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The ‘Hanukkah House’ in Brooklyn is a family tradition and a neighborhood treasure
(New York Jewish Week) — Hanukkah, the winter holiday that commemorates the triumph of Judah Maccabee and the miracle of long-lasting oil, has plenty of heroes to celebrate. But in one Brooklyn family’s home, the hero is the “Hanukkah Fairy” — or at least the mom behind it.
Starting some 25 years ago, Gail Nalven Fuchs and her husband, David Fuchs, stayed up late the night before Hanukkah began to completely decorate the interior of their Midwood house in tinsel, dreidels and blue and white decor. When their two kids awoke wide-eyed at the wonder, the Fuchs explained that the Hanukkah Fairy, who came to decorate and spread the light and joy of the holiday, had paid their house a visit.
Over the years, what began as a lark grown into a grand tradition — these days, eye-catching, illuminated Hanukkah decorations can be found on the home’s exterior and front lawn, too, including an oversized menorah, Jewish stars and inflatables, such as a giant teddy bear wearing a Hanukkah sweater and a spinning dreidel. The “Hanukkah House,” as it is locally known, is now a bonafide neighborhood treasure, attracting neighbors, visitors and children from around Brooklyn.
Fuchs and her family pose in matching sweatshirts outside their decorated house. L-R: Michael, Charlie and Alyson Kogan; Harrison and Katie Bryan; David and Gail Fuchs.
The tradition of Hanukkah decorating started in 1997 when the Fuchs’ kids, Alyson and Harrison, were 7 and 5. It was one of the family’s favorite holiday traditions to drive through the neighborhoods of Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, where family homes have been putting out over-the-top lights and Christmas decorations since the 1980s.
“Isn’t Hanukkah called the Festival of Lights?” her son, Harrison — the playwright for “A Hanukkah Carol, or GELT TRIP! The Musical,” a Jewish take on Charles Dickens’ Christmas classic — asked one year as they drove through Sheepshead Bay. Fuchs confirmed it was.
“Then why don’t I see any Hanukkah lights?” he asked. “Everything is Christmas themed.”
Fuchs tried to explain to her son that even though the lights are Christmas themed, they are for everyone to enjoy. “He said, ‘I would enjoy it so much more. If I saw something that I know about. I don’t know about Christmas,’” she recalled.
It was a moment of realization for Fuchs. “New Yorkers always say we live in a melting pot,” she told the New York Jewish Week. “It didn’t feel that way at Christmastime.”
In response to Harrison’s questions, she helped him pen a letter to the New York Post. “It’s very hard to be a 5-year-old Jewish boy at this time of year,” the letter, which was published in 1997, opens. “I get very sad when I am driving the car in Brooklyn and I look at all the lights and decorations hanging across the avenues.” Harrison then goes on to request more Hanukkah decorations in the years to come.
The next year, a few weeks before Hanukkah, someone from the New York Post called to let Fuchs and her family know that there would be a large public menorah on Avenue U — sure enough, there it was.
“We drove by and Harrison was so excited. He went home and drew the menorah with paint and we hung it on our wall and he would look at it every day.”
Harrison Bryan as a child in front of handmade Hanukkah art, alongside an excerpt of his letter he wrote to the New York Post in 1997. (Courtesy, design by Mollie Suss)
Seeing how happy her kids were when they saw their holiday represented, Fuchs decided to start decorating her home with dreidels, menorahs, candles, Hanukkah art and tinsel. Enter the Hanukkah Fairy, who Fuchs created to add a sense of magic and wonder to the holiday — and to surprise her young kids.
“Every year there were more and more Hanukkah decorations from the Hanukkah Fairy,” Fuchs said. “The kids used to write letters to her before the holiday saying ‘Hi Hanukkah Fairy, I hope you had a nice year, I cannot wait to see my home decorated this Hanukkah.’”
The exterior decorating began slowly: David Fuchs, who owns a handmade steel manufacturing and distribution business, built the giant menorah. Over the years, the “Hanukkah Elf,” as he’s known by his family, has since built Jewish stars and various signs for the house. They also try to add a Hanukkah-themed inflatable to their collection every year — this year’s newbie is a dinosaur wearing a Hanukkah sweater.
Harrison and Alyson are now 30 and 32, respectively, but the tradition has carried on. To keep the Hanukkah spirit strong, the decorations typically start going up about a week before the holiday starts, and stay up until a week after it ends, Fuchs said.
While Fuchs considers herself a Conservative Jew, many of her neighbors in Midwood are more traditionally Orthodox. Still, she’s noticed that many in the area are eager to take pics with the inflatables — some years, a school bus from a nearby yeshiva even stops in front of the house so kids can look.
“I love sitting back on my porch — nobody sees me and I love watching all the people go by,” she said. “It’s just a joy.”
The Fuchs family has always celebrated Hanukkah to the nines — four generations of the extended family gather at their home for a Hanukkah party, complete with a gift exchange — and decorating the house has become one of their favorite parts of the holiday. Fuchs’ adult children will help decorate the house, and Alyson Fuchs now also puts up decor in her apartment in Carroll Gardens, where her two daughters, who are 2-and-a-half years old and 7 months old, now carry on the wonder and delight at the Hanukkah Fairy.
“We have Hanukkah pride,” she said. “But it’s not so much ‘Hey, I’m Jewish. Here’s my house, too.’ It’s ‘Hey, I have a holiday that’s really a lot of fun. Look how pretty it is.’”
It’s a tradition that’s become so important to the family that the “Hanukkah Fairy” even features in Harrison Fuchs’ new musical. “I really did believe in The Hanukkah Fairy,” Harrison, who uses the stage name Harrison Bryan, told the New York Jewish Week. “To me, this magical entity was just as real as the Tooth Fairy, or Santa to other kids. It was amazing waking up on Hanukkah morning — my sister and I would marvel at all the decorations — blue and white everywhere, and to such an extent that it felt impossible for this to have been done without actual magic.”
“It was only when I got a little bit older that I realized, it was real magic — the magic of having incredibly imaginative parents who wanted their children to feel loved and proud of their cultural identity,” he added.
Bryan made “The Hanukkah Fairy” a character in his musical — the fairy is the “Spirit of Hanukkah Present” who guides the Scrooge-like protagonist Chava Kanipshin through her actions. “Even though it may have been a tradition my parents made up, it was always meant to spark joy in others too,” Bryan added. “And with the show, alongside the Hanukkah Fairy, we hope to do just that.”
Hanukkah starts this year on the evening of Sunday, Dec. 18, and Fuchs welcomes visitors to come by, enjoy the decorations and take pictures. Located in Brooklyn on East 14th Street between Avenues J and K, her house will be the one all lit up with Hanukkah gear. “You can’t miss it,” she said.
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The post The ‘Hanukkah House’ in Brooklyn is a family tradition and a neighborhood treasure appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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VIDEO: A Hasid gives us a tour of Morocco in Yiddish
דער ירושלימער יוטוב־שטערן וועלוול קירשנבוים האָט לעצטנס אַרויסגעשטעלט אַ ווידעאָ אויף ייִדיש פֿון אַ פּרעכטיקן וויזיט, וואָס ער האָט געמאַכט אין מאַראָקאָ. עס באַגלייט אים זײַן חבֿר אַבֿרהם פּרץ.
אינעם ווידעאָ זעט מען ווי קירשנבוים דאַוונט שחרית מיט די אָרטיקע ייִדן און באַזוכט אַ גוט אָפּגעהיטענעם בית־עולם, וווּ עס ליגן באַערדיקט גרויסע צדיקים ווי למשל הרבֿ חיים בן עתר (1696–1743), באַקאַנט ווי דער „אור החיים“. „מענטשן מיינען, אַז נאָר אין אייראָפּע זענען דאָ קבֿרים פֿון צדיקים!“ זאָגט קירשנבוים.
מיר זעען אַ גרויסע, שיינע שיל מיט אַ פֿײַנער אַרכיטעקטור אין קאַזאַבלאַנקאַ; דעם גרויסן אַראַבישן שוק, וווּ קירשנבוים קויפֿט זיך אײַן מלבושים פּונקט ווי די מאַראָקאַנער גייען אָנגעטאָן. ער באַוווּנדערט אויך די שיינע טיי־גלעזער און טשײַניקן, וואָס מע פֿאַרקויפֿט דאָרט, און באַקענט זיך מיט אַ ייִדישן סוחר וואָס האַנדלט מיט זילבער און גאָלד, פּונקט אַזוי ווי זײַן טאַטע און זיידע האָבן געטאָן פֿאַר דור־דורות.
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Conservative and Christian movies are coming for Hollywood
A star-studded new movie set in a Soviet prison is coming out in November. James Franco and Rob Lowe anchor the cast of Confession, playing a brutal prison guard and an imprisoned dissident professor, and a disheveled Nick Nolte appears as a fellow prisoner.
These actors were once huge gets, and their names could convey legitimacy to a project. Nolte and Franco both have received Academy Award nominations. Lowe was a member of the Brat Pack, and was a regular on The West Wing.
Confession, written by Ben Shapiro and produced by the rightwing tabloid-esque news site The Daily Wire, is not the expected fare for actors with that kind of name recognition; Shapiro’s screenwriting aspirations have been the target of ridicule for years.
Nevertheless, this isn’t the only Daily Wire production getting big names; Danny Trejo signed onto a pro-ICE movie about Minneapolis in the aftermath of the Renee Good shooting, and Jonathan Majors led Run, Fight, Hide: Infidels earlier this year.
Each one of these actors has been, in some way, canceled or in career doldrums so may have been more open to working with The Daily Wire. And some have claimed that they did not know who Shapiro was, or what his politics were; Trejo’s son, Gilbert, said his 82-year-old father did not endorse ICE and was misled about the movie before he signed his contract.
Movie studios have struggled through the pandemic and the streaming era, both of which have tanked box office receipts, leaving the field open for movies from offbeat production studios. In addition to The Daily Wire, there has been a whole ream of Christian movies attempting to shift the stereotype of bible movies — that they’re preachy, low-budget straight-to-TV affairs with cardboard acting — to something more prestigious, or at least profitable.
The Christian company Angel Studios has been placing screenings of the half philo-semitic, half-antisemitic Jesus TV series The Chosen in movie theaters across the country, produced the right-wing hit The Sound of Freedom and is pumping out faith-based movies like the animated King of Kings Christmas story and David, a kiddie movie about the biblical king. Recently, Pinnacle Peak Pictures, another faith-based production company, premiered Daniel and the Fiery Furnace, another bible movie that was notable enough to merit a review in The New York Times. (Though admittedly it wasn’t a particularly positive one.)
For decades, Hollywood, and the media industry at large, has been associated with liberalism, progressive politics and diversity. (This is part of why conservative conspiracy theorists often insist that Jews control the media.) Even when conservatives are in power, satirical movies have poked fun at the ruling class — Team America: World Police spoofed George W. Bush’s foreign policy, while M*A*S*H critiqued Richard Nixon. During the current Trump administration, we’ve seen One Battle After Another lambasting immigration policies and rising white nationalism, Eddington on misinformation and populism, and The Apprentice depicting Trump directly.
But a rising number of higher-budget, bigger releases from the right wing, whether The Daily Wire’s conservative political parables or the Christian fables, are bringing a new kind of messaging — about the importance of God and country, about gender roles, about about the centrality of Jesus to the U.S. — to the American movie-going public.
This is no accident. A group of powerful conservative Christians, many of whom worked on Project 2025, are proponents of the Seven Mountains Mandate, a blueprint for Christian nationalism that instructs Christians to gain influence and control over the “seven mountains” of society — which include media, entertainment and the arts. The Mandate is part of the New Apostolic Reformation, a decentralized evangelical movement embraced by millions of Americans.
Jeremy Boreing, the director of many Daily Wire movies — though he has since left the company — said on a podcast hosted by businessman Patrick Bet-David that “It had always been part of our strategy to move into making culture, not just criticizing culture” as a way of proving that “there is a future where conservatives aren’t losing. There’s a future where we have political power and cultural power.”
Cultural power, of course, requires more than just a lot of movies; they have to be well-done, or at least appear to be. Previous Daily Wire productions, as well as other right-wing, MAGA movie ventures, have been hacky. Lady Ballers, about an unsuccessful men’s basketball team pretending to be women so they can dominate the league, was an unsubtle, unfunny and ultimately unwatchable spoof of transgender athletes. And even plenty of higher-budget attempts, like Daniel and the Fiery Furnace, can still fall victim to wooden acting and writing.
But now, with the financial success of movies like The Sound of Freedom and biblical parables like The Chosen, bigger stars are being drawn to projects like the Daily Wire’s lineup of pro-ICE, anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ movies. With those bigger stars may come new audiences who might not have watched a Christian movie or Daily Wire project otherwise. And where there is money and viewers, mainstream Hollywood will go, too, no matter how progressive people expect the industry to be. We’ve already gotten a biblical epic from Amazon Prime, with The House of David, and there are likely to be many more to come.
After all, it wasn’t so long ago, after all, that Cecil DeMille’s The Ten Commandments was the biggest movie in town.
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‘Heil’ Mary? New Atlanta Falcons logo inspires Nazi comparisons
If there was something off about the logo the Atlanta Falcons unveiled on social media Wednesday, whoever runs their accounts did, uh, not see it.
Behind the black falcon graphic that began appearing on the football team’s helmets in the 1960s was a new background — a flag of red, tan, black and white vertical stripes. To thousands of people who responded to the logo, it looked distinctly German — in a 1930s kind of way.
“The Atlanta Falcons are preparing to invade Poland,” one fan wrote.
A day after its posting, the new profile picture had unleashed a deluge of Nazi memes in the 4,000-plus replies on X. One picture swapped in the logo for Nazi flags in the background of a historical photo of a Hitler rally. Another edited the Falcon claw to look like a Nazi salute.
Others depicted Hitler in a Falcons cap, references to Inglourious Basterds and the Battle of the Bulge and a World War II joke invoking a blown lead in Super Bowl LI.
“Falcons were up 28-3 at Dunkirk,” that tweet read.
The Falcons’ snafu enters a small but growing catalogue of Reich-coded brand mixups. Who can forget the German national soccer team’s ‘44’ soccer jerseys? There was also the swastika-emblazoned Hallmark gift wrap; the accidental Hitler mugs; and (for my money) the worst of the bunch, Zara’s concentration camp uniform shirt.
All of those have been addressed; so far, the Falcons’ has not. We’ve reached out to them for comment.
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