closes in on itself, or a steadier confidence that welcomes those moved by the stories and ethics we are illuminating?
The miracle is not only that the Jewish people have survived. It is that Judaism continues to draw people in. The doors we open — or keep shut — will determine who gets to stand in that glow with us.
The post The part of the Hanukkah story we ignore — and why it matters to converts like me appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump Says Gas Prices May Remain High Through November Midterm Election
U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters while Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio look on, as they attend a meeting with oil industry executives, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 9, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the price of oil and gasoline may remain high through November’s midterm elections, a rare acknowledgement of the potential political fallout from his decision to attack Iran six weeks ago.
“It could be, or the same, or maybe a little bit higher, but it should be around the same,” Trump, who is in Miami for the weekend, told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo” when asked whether the cost of oil and gas would be lower by the fall.
The average price for regular gas at US service stations has exceeded $4 per gallon for most of April, according to data from GasBuddy. Trump’s comments on Sunday came after weeks of asserting that the spike in prices is a short-term phenomenon, though his top advisers are cognizant of the war’s economic impacts, officials have said.
Earlier on Sunday, Trump announced on social media that the US Navy would blockade the Strait of Hormuz and intercept any ship that paid a crossing fee to Iran, after marathon talks between the US and Iran in Pakistan over the weekend did not yield a peace deal.
“No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Any US blockade is likely to add more uncertainty to the eventual resolution of the conflict, which is currently subject to a tenuous two-week ceasefire. The new tactic is in response to Iran’s own closure of the strait’s critical shipping lanes, which has caused global oil prices to skyrocket about 50%.
UNPOPULAR WAR HITS TRUMP’S APPROVAL
The war began on February 28, when the US launched a joint bombing campaign with Israel against Iran. The scope quickly expanded as Iran and its allies attacked nearby countries, while Israel targeted Hezbollah with massive strikes in Lebanon.
The war has buffeted global financial markets and caused thousands of civilian deaths, mostly in Iran and Lebanon.
Trump’s political standing at home has suffered, with polls showing the war is unpopular among most Americans, who are frustrated by rising gasoline prices.
The president’s approval rating has hit the lowest levels of his second term in office, raising concern among Republicans that his party is poised to lose control of Congress in the midterm elections. A Democratic majority in either chamber could launch investigations into the Trump administration while blocking much of his legislative agenda.
US Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, questioned the strategy behind Trump’s planned blockade.
“I don’t understand how blockading the strait is going to somehow push the Iranians into opening it,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
In a separate appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Warner said the blockade would not undermine Iranian control of the waterway.
“The Iranians have hundreds of speedboats where they can still mine the strait or put bombs against tankers in closing the strait,” he said. “How is that going to ever bring down gas prices?”
Although Trump has repeatedly said that the war would be over soon, Republican US Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday that achieving US aims in Iran “could take a long time.”
“It’s going to be a long-term project,” said Johnson, who was not asked about Trump’s proposed blockade. “I never thought this would be easy.”
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Israel’s Ben-Gvir Visits Flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound
Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir walks inside the Knesset, in Jerusalem, Oct. 13, 2025. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Pool via REUTERS
Israel’s far-right police minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem on Sunday, saying he was seeking greater access for Jewish worshipers and drawing condemnation from Jordan and the Palestinians.
The compound in Jerusalem’s walled Old City is one of the most sensitive sites in the Middle East. Known to Jews as Temple Mount, it is the most sacred site in Judaism and is Islam’s third-holiest site.
Under a delicate, decades-old arrangement with Muslim authorities, it is administered by a Jordanian religious foundation and Jews can visit but may not pray there.
Suggestions that Israel would alter the rules have sparked outrage among Muslims and ignited violence in the past.
“Today, I feel like the owner here,” National Security Minister Ben-Gvir said in a video filmed at the site and distributed by his office. “There is still more to do, more to improve. I keep pushing the Prime Minister (Benjamin Netanyahu) to do more and more — we must keep rising higher and higher.”
A statement from the Jordanian foreign ministry said it considered Ben-Gvir’s visit to be a violation of the status quo agreement at the site and “a desecration of its sanctity, a condemnable escalation and an unacceptable provocation.”
The office of Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said such actions could further destabilize the region.
Ben-Gvir’s spokesman said the minister was seeking greater access and prayer permits for Jewish visitors. He also said that Ben-Gvir had prayed at the site.
There was no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office. Previous such visits and statements by Ben-Gvir have prompted Netanyahu announcements saying that there is no change in Israel’s policy of keeping the status quo.
Muslim, Christian and Jewish sites, including Al-Aqsa had been largely closed to the public during the Iran war. There was no immediate sign of unrest on Sunday after Ben-Gvir’s visit.
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Netanyahu Visits Troops Fighting Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Aug. 10, 2025. Photo: ABIR SULTAN/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Israeli forces operating in southern Lebanon on Sunday as military operations against Hezbollah-linked targets continue.
Netanyahu toured forward positions alongside Defense Minister Yisrael Katz, Eyal Zamir, and Northern Command Commander Rafi Milo, meeting troops and receiving operational briefings from commanders on the ground.
Speaking to soldiers, Netanyahu praised their performance and said operations in the Lebanese security zone were ongoing.
“The war continues, including within the security zone in Lebanon,” he said, adding that Israeli forces were working to prevent infiltration attempts and neutralize threats such as anti-tank fire and missiles.
He described the northern campaign as part of a broader regional struggle involving Iran and its allies, saying Israel’s adversaries were now “fighting for their survival” following sustained Israeli military pressure.