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The Hanukkah merch market has exploded. But are Jews feeling more represented?
(JTA) — It was early November when Nicholas Wymer-Santiago walked into his local Target in Austin, Texas, and realized it was beginning to feel a lot like Hanukkah.
Instead of an endcap with a limited array of Hanukkah basics, as he had seen in past years, there stretched out a whole aisle of holiday products: pillows; dreidel-shaped pet toys; window decals; menorahs in the shape of lions, corgis and whales; and so much more. Even the $5-and-under impulse-buys section filled with seasonal products had a supply of Hanukkah goods, including a Star of David-shaped bowl and a set of dishes labeled “sour cream” and “applesauce.”
“In a good way, it was overwhelming at first, because there’s so much and I kind of want to buy it all,” Wymer-Santiago recalled feeling as he stood in the holiday section, looking up at a large photograph of a Hanukkah celebration alongside others showcasing Christmas.
The higher education administrator at the University of Texas decided to limit himself, at first taking home just a tea towel and a matching mug printed with a Hanukkah motif.
“And then I came back twice, maybe three times and each time I bought more and more items that I know I probably don’t need,” he said. “I think I’ve just had so much excitement about the novelty of it all, and having the ability to purchase these items, many of which I’ve never seen before.”
Wymer-Santiago is hardly alone in loading his cart with Hanukkah merchandise. Across the United States, big-box stores appear to be stocking more Hanukkah products than ever — and while off-color items such as Hanukkah gnomes and “Oy to the World” dish towels have raised eyebrows, the real story might be that American retailers have decked their shelves with menorahs, tableware and other items that are appropriate, affordable and often downright tasteful.
For many American Jews, the result is a sense of inclusion at a time of unease — although some are wrestling with what it means to have access to a fast-fashion form of Judaica.
“It is very exciting to go into Target or Michaels or a Walmart and to see Hanukkah merchandise,” said Ariel Scheer Stein, an influencer who shares crafting and holiday content for Jewish families on Instagram, where she has more than 20,000 followers.
Social media influencers in Miami, New York City and Denver respond to the flood of Hanukkah products at their local Target shops in 2022. (Instagram/@jamwithjamie/@cupofjo)
“The feeling is almost like pride and like we’re being seen and represented,” Stein added. “In a sea of Christmas … it feels really great, even if it’s a much smaller representation, that the Jewish holiday is there also and the Jewish community is being acknowledged and represented.”
The idea that retailers have stocked up on Hanukkah goods to make Jews feel represented is tempting, but it’s probably not the only reason for a shift in the market, according to Russell Winer, deputy chair of the marketing department at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He said that while an endcap — the small set of shelves at the end of an aisle — might sometimes be given over for symbolic purposes, the devotion of an entire aisle at the busiest time of the year is purely a business decision.
“These stores are very sophisticated in what they put in them,” Winer said. “They’re not going to put stuff on the shelves, especially at the holidays, if they don’t think they’re going to sell.”
There are signs that the Hanukkah market might be much wider than the proportion of Americans who identify as Jewish, 2.5%, would suggest. Numerator, a respected consumer trends polling firm, found in a survey of 11,000 consumers conducted in January 2022 that 14% of respondents said they were “definitely” or “probably” celebrating Hanukkah this year, compared to 96% for Christmas. More than half of the Hanukkah celebrants said they expected to spend more than $50 on the holiday — suggesting that retailers can expect hundreds of millions of dollars in Hanukkah spending this year.
Part of that marketplace is the growing number of families in which Hanukkah is celebrated alongside other holidays, usually Christmas. Most American Jews who have married in the last decade have done so to people who are not Jewish, according to the 2020 Pew study of American Jews; most of them say they are raising their children exclusively or partly as Jews. They may want to have products that allow Hanukkah to share the stage equitably with the other celebrations in their family.
“I’m not terribly surprised from a cultural standpoint that there’s more merchandise,” said Winer, who is Jewish. He said he and his wife had purchased Hanukkah stockings for their grandchildren, who are being raised in two faith traditions. (Evangelical Christians and Messianics, those who adopt Jewish practices while believing in the divinity of Jesus, also represent an emerging market for Jewish ritual objects.)
Stein offered another theory to explain the uptick in interest in Hanukkah products: the fact that social media and Zoom meetings have made home lives more transparent than ever.
“The communal sharing of lives, whether you’re an influencer or even my friends on Facebook showing what their display is this year or taking a picture of a recipe they were really proud of, making latkes from scratch — there’s just more visibility than there has been in the past,” she said. “And that’s probably a factor.”
Whatever the reasons, shoppers are noticing. Like Stein and countless other Jewish influencers, Rabbi Yael Buechler, a devoted observer of Jewish consumer trends, has offered tours of Hanukkah merchandise to her social media followers. Wearing Hanukkah pajamas that she designed and sells, Buechler has posted 14 videos to TikTok showcasing the Hanukkah collections of national retailers and assigns each store a “yay” or “nay” based on several metrics, including whether items display accurate Hebrew or appear to be generic blue-and-white items being passed off as made for the holiday. The videos, which have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, have given her a broad view of what’s available to the Hanukkah consumer.
Welcome to the second installment of Hanukkah merch: YAY or NAY? .@target edition .Items were rated by:If the product was beyond blue & white Correct Hebrew Whether the Hanukkiyah was kosher If the Hanukkah pun was goodWhether animal was Hanukkah punnable (i.e. Menorasaurus) .#hanukkahiscoming #hanukkahfails #hanukkahcountdown #hanukkahyayornay #yayornay #hanukkah2022 #targetfinds #hanukkahpresents #hanukkahpjs #hanukkahgifts #hanukkahcheck #chanukah2022
“I see a lot more products this year than any other year,” said Buechler, who works at a Jewish school outside New York City. “I see a lot of new prints. I see more creativity in the market. I see more humor in the market.”
Like Wymer-Santiago, Buechler said Target, which has 2,000 locations across the United States, stood out as offering the widest array of products and the lowest proportion of “fails,” or products that miss the mark religiously, culturally or aesthetically.
“They have really stepped it up,” Buechler said. “Target also carries the Nickelodeon ‘Rugrats’ Hanukkah sweatshirts that are just brilliant. … I would definitely say they get the biggest ‘yay’ for this year.”
Target, which has a track record of using inclusive imagery in its advertisements and in-store promotions, declined to answer questions about its offerings, including how much bigger its Hanukkah collection is this year than in the past and how widely the products for Jewish buyers have been distributed. But a spokesperson said the feeling Wymer-Santiago and Stein described after visiting their local stores is exactly what the company is trying to cultivate.
“Target is committed to creating an inclusive guest experience in which all guests feel represented,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. The spokesperson noted that Target’s Hanukkah assortment “was developed in collaboration with Jewish team members and input from our Jewish employee resource group” and crosses several of the retailer’s in-house brands.
One of those lines, Opalhouse by Jungalow, was created by a Jewish artist, Justina Blakeney. Last year, Blakeney’s first Hanukkah collection included plates and pillows, as well as a gold menorah shaped like a dove. This year, Blakeney added new pillow designs and a clay menorah.
Target’s website prominent promotes Hanukkah products, including from a house brand by a Jewish creator named Justina Blakeney. (Screenshot)
“If I could go back in time and tell elementary-school-aged Justina (or ‘Tina’ as I was called back then) that I would have a chance to design a Hanukkah collection for Target, I would have lost my mind,” she wrote in an October blog post revealing the collection.
Hanukkah goods have always been widely available through Jewish merchandisers and at synagogue bazaars — but those products have been available only to people who already engaged in Jewish communities. Amazon and other online retailers have increased access, but only for people who are hunting for Hanukkah supplies. A Hanukkah aisle at Target, in contrast, reaches the many Jews who may not already have robust holiday traditions.
Stein, who said she particularly regretted not snapping up a marble dreidel sculpture that quickly sold out at Target, said she saw only benefits in promoting major retailers’ Hanukkah offerings, even if doing so has made her something of an unpaid advertiser at times.
“Right now, especially with the rise of antisemitism, if there are ways that we can spur Jewish joy — and for me, that’s by sharing and inspiring people with different kinds of Hanukkah merch and home decor and jewelry — I think that’s great,” she said.
Not everyone is thrilled by the shift in the marketplace. The sweeping Hanukkah displays are drawing criticism from those who have long lamented that the American primacy of Christmas has caused Jews to focus too much on a minor holiday, while leaving holidays with more religious significance relatively uncelebrated.
“I think: What would it feel like to see a giant Shavuot display?” Wymer-Santiago said.
The fast-fashion aspect of the big-box retailers’ offerings, many of which are imported from China, also raises concerns about whether easy access to trendy Judaica comes at environmental and cultural costs.
“How about we don’t extract fossil fuels to make crap that no one needs and that makes Jewish communities less distinctive?” asked Dan Friedman, a writer and longtime climate activist, though he emphasized that systemic change, rather than tweaks to purchasing decisions by Jewish consumers, is needed to avert climate catastrophe.
For Buechler and others, the benefits of a mass-market Hanukkah merchandise boom outweigh any possible drawbacks.
“As a rabbi, I am all for anything that will make Hanukkah celebrations more engaging and potentially lengthen a family celebration,” said Buechler, who said her own collection had outgrown the four tubs it occupied several months ago, and that one of her favorite purchases was of a Hanukkah sweater for lizards that she bought for a friend’s guinea pig.
“I really do believe that owning different kinds of Hanukkah merch, whether apparel or otherwise, will increase the likelihood that a family will celebrate with friends with family for more nights than they would have last year,” she added.
Nicholas Wymer-Santiago takes a selfie showing off his menorah collection, mostly acquired at his local Target in Austin, Texas. (Courtesy of Wymer-Santiago)
Wymer-Santiago plans to celebrate the holiday with his family in Ohio, meaning that he will be leaving behind much of this year’s Target haul in his Austin apartment: the device that makes dreidel-shaped waffles, the window decals that advertise the holiday to passersby, the giant dreidel-shaped jar that he has filled with, well, dreidels. He said he planned to make room in his suitcase for at least one item: a $5 menorah that reminds him of his dog.
Wymer-Santiago said a piece of him worried that Target was taking advantage of his excitement about Jewish representation, the way it has been criticized for doing around LGBTQ Pride celebrations, to sell him stuff he doesn’t need.
“Every time I buy something from Target in general, but definitely for Hanukkah, I think about this,” he said. “But then I think: This thing is so cute. And I just need it.”
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Hungarian Filmmaker Says ‘Orgy of Antisemitism Overtaking the West,’ Feels ‘Ostracized’ by Film Industry
Hungarian film director László Nemes attends the photocall of “Moulin” at the 79th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France. Photo: Marco Barada / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
Hungarian Jewish filmmaker László Nemes talked about antisemitism, the “politicization of cinema” regarding Jewish subject matters, and what he believes is an unhealthy “obsession with Jews” in a new interview with The Guardian published on Monday.
Nemes’s latest film, “Moulin,” which is about French resistance leader Jean Moulin, debuted at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday.
His 2025 film “Orphan” is about a teenage Jewish boy who survived the Holocaust by being hidden in an orphanage. While he searches for his missing father, he discovers the truth about how his mother survived the Holocaust. The film has so far not secured a US distribution deal, and Nemes believes it is because of the film’s Jewish subject matter at a time when tensions are high around the world.
“You should be able to talk about these things without being ostracized,” the filmmaker told The Guardian, adding that he feels “a little bit” ostracized by the industry.
“Even some response [to ‘Orphan’] from the media smells of an ideological standpoint,” he noted, explaining that he thinks the film was “ignored” at last year’s Venice Film Festival.
“There’s an orgy of antisemitism, an absolute, shameless orgy of antisemitism, overtaking the West,” added the director, whose grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. He also described a “race obsession” and a “puritan, moralizing, self-righteousness” ideology that he believes has taken over the cultural world and online.
Nemes won an Oscar in 2016 for his debut feature film “Son of Saul,” which follows a day and a half in the life of an Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner who is forced to clear out the corpses of fellow Jews from the gas chambers and place the bodies in ovens to be incinerated. The film won an array of awards, including the Oscar for best foreign language film. When asked how he thinks “Son of Saul” would be accepted if it was released today, Nemes told The Guardian: “I don’t even think it would make the [Oscar] shortlist today. Because of the politicization of cinema, because anything that’s Jewish is now considered … Nobody would touch it with a 10-feet pole.”
He also said he thinks boycotting Israeli film institutions, which thousands of Hollywood figures have pledged to do, is “anti-humanist regression.”
“And because it’s not identified as this, I think it’s very effective at spreading,” the filmmaker said. “And one of its very potent vectors has been antisemitism … The Jew has always been [cast as] the sort of internal enemy, and I think now [the idea of] the Jew as the internal enemy of the West has reached the dimensions of European antisemitism before the takeover by the National Socialist [Nazi] party.”
He further criticized the thousands of film industry professionals who support cultural boycotts of Israel or protest Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip, which target Hamas terrorists in the enclave who orchestrated the massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Obviously, they prefer to attach themselves to an ideology that’s been around for a long time and that pretends to be humanitarian, but it’s actually not what it purports to be,” Nemes said. “Had they really cared about the people in this region, they would have revolted against these people being ruled by a totalitarian death cult that’s actually killing its own population and at unprecedented levels.”
He believes there is an “obsession with Jews,” and when referring to the difficulty in finding a US distributor for “Orphan,” he said: “People [would] ask me about Gaza, instead of, you know, asking about the movie. [They ask] if I signed this or that petition.”
“It’s tiring to hear the overclass of Hollywood lecture us morally,” Nemes added. “Not only in Hollywood, but in the world. There’s definitely an overclass of people cut from reality, and they are eager to preach to us … Sometimes I think it’s better if actors don’t, you know, speak up that much, because I don’t think they’re very much qualified to talk about anything. They should try to be actors, the best they can, and not become activists. It’s not really their role.”
While speaking to The Guardian, the Hungarian director also criticized fellow Jewish filmmaker Jonathan Glazer for the speech he made at the 2024 Academy Awards. When the British director went on stage to accept his Oscar for the Holocaust-focused historical drama “The Zone of Interest,” Glazer said he and the film’s producer James Wilson “stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of Oct. 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza.”
Nemes told The Guardian that making a film about the Holocaust “imposes on its maker a need for responsibility.”
“I didn’t feel that he was responsible at all,” Nemes said, referring to the Glazer. “I thought he wanted to please that overclass of Hollywood with the line of good, righteous thought … I don’t believe that he understands anything about the reality of the region, yet he feels the need to do it. And I think it’s very presumptuous, very condescending.”
Nemes is a graduate of the Sam Spiegel International Film Lab, which is part of the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film & Television School.
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UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese Urges Germany to Get Over Holocaust Guilt in Antisemitic Tirade
Francesa Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, speaks at a conference, “A Cartography of Genocide: Israel’s Conduct in Gaza,” at the Roma Tre University, in Rome, Italy, Oct. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Remo Casilli
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, has published a bizarre social media post mixing antisemitic rhetoric with Holocaust revisionism, appearing to urge Germany to move beyond its historical guilt while casting Jews as arrogant and viewing themselves as morally superior to Europeans.
In a Facebook post published on Sunday, Albanese — who has an extensive history of using her role to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s attacks against the Jewish state — called on Germans to absolve themselves of responsibility for the Nazi regime’s crimes and the historical burden of guilt tied to them.
The anti-Israel UN official argued that modern Germany’s efforts to come to terms with its past through strong support for the Jewish state do not reflect genuine remorse.
Instead, she claimed this stance reflects a “historical superiority syndrome” that has never been addressed and serves as a “convenient mask” for Germany’s return to the international community.
“The Western club accepted them because they proved themselves capable of tolerating certain members of the group that were previously ‘undesirable,’ and so they accepted the Jews, but not all of them,” Albanese wrote. “They learned that to survive in this world they must be superior. No longer a fragile minority. No longer a people in exile. No longer the people of the book. But the chosen people. ‘Chosen to rule?’ One might wonder when looking at what Israel has become.”
She then went on to claim that Germany does not respect Jews unless they are Zionist and behaves like a “socially deranged” state that enacts discriminatory laws, while calling on its citizens to free themselves from what she described as an obligation to Israel.
“I know Germans can do better,” Albanese concluded. “I have seen them. But they are called upon emancipating themselves. This is their chance.”
This latest controversy is far from the first involving Albanese, who has a mandate from the UN to advise the international body on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In her position, which she has held since 2022, Albanese has faced consistent criticism over a pattern of incendiary anti-Israel remarks, with officials accusing her of inciting violence and hatred.
Earlier this year, top diplomats from Austria, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, and France called for Albanese’s resignation after she delivered yet another inflammatory tirade against Israel.
During an Al Jazeera forum in Doha, Albanese described the state of Israel as “the common enemy of humanity” and accused the country of “planning and carrying out a genocide” during its defensive war against Hamas.
“It’s also true that never before has the global community seen the challenges that we all face, we who do not control large amounts of financial, algorithms, and weapons,” Albanese said at the time, appearing to invoke a long-standing antisemitic conspiracy that Jews control wealth and technology.
She also accused Western nations of being complicit in the so-called “genocide” by supplying arms and financing Israel, while claiming that Western media helps defend the Jewish state by “amplifying the pro-apartheid, genocidal narrative.”
Albanese has previously referred to a “Jewish lobby” controlling the US and Europe, compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and stated that Hamas’s violence against Israelis — including rape, murder, and kidnapping — needs to be “put in context.”
Despite her history of antisemitic statements, the UN has consistently refused to fire Albanese, citing her status as one of its “independent experts.”
Since taking on her UN role, Albanese has been at the center of controversy due to what critics, including US and European lawmakers, have described as antisemitic and anti-Israel public remarks.
Last year, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) faced intense pressure to block Albanese’s reappointment for another three-year term, with several countries and NGOs urging UN members to oppose the move due to her controversial remarks and alleged pro-Hamas stance.
Despite significant pressure and opposition, her mandate was confirmed to extend until 2028.
Last year, the UN launched a probe into Albanese for allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.
In the past, she has also celebrated the anti-Israel protesters rampaging across US college campuses during the 2023-2024 academic year, saying they represent a “revolution” and give her “hope.”
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Kuwaiti Jiu-Jitsu Gold Medalist Refuses Handshake With Israeli Athlete: ‘We Do Not Respect Them At All’
An aerial view shows Kuwait City, Kuwait, March 16, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Stephanie McGehee.
Kuwaiti jiu-jitsu gold medalist Jassim Alhatem refused to shake hands with Israeli bronze medalist Yoav Manor at the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam Jiu-Jitsu World Tour on Friday, saying later in a video posted on social media that he has no respect for an athlete from Israel.
Alhatem won all four of his bouts in the men’s blue belt amateur under-77-kilogram category at the competition and took home the gold, while Manor earned the bronze for winning three of his four matches. At the medal ceremony, Alhatem refused to shake Manor’s hand and also declined to pose with him for the traditional photo of all the winners.
Alhatem later defended his actions in an Arabic-language video posted on Instagram. He described Israel as a “Zionist entity” and claimed he told Manor before the award ceremony, “I don’t want to know you and I don’t want to greet you. Stay on your side and I on my side, so no problem happens,” according to an English translation of the video. He further claimed that “as a Muslim,” he will not respect athletes from Israel and does not believe in separating politics from sports.
“These types we do not respect,” Alhatem said. “As Kuwaitis, we do not respect them at all … as a Muslim man, [you] must have principle. It is not right for me to play with them or respect them. It is not right. You as a Muslim must have a principle, even if you told me sport is separate from politics. No, no. There is no [separation]. If that were true, Russia wouldn’t be banned right now from participating in the Olympics.”
The International Olympic Committee has allowed eligible Russian athletes to compete as neutrals and not under the Russian flag.
The Israeli delegation at the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam Jiu-Jitsu World Tour said in a statement to the Israeli publication Ynet that “despite the tension, the organizers and Emirati hosts tried to calm the situation and persuade the Kuwaiti competitor to take part in the medal ceremony, but he chose to leave the podium area. Manor, for his part, remained focused on the sporting achievement: a bronze medal at a prestigious international competition, after an impressive day of bouts against opponents from around the world.”
Members of the Israeli delegation added that Alhatem said to Manor, “You Israelis kill children,” and “If you had reached the final, I would not have competed against you.”
Amir Boaron, the coach of Israel’s national jiu-jitsu team, also told Ynet that Alhatem called Manor a “child murderer.”
“Yoav continued trying to shake his hand and behave like an athlete. It is important for me to stress that the Emirati hosts welcomed us wonderfully and even apologized for the incident,” Boaron added.
The Abu Dhabi Grand Slam Jiu-Jitsu World Tour is organized by the United Arab Emirates, which normalized diplomatic relations with Israel when it signed the 2020 Abraham Accords, while Kuwait does not have diplomatic ties with Israel. Senior Kuwaiti officials have said the country “will be the last to normalize ties” with the Jewish state.