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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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Kate Hudson Reminisces About Jewish Grandmother’s ‘Amazing’ Cooking, Gets Emotional Over Jewish Food
Kate Hudson attends premiere of “Song Sung Blue” by FocusFeatures at AMC Lincoln Square in New York, NY on Dec. 11, 2025. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Actress Kate Hudson got nostalgic talking about her Jewish grandmother’s cooking, and all the Jewish foods that she loves and makes, during a podcast interview that aired on Wednesday.
The star of “Song Sung Blue” made an appearance on the New Year’s Eve episode of “Table Manners,” a podcast hosted by Jewish mother and daughter duo Lennie and Jessie Ware in which they talk largely about food and family while sharing a meal with their guest. Hudson has Hungarian Jewish roots on her maternal side of the family, and after she did DNA testing, the actress discovered that she is also half Sicilian, she said on the podcast. She also learned that she has German and Swedish roots.
When Hudson was asked at the start of the podcast to share a memorable dish from her childhood, she began by talking about her mother, award-winning actress Goldie Hawn, and her great cooking before mentioning her grandmother’s skills in the kitchen.
“I grew up with a mother that could throw anything into a pot, no cookbook, no nothing, and somehow it tasted amazing,” said the “Running Point” star. “And my grandma was an amazing cook, but she was a very traditional Jewish cook, like challah, amazing matzah balls, brisket – her brisket was to die for – [and] latkes. And she’d make the best challah French toast.”
Later on, Jessie asked the Golden Globe-winning actress to share a “nostalgic taste” that can transport her back in time. Hudson replied by talking about her grandmother’s matzah ball soup. The actress said she makes matzah ball soup too, but nothing compares to her grandmother’s.
“My grandmother made the best matzah balls,” Hudson explained. “Their fluff made them perfect. Perfect matzah ball soup … her matzah balls, nothing like ’em.” She also said that “any Jewish meat,” like her grandmother’s brisket, makes her feel like she’s with her “gram.”
“It makes me emotional, Jewish food,” Hudson added. “And blintzes, for instance. I grew up with blueberry blintzes, and I love them so much. I just with my daughter got some the other day and I got so emotional. You realize no matter how religious you are – we’re not a religious family. It’s not like, we didn’t go to temple. I mean we did when my grandma was alive, but after that, we didn’t really carry the religious part of our Judaism. But the traditions are so amazing and beautiful.”
The conversation then circled back to challah and Hudson shared that she bakes a four-strand challah with the help of a “diagram” but also small challah rolls.
“I still make challah. We pray on the challah bread. We do the whole thing,” she shared. “Every time I do, we talk about what each ingredient, what it represents. There are such beautiful traditions. And my grandma gave that to us, no one else. She was the only one. And thank God for that. Sitting around the table on a Jewish holiday and the food that it represents, just makes me happy.”
Jessie replied by telling her mother, “You never told me what all the ingredients of challah bread represent. You’ve just given me Jewish guilt.” Lennie laughed and replied that she has never baked challah before. Hudson immediately offered to share her challah recipe, saying, “They’re so easy.”
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New York City Woman Punched Over Hat Defending Jews
A New York City subway platform on Oct. 25, 2022. Photo: Jakub Porzycki via Reuters Connect
A woman was punched in the face this week while riding the New York City subway for wearing a hat that said “F— Antisemitism,” according to a local report.
“F— Jews,” the suspect, described as a “Black man in his 40s,” allegedly said to her before striking the blow on Tuesday afternoon, the New York Daily News reported, citing local law enforcement.
The victim then “fled” the railcar at the 116th St. – Columbia University subway station in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, while the assailant remained on board, the News added. She was reportedly not seriously injured, as medics did not treat her following the incident’s being reported to law enforcement.
The assault is one of the latest acts of antisemitism on the city’s public transport. Last month, two Black men assaulted two Jewish men on a train in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, with one of them seizing hold of a victim’s neck and shoving him. Not a day later, according to a local NBC affiliate, someone stabbed a Jewish man in the same neighborhood. It has been reported that the dispute began when the would-be stabber uttered an antisemitic comment to the victim.
Beyond public transit, New York City has seen an alarming surge in antisemitic hate crimes over the last two years, following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
Jews were targeted in the majority (54 percent) of all hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024, according to data issued by the New York City Police Department (NYPD). A new report released on Wednesday by the New York City Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, which was established in May, noted that figure rose to a staggering 62 percent in the first quarter of this year, despite Jewish New Yorkers comprising just 11 percent of the city’s population.
New York City is home to the world’s largest Jewish community outside of Israel.
In a moment of rising neo-Nazism and tensions between Arab Muslims and Jews over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this week’s subway incident highlights antisemitism in New York City’s African American community, which has been the source of much of the recent antisemitic violence.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, in just eight days between the end of October and the beginning of November 2024, three Hasidim, including children, were brutally assaulted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. In each case, the assailant was allegedly a Black male, a pattern of conduct which continues to strain Black-Jewish relations across the Five Boroughs.
In one instance, an Orthodox man was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cellphone in compliance with what appeared to have been an attempted robbery. In another incident, a man smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn.
In 2023, an analysis of NYPD data conducted by Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA), found that 97 percent of antisemitic hate crimes were perpetrated by members of other minority groups and nearly a quarter by teenagers. Over two-thirds, 69 percent, of the assailants, it added, were Black, the report continued, with most attacks, 77 percent, taking place in predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
Tensions between Blacks and Jews have limited inter-group cooperation in recent decades, causing the halcyon days of the relationship in the 20th century, when Jewish philanthropy helped sustain the Civil Rights Movement, to seem more like ancient history than a current, lived experience. Black antisemitism increased in volume and visibility in the 1960s, with the rise of the Nation of Islam and the Black Power movement, and since then some prominent Black leaders have called Jews “hymies,” stoked a race riot in Crown Heights in which Blacks assaulted Jews in the streets, and promoted the anti-Zionist movement, which aims to dispossess Jews of their homeland in Israel. Most recently, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement blamed Israel for police killings of Black men.
The rift is often cited as a missed opportunity for a permanent solidarity between two historically oppressed groups. However, that has not stopped Black and Jewish leaders from attempting to revive the Black-Jewish alliance of lore.
In 2019, Black and Jewish members of Congress launched the Black-Jewish Congressional Caucus and “relaunched” it in 2023 with the help of the National Urban League, American Jewish Committee, and the Anti-Defamation League.
“It’s an incredible and positive development,” Darius Jones, CEO of the National Black Empowerment Council, told The Algemeiner during the relaunch event in 2023. “Fighting antisemitism and racism has inspired a resurrection of the Black-Jewish relationship at the community level, and it’s great to see it happening and even better that national leadership is stepping up to move it along.”
Several members of Congress delivered remarks during the event, including co-chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-NY), who said that both Jews and Blacks are equally reviled by white supremacists.
“Jewish tradition teaches that it is incumbent upon us to speak out and act against injustice. African American and Jewish communities have a long, shared history of confronting discrimination and racism in the United States, and the recent rise of white supremacy, bigotry, and antisemitism poses a direct threat to both our communities,” Schultz said. “This caucus will build upon our historic fight for a better, more peaceful world, while also raising awareness in Congress about the common issues facing our communities.”
In 2024, the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), a nonprofit which promotes academic freedom and free speech, partnered with South Carolina State University and Voorhees University — two Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) — to host a series of student and faculty seminars on the history of “Black-Jewish solidarity,” from the creation of Rosenwald Schools for Black children following the abolition of slavery to the present day.
“Recent surveys and studies show a disturbing rate of antisemitic attitudes among Black Americans, especially young people,” AEN executive director Miriam Elman told The Algemeiner at the time. “HBCUs have a critically important role to play as allies with the Jewish community to counter antisemitism.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jewish Community in Spain Condemns Online Map Labeling Schools, Businesses as ‘Zionist’
The children’s bookstore in Sant Cugat, Spain, was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti and slogans, prompting outrage from the local Jewish community. Photo: Screenshot
Members of Spain’s Jewish community have filed complaints against a French online platform over a map pinpointing Jewish-owned businesses, schools, and Israeli-linked companies in Catalonia, warning it revives Europe’s darkest antisemitic practices and dangerously promotes harassment and violence.
According to the local Jewish outlet Enfoque Judío, the interactive map — known as Barcelonaz — was launched by an unidentified group claiming to be “journalists, professors, and students” on the French-hosted mapping platform GoGoCarto.
As a publicly accessible and collaboratively created online platform, the map marks over 150 schools, Jewish-owned businesses — including kosher food shops — and Israeli-linked as well as Spanish and international companies operating in Israel, labeling them as “Zionist.”
“Our goal is to understand how Zionism operates and the forms it takes, with the intention of making visible and denouncing the impact of its investments in our territory,” the project’s website states.
Users are also encouraged to donate and to submit additional locations that meet the criteria set by the map’s creators.
Jewish leaders in Spain have strongly denounced the initiative, warning that it fosters further discrimination and hatred against the community amid an increasingly hostile environment in which Jews and Israelis continue to be targeted.
Several community organizations have filed complaints with GoGoCarto, demanding the site’s removal and arguing that it violates French laws against hate speech and discrimination, Enfoque Judío reported.
The newly unveiled project “clearly has an antisemitic and discriminatory character, as it seeks to identify and stigmatize a population based on its real or perceived religious affiliation,” the complainants wrote in a letter obtained by Enfoque Judío.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Spain has become one of Israel’s fiercest critics, a stance that has only intensified in recent months, coinciding with a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents targeting the local Jewish community — from violent assaults and vandalism to protests and legal actions.
Last week, Israeli mural artists Hodaya and Dudi Shoval were physically assaulted in Barcelona while working on a project that turns existing murals into pro-Israel messages, confronting a rising tide of antisemitic and anti-Israeli graffiti throughout the city.
While working in the city center, a group of unknown individuals approached them and started shouting antisemitic insults before turning violent.
As the Shovals and their camera crew tried to flee the scene, the assailants began throwing objects, including a glass bottle that smashed against their photographer’s head.
Amid this increasingly hostile climate, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has faced growing backlash from political leaders and the Jewish community, who accuse him of fueling antisemitic hostility.
As part of its anti-Israel campaign aimed at undermining and isolating the Jewish state internationally, the Spanish government announced earlier this week a ban on imports from hundreds of Israeli communities in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights — making Spain the second European Union country to implement such a policy in its ongoing effort to boycott Israel.
Spain’s newly implemented measure marks its latest attempts to curb Israel’s defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, as ties between the two countries continue to deteriorate amid ongoing tensions.
In September, Spain also passed a law to take “urgent measures to stop the genocide in Gaza,” banning trade in defense material and dual-use products from Israel, as well as imports and advertising of products originating from Israeli settlements.
On Tuesday, Spain’s consumer ministry ordered seven travel booking websites to take down 138 listings for holiday homes in Palestinian territories, warning they could face sanctions if they continue advertising Israeli-owned properties in those areas.
Earlier this year, the Spanish government also announced it would bar entry to individuals involved in what it called a “genocide against Palestinians,” block Israel-bound ships and aircraft carrying weapons from Spanish ports and airspace, and enforce an embargo on products from Israeli communities in the West Bank.