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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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Nvidia in Advanced Talks to Buy Israel’s AI21 Labs for Up to $3 Billion, Report Says
A smartphone with a displayed NVIDIA logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Nvidia is in advanced talks to buy Israel-based AI startup AI21 Labs for as much as $3 billion, the Calcalist financial daily reported on Tuesday.
Nvidia declined to comment, while AI21 was not immediately available to comment.
A 2023 funding round valued AI21 at $1.4 billion. Nvidia and Alphabet’s Google participated in that funding.
AI21, founded in 2017 by Amnon Shashua and two others, is among a clutch of AI startups that have benefited from a boom in artificial intelligence, attracting strong interest from venture capital firms and other investors.
Shashua is also the founder and CEO of Mobileye, a developer of self-driving car technologies.
Calcalist said AI21 has long been up for sale and talks with Nvidia have advanced significantly in recent weeks. It noted that Nvidia‘s primary interest in AI21 appears to be its workforce of roughly 200 employees, most of whom hold advanced academic degrees and “possess rare expertise in artificial intelligence development.”
Calcalist said the deal to buy AI21 is estimated at between $2 billion and $3 billion.
Nvidia, which has become the most valuable company in history at more than $4 trillion, is planning a large expansion in Israel with a new R&D campus of up to 10,000 employees in Kiryat Tivon, just south of the port city of Haifa – Israel’s third-largest city.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has described Israel as the company’s “second home.”
Nvidia has said that when completed, the campus will include up to 160,000 square meters (1.7 million square feet) of office space, parks and common areas across 90 dunams (22 acres), inspired by Nvidia‘s Santa Clara, California, headquarters. Nvidia expects construction to begin in 2027, with initial occupancy planned for 2031.
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How The New York Times Used Selective West Bank Data to Shape a False Moral Verdict
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The New York Times’ recent interactive project on the West Bank avoids incendiary terminology. It does not accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing outright. Yet the impression it leaves readers with is unmistakable: a story of systematic dispossession, driven by Israeli settlers and tolerated by the state.
That conclusion is not argued directly. It is constructed indirectly, through selective facts, emotional imagery, and critical omissions.
The article portrays a daily reality of Palestinian villagers under siege by armed settlers, shielded by Israeli soldiers, and backed by state institutions. The tone is stark and accusatory. But the apparent coherence of this narrative depends on three elements that are completely biased.
1/
The New York Times doesn’t use the phrase “ethnic cleansing” in its West Bank project.It doesn’t have to.
Selective imagery, distorted data & erased Palestinian terrorism lead to one conclusion: Israel is driving Palestinians off their land.
That claim is false.
pic.twitter.com/a4boarQwVq
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 22, 2025
Casualty Statistics
The first is the use of casualty statistics. The Times relies extensively on data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) to demonstrate a dramatic rise in settler violence.
What readers are not told is how those numbers are assembled. UNOCHA does not consistently distinguish between civilians and terrorists killed while carrying out attacks. Palestinians who die while attempting stabbings, shootings, or vehicular assaults, are frequently recorded simply as casualties.
This methodology matters. It collapses perpetrators and victims into the same category and inflates the appearance of civilian harm. When such figures are presented without explanation, they create a misleading picture of violence divorced from context. The New York Times adopts these numbers uncritically, allowing a flawed dataset to underpin its central claim.
Ignoring Palestinian Terrorism
Second, the article ignores Palestinian terrorism. Over the past year, according to Israel Security Agency data, thousands of attacks have targeted Israelis in the West Bank, ranging from shootings and stabbings to Molotov cocktails and explosive devices. Many were intercepted before civilians were harmed. This sustained campaign is essential to understanding Israeli military operations and security measures. Yet it appears only faintly, if at all, in the article.
HonestReporting visualization based on B’Tselem data of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces from October 7, 2023, to October 31, 2025.
The absence extends further. Palestinians killed during Israeli counterterror operations are frequently affiliated with armed groups such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad, particularly in hotspots like Jenin and Nablus. These affiliations are rarely acknowledged. Readers are left with an image of indiscriminate force rather than targeted security activity.
Visual Storytelling
The third biased element in the article is the visual storytelling, which reinforces the narrative.
Images of demolished homes and emptied landscapes suggest deliberate displacement. But the legal framework governing much of the territory is barely explained.
Many demolitions occur in Area C, which, under internationally recognized agreements, falls under Israeli civil and security authority. Construction there requires permits. Unauthorized structures, whether Palestinian or Israeli, are subject to enforcement. By omitting this context, regulation is reframed as expulsion.
The article also implies that Israeli institutions tolerate or even enable extremist settler violence. This claim overlooks documented realities.
Israeli political and military leaders have repeatedly condemned such acts, warning that they undermine security and divert resources. Extremist settlers have been arrested, prosecuted, and in some cases have violently clashed with Israeli soldiers themselves. Internal accountability exists, but it is erased from the story.
Criticism of Israeli policy is legitimate and necessary. But journalism carries an obligation to present complexity honestly. When context is stripped away, when flawed data is treated as fact, and when terrorism is sidelined, reporting stops informing and starts directing. The New York Times’ project offers readers a powerful story, but not a complete one. And when narrative takes precedence over evidence, the public is misled.
HonestReporting is a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Israel, Greece, and Cyprus: In Search of New Synergies
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (center), Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides (left), and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis hold a joint press conference after a trilateral meeting at the Citadel of David Hotel in Jerusalem, Dec. 22, 2025. Photo: ABIR SULTAN/Pool via REUTERS
The 10 trilateral summit of Israel, Greece and Cyprus, which took place in Jerusalem on December 22, showcased the continuing commitment of the three countries to the expansion of their collaboration. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hosted his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides in an effort to revitalize the trilateral mechanism. The ninth trilateral summit took place on September 4, 2023 in Nicosia, and the regional order has changed a great deal in the two years since. Israel responded to the terrorist invasion of October 7, 2023 by engaging in wars on multiple Middle East fronts, including a 12-day war with Iran. Despite the multidimensional and complex character of all these conflicts, Israel managed to show its power and resilience.
Both Greece and Cyprus continued to value their strategic partnership with Israel even as the Jewish State was being roundly condemned and vilified. Unlike the EU member states that chose to condemn Israel for the war in Gaza, Athens and Nicosia took a mild and balanced approach. Premier Mitsotakis has been able to prioritize what he perceives as Greece’s national interests and fend off criticism from other parties. Nikos Androulakis, the leader of the main opposition PASOK party, did not hold back in his excoriation of Israel in the context of the war in Gaza, inaccurately using the terms “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” to describe Israel’s conduct during the war and denying that both terms in fact apply to Hamas’s assault on Israel, as well as to its ongoing plans for that country. On October 16, 2025, Androulakis called Netanyahu a “butcher” and demanded that Mitsotakis apologize for aligning Greece’s interests with those of Israel. Similarly, the parliamentary spokesperson of PASOK, Dimitris Mantzos, spoke of a “live-streamed genocide” and wondered “what strategic partnership might endure the pain of this bloodshed.”
Interestingly, it was the former leader of PASOK, George Papandreou, who laid the foundations for the Greek-Israeli friendship while serving as prime minister in 2010.
During the Israel-Iran war of June 2025, Greece and Cyprus served as hubs for Israeli civilians unable to return to their country. Planes belonging to Israeli airlines were stationed at Greek and Cypriot airports, and the aircraft serving Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog departed for Athens after Operation Rising Lion was launched on June 13. When the conflict ended, the Greek and Cypriot authorities coordinated with the Israeli government to implement Operation Safe Return to facilitate the repatriation of Israelis. Former Knesset member Gadeer Kamal-Mreeh praised Greece and Cyprus in a Jerusalem Post commentary in which he argued that the two countries had stepped up to help Israel – with actions, not just with words – at a time of serious crisis.
In the sphere of defense, Greece and Cyprus have looked favorably towards the Israeli market for years. Greece is now finalizing an agreement with Israel to purchase 36 PULS rocket artillery systems for $757.84 million. The Greek Parliament and the Government Council for National Security have approved the budget for the purchase, according to a press release from Elbit, the PULS manufacturer. Cyprus reportedly deployed Israel Aerospace Industries’ Barak MX air defense system last September and is eyeing new military deals with Israel to equip its National Guard. In addition to the arms transactions, Jerusalem, Athens and Nicosia are expected to conduct joint drills in 2026. In the past, Greek-Israeli exercises in the area between Israel and the island of Crete have allowed Israeli pilots to engage in bombing exercises and to rehearse the kind of aerial refueling necessary to cover a distance equal to that separating Israel from Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility.
Israel, Greece and Cyprus are all apprehensive about Turkish tactics in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean, a common concern that facilitates dialogue. Jerusalem is of course primarily concerned about Ankara’s attitude toward Hamas and presence in Syria, while Athens and Nicosia are more focused on Ankara’s policies in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean as well as on the Cyprus question. Israel, Greece and Cyprus support the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), which bypasses Turkey, though IMEC will inevitably have limitations. The Turkish market is too big to be ignored, and the Corridor is still lacking tangible investments.
Energy also brings the three countries closer. Last November, Israeli Energy and Infrastructure Minister Eli Cohen put the idea of the East Med pipeline back on the table. Cohen made the comment on the sidelines of a ‘3+1’ Energy Ministerial Meeting in Athens that was also attended by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Although the East Med pipeline project remains expensive and technically difficult, attention is being directed towards a connecting of Israeli gas fields and LNG facilities in Cyprus. Israel is keen on selling its natural gas to Cyprus. The Energean company, which is drilling in Israeli waters, has proposed the construction of a subsea pipeline from its Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) to Cyfield’s planned power generation facility in Cyprus. According to Reuters, the cost will be around $400 million, while the capacity of the new pipeline will be 1 billion cubic meters a year. Theoretically, Israel, Greece and Cyprus remain committed to the Great Sea Interconnector project, but the Cypriot government seems to be having second thoughts about its viability. Athens and Nicosia have openly disagreed on this matter over the past few weeks.
Last but not least, Israel, Greece, and Cyprus are expected to improve coordination in accessing EU Horizon programs and other external funding sources. When the European Commission proposed, in July 2025, to partially suspend Israel’s integration into the European Innovation Council, Greece and Cyprus were among the EU member states to oppose the idea.
The trilateral Jerusalem summit welcomed the Cypriot presidency of the Council of the EU for the first semester of 2026, and Greece will hold the EU presidency in the second semester of 2027. The next two years should be a good opportunity to recalibrate EU-Israel relations under the aegis of Cyprus and Greece as well as to intensify the European fight against antisemitism.
Dr. George N. Tzogopoulos is a BESA contributor, a lecturer at the European Institute of Nice (CIFE) and at the Democritus University of Thrace, and a Senior Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.