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How Jewish studies scholars navigated Jewish law and fire-code rules to save Hanukkah at their conference
(JTA) — The email landed like a batch of soggy latkes last week: Hanukkah candle-lighting would not be permitted at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies.
“We recognize the sacrifice many of you will make to attend the conference during the holiday of Chanukah. We apologize that the conference hotel will not allow us to light candles in a separate room, as we have done in the past,” the professional group for Jewish studies scholars said in a message to its members, of whom approximately 1,200 are expected at this week’s convening in Boston.
Thus began a MacGyver-like scramble by some of the country’s leading Jewish studies scholars to hack a Hanukkah solution that would comply with both halacha, Jewish law, and the Sheraton Boston’s interpretation of Massachusetts fire code.
At first, the scholarly group directed conference-goers to details about a Hanukkah celebration at a nearby synagogue where menorahs could be lit, at least on the first night of the holiday Sunday. But that was little consolation for those whose personal practice of Judaism is rooted in traditional Jew law — which says the Hanukkah menorah must be lit in the place one eats and sleeps.
Some conference attendees said they would rely on Jewish law’s provision for travelers, which says someone on the road can be considered as having fulfilled the commandment to ignite a Hanukkah light if his family at home does so. But not everyone at the conference has a family, and even some who do were unsatisfied with that option.
Electric menorahs offered another possibility. After all, such devices are frequently found in hotels and other public spaces, and they’re what Chabad, the Orthodox denomination, uses in its famous public Hanukkah celebrations, this year scheduled for more than 15,000 locations around the world. But not everyone owns one, and at any rate, the use of oil wicks or, in the last few centuries, wax candles that offer a similar experience is considered preferable, according to some interpreters of Jewish law.
On Facebook and over email, anger was expressed. Impractical suggestions for the conference to relocate were made. And fear mounted that some conference-goers would smuggle in contraband menorahs and light them in their hotel rooms.
“You can’t stop people from breaking the rules, and it’s certainly much less safe to have that than something being watched,” Joshua Shanes, a historian at the College of Charleston who was part of the behind-the-scenes scramble, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Finally, on Friday morning, with some scholars already Boston-bound, Laura Arnold Leibman, a professor at Reed College and a member of the AJS board, announced a solution.
“We were able to negotiate with the hotel what I am referring to as the ‘Kaplan-Shanes compr[om]ise’ this morning that should allow for a halachic solution to the candle lighting situation (see details below), and I was able to get a beautiful hanukkiah this morning from the Israel Bookstore in Brookline that will meet the fire code,” she wrote on Facebook, to plaudits from association members.
Under the plan, a single Hanukkah lamp can be lit, under supervision, at the hotel. But each candle must be contained within a glass enclosure with at least 2 inches of space above the flame — so Leibman bought glass votives used to hold yahrzeit memorial candles, as well as a massive menorah to which they could be affixed.
“This was the only Hanukkiah I could find in Brookline large enough to handle them [and] will clean them up before Sunday and glue them down for safety to the inserts,” Leibman wrote alongside pictures of the brass menorah on her hotel windowsill.
That solved the problem of the flames themselves. But what of the obligation to light, which under traditional Jewish law each household must fulfill individually?
Enter the “Kaplan” of the compromise: Lawrence Kaplan, a professor of Judaic and rabbinic philosophy at McGill University who is perhaps best known for compiling and editing the teachings of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik of the philosophy of Maimonides, the 12th-century Jewish philosopher.
Kaplan wrote on Facebook that he had consulted Rabbi Daniel Fridman, the rabbi of the Teaneck Jewish Center and the top rabbi at the Torah Academy of Bergen County, for a way to have a single conference-goer fulfill the mitzvah of lighting a Hanukkah lamp on behalf of others. He learned that a contribution of a penny (or more) could enable someone to buy into the mitzvah — so a bowl for coins will sit aside the jerry-rigged menorah.
“I really l appreciate the effort and expense to which you went,” Kaplan wrote on Liebman’s Facebook post. “It was easy for me to suggest the idea but it was you who transformed it into a reality.”
Now, the discussion has shifted to whether contributions in excess of a penny can be turned into donations to the Association for Jewish Studies — and what can be done to prevent such a snafu in the future. Next year’s conference in San Francisco starts after the holiday ends, and the 2024 conference will be online-only. But in 2025, the first day of the conference again corresponds with the first night of Hanukkah.
Shanes and Liebman both indicated that they expected the right to light candles to be written into the contract with any future conference host, marking a return to the old custom of having conference-goers light candles on their own schedule.
“At least for this year,” Shanes said, “we’re all coming together. It’s a silver lining I suppose.”
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The post How Jewish studies scholars navigated Jewish law and fire-code rules to save Hanukkah at their conference appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel deported me for helping West Bank Palestinians. I won’t give up on a peaceful future for the country I love
In the dark, sparsely furnished Israeli Immigration Authority waiting room at Ben Gurion airport, handcuffs around my wrists, I picked up a siddur — a prayerbook. It was 6 a.m. and I began to recite the ancient words of shacharit, morning prayers. Praying was familiar, an attempt to make sense of the baffling circumstances I found myself in: a Jew being deported from the Jewish state.
Thousands, if not millions, of other Jews across Israel would recite those same words that morning. But unlike them, I knew this was the last time — for a long time — that I would be able to say them in the Jewish homeland. I had just learned I would not be allowed to return to Israel for a decade.
All because I was on a bus, as part of an activist excursion organized by a peaceful, solidarity-focused NGO, that entered a recently-declared closed military zone in the West Bank as we tried to reach Palestinian farmers in their olive groves. A closed military zone is determined at will by the Israeli army; it is a designation that gives soldiers legal authority to bar entry or remove anyone—including residents.
I entered the closed military zone unknowingly. The usual consequence for a Jew who does that is a temporary restriction from the West Bank — not a 10-year ban from the country.
I am 18 years old. For me, 10 years feels like a lifetime.
A deep, critical connection
In September I joined a program called Achvat Amim, or “solidarity of nations,” for a gap year before starting at Williams College. The program is organized around learning Jewish texts, considering Israeli and Palestinian history, and volunteering in both Israel and the occupied West Bank.
Achvat Amim felt like the perfect way for me to deepen my connection to a place I both love, and struggle with.
Judaism has been the lens through which I experience the world, and as Jewish values inform my understanding of self, they also inform my understanding of Israel. As I have tried to find my place in an imperfect and deeply unjust state, I have turned again and again to the Jewish concepts of tikkun olam (repairing the world) and b’tselem elohim (a belief that every human being is created in the image of God).
When I lived in Jerusalem during 10th grade, I attended pro-democracy protests every week. On my many trips to Israel since, I’ve joined protests demanding an end to the war in Gaza and the return of the hostages. These mass displays showed me that many Israeli Jews were willing to fight for and honor the Jewish values that drive me. They urged me to believe there was a just future for this country.
In the two months before my deportation, I was introduced to a world of Jewish leftists in Jerusalem who split their time between synagogue, Shabbat meals, political demonstrations, and solidarity actions side-by-side with Palestinians in the West Bank. They showed me a way to be deeply Jewish and connected to Israel, yet unapologetically critical of the injustice I saw.
And I saw injustice. As I spent more time in the South Hebron Hills and Jordan Valley, I saw demolished homes, burned villages, and fields of uprooted olive trees. There was also joy: I held babies, danced with little girls, and drank cup after cup of sage-infused tea. When the olive harvest began, I joined the Israeli organization Rabbis for Human Rights, going twice each week to help protect farmers from harassment or attack by Israeli settlers and soldiers.
Accompanying farmers as Jews made a statement: We would not stand idly as our fellow Jews burned Palestinians’ fields, murdered their sheep, and harmed their bodies.
A forceful rejection
I spent many days high up in olive trees, meeting other Jewish activists as we separated leaves from fruit. The day I was detained began exactly that way. I climbed trees, laid out tarps, and poured multicolored olives into buckets. But walking back to our bus, volunteers were confronted by Israeli soldiers. They asked all 11 of us for identification, then announced that we were being detained. Two soldiers boarded the bus and directed the driver to take us to a police station in the settlement of Ariel.
I was not worried. I knew other visiting Jewish activists who had been detained and released the same day, perhaps banned from returning to the West Bank for a couple of weeks. That is exactly what happened to the volunteers who held Israeli citizenship and long-term visas. I watched as each of them walked out of the station.
But after four hours of interrogation and waiting, I began to understand the vulnerability of my tourist visa, and I became worried. Finally, at 7:00 pm, I was informed that my detention had turned into an arrest, and my deportation hearing would be held at 3 a.m. the following morning.
I was shocked. I am not Greta Thunberg, who was deported three weeks before me after attempting to enter Gaza as part of a protest flotilla of aid ships, I am an 18-year-old Jewish American, the daughter of a rabbi.
I was not wearing a keffiyeh, I was wearing rings etched with the words of the Shema prayer. It did not seem to matter what I had said in my many interviews that day nor did it matter that I kept Shabbat, could speak nearly fluent Hebrew, and knew where to find the best falafel in Jerusalem. All that seemed to matter is that by showing up as a Jew to aid Palestinians, I was the wrong kind of Jew.
Israel was supposed to be a home for all Jews, for me. I never imagined it would reject me so forcefully.
A few minutes after learning that the state where I had always been told I belonged was deporting me, I asked a police officer wearing a kippah if I could borrow a prayerbook. He watched me recite the words with a confused expression. I imagine that my knowledge of the prayers defied his assumptions about Jews like me.
I realized that this binary-defying confusion is our power. It asserts that as Jewish activists, we stand with Palestinians not despite our Judaism, but because of it.
Who defines Judaism — and Israel?
I know what my deportation is supposed to mean.
It’s supposed to tell American Jewish activists doing solidarity work in the West Bank that they are not safe, and Jewish high schoolers that they should make other plans for their gap years. It sends a message that the only Jews whom Israel wants are compliant ones.
But we cannot let ourselves be defined by those who use Judaism in the name of violence.
To not return to Israel for a decade is unfathomable to me. I do not want to forget my way around the streets of the old city, or the secret route I like to take to the Western Wall. I want to eat pomegranates from trees that hang over sidewalks, and figs from community gardens. I wanted to taste the olive oil made from the olives I picked with my own hands.
My deportation felt like a betrayal. Israel was supposed to be for me, for every Jew. But the settler movement and the current government would like to redefine what it means to be Jewish along political lines.
In Hebrew, I was taught to love our neighbors and to commit to repairing a broken world. To me, that means that while I may be angry at Israel and critical of its actions and policies, I cannot serve justice by severing my relationship with this land entirely.
I am not done with Israel, not done with Judaism. I am not giving up, and neither should any leftist American Jew. I believe that if there is hope for Israelis and Palestinians, it’s in the place of struggle. It does not serve us, as those who want a future of shared society, security, and justice in this land, to give up on this land.
The post Israel deported me for helping West Bank Palestinians. I won’t give up on a peaceful future for the country I love appeared first on The Forward.
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A chat in Yiddish with filmmaker Pearl Gluck
וואָס געשעט ווען אַ יונגע פֿרוי פֿאָרט זוכן אַ פֿאַרלוירענע געבענטשטע חסידישע סאָפֿע אין אונגערן, און געפֿינט דווקא אַ נײַעם קונסטוועג וואָס ברענגט ייִדיש אין קינאָ אַרײַן און דערבײַ הייבט זי אָן אַ הצלחהדיקע פֿילם־קאַריערע?
באַקענט זיך אויף אַ זומישן שמועס אויף ייִדיש מיט פּראָפֿ׳ פּערל גליק — אַ פֿילמאָגראַפֿקע וואָס איז דערצויגן געוואָרן בײַ אַ חסידישער משפּחה — זונטיק, דעם 23סטן נאָוועמבער, 1:30 נאָך מיטאָג ניו־יאָרקער צײַט.
הײַנט איז גליק אַ פּראָפֿעסאָרין פֿון פֿילם־פּראָדוקציע בײַ פּען־סטייט־אוניווערסיטעט, און די גרינדערין פֿון Palinka Pictures. זי שאַפֿט דאָקומענטאַלע און נאַראַטיווע פֿילמען, אין וועלכע זי וועבט צונויף ייִדיש־לשון מיט די טעמעס זכּרון, משפּחה און דאָס דערציילן פּערזענלעכע געשיכטעס.
דער אינטערוויו, וואָס וועט געפֿירט ווערן דורך אלי בענעדיקט, ווערט געשטיצט פֿון דער ייִדיש־ליגע.
גליקס פֿילמען האָט מען שוין געוויזן אינעם Film Forum און אויף PBS, ווי אויך אין פּראָגראַמען פֿאַרבונדן מיט דעם „קאַן־קינאָ־פֿעסטיוואַל“. צווישן אירע באַקאַנטסטע פֿילמען זענען: „דיוואַן“, Where is Joel Baum און „שלעסער אינעם הימל“.
בענעדיקט וועט שמועסן מיט איר וועגן איר שאַפֿערישן פּראָצעס, ווי ייִדיש שפּילט אַ ראָלע אין אירע פֿילמען, און די געשיכטע הינטער געוויסע סצענעס. מע וועט אויך ווײַזן קורצע אויסצוגן צו פֿאַרטיפֿן דעם שמועס.
כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן אויף דער פּראָגראַם, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
The post A chat in Yiddish with filmmaker Pearl Gluck appeared first on The Forward.
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UN Says Israeli Wall Crosses Lebanon Border
The United Nations headquarters building is pictured though a window with the UN logo in the foreground in the Manhattan borough of New York, Aug. 15, 2014. Photo: REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
A survey conducted by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon last month found that a wall built by the Israeli military crosses the Blue Line, the de facto border, a U.N. spokesperson said on Friday
The Blue Line is a U.N.-mapped line separating Lebanon from Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general, said the concrete T-wall erected by the IDF has made more than 4,000 square meters (nearly an acre) of Lebanese territory inaccessible to the local population.
A section of an additional wall, which has also crossed the Blue Line, is being erected southeast of Yaroun, he said, citing the peacekeepers.
Dujarric said UNIFIL informed the Israeli military of its findings and requested that the wall be removed.
“Israeli presence and construction in Lebanese territory are violations of Security Council resolution 1701 and of Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” UNIFIL said in a separate statement.
An Israeli military spokesperson denied the wall crossed the Blue Line.
“The wall is part of a broader IDF plan whose construction began in 2022. Since the start of the war, and as part of lessons learned from it, the IDF has been advancing a series of measures, including reinforcing the physical barrier along the northern border,” the spokesperson said.
UNIFIL, established in 1978, operates between the Litani River in the north and the Blue Line in the south. The mission has more than 10,000 troops from 50 countries and about 800 civilian staff, according to its website.