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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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Credit Suisse had many more bank accounts with Nazi ties than previously known, investigation finds
(JTA) — The financial services company Credit Suisse had hundreds more bank accounts with Nazi ties than it had previously revealed, a new investigation reported this week.
The findings were discovered when independent investigators audited UBS, the Swiss bank that acquired Credit Suisse in 2023.
“What the investigation has found to date shows that Credit Suisse’s involvement was more extensive than was previously known, and it underscores the importance of continuing to engage in research efforts about this horrific era of modern history,” Neil Barofsky, a lawyer overseeing the inquiry, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday.
Barofsky’s report found 890 accounts potentially linked to Nazis: 628 individuals and 262 legal entities.
The investigation also found that Credit Suisse provided support to the “ratlines” that enabled Nazis to escape Europe and enter Argentina, opening and maintaining accounts for the Argentine Immigration Office.
Specifically, Barofsky said in his testimony, Credit Suisse provided funds “to finance bribes, obtain fraudulent travel documents, and pay for living expenses and transportation for fugitives, including perpetrators of the Holocaust.”
Barofsky’s investigation into UBS also found multiple previously unreported instances of the forced sale of property owned by Jews during the Holocaust. It also found that Credit Suisse held accounts for the German foreign office during the Holocaust, which dealt with the deportations of Jews.
Last May, Argentina declassified more than 1,800 documents related to the ratlines at the behest of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, named for the late Nazi hunter. Barofsky’s research into Credit Suisse’s involvement in the ratlines is ongoing, he said.
The findings represent a potentially explosive capstone to years of investigation into Credit Suisse’s Nazi ties.
Jewish organizations have long claimed that in addition to playing a key role in financially supporting Nazi Germany, Credit Suisse has held onto money looted from Jews long after the war. In 1999, the Swiss bank paid Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors a settlement of $1.25 billion in restitution for withholding money from Jews who had tried to withdraw their funds.
In 2020, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish advocacy group, alleged that the bank had also hidden information about its ties to Nazis who fled to Argentina.
The bank hired Barofsky the following year to investigate its record but fired him in 2022, angering U.S. lawmakers including Sen. Chuck Grassley, now chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 2023, as the top Republican on the Budget Committee, Grassley charged that Credit Suisse was obfuscating its Nazi ties, saying, “When it comes to investigating Nazi matters, righteous justice demands that we must leave no stone unturned. Credit Suisse has thus far failed to meet that standard.” Barofsky was soon rehired.
Tuesday’s hearing grew heated when Barofsky said the bank was still interfering with his investigation. He argued that his investigation could not be completed without access to 150 documents related to a 1998 restitution settlement between UBS and Holocaust survivors, which Barofsky says may contain the names of specific account holders he is investigating.
Robert Karofsky, president of UBS Americas, alleged Tuesday that giving Barofsky access to those documents could violate attorney-client privilege.
“Materials from the 1990’s are not within the scope of the Ombudsperson’s oversight, which is meant to be focused on Credit Suisse’s history and World War II-era conduct,” Karofsky said.
Still, Barofsky said, his report will be incomplete without those documents.
“I will be unable to provide assurance in my final report that the investigation has truly left no stone unturned,” he said.
The post Credit Suisse had many more bank accounts with Nazi ties than previously known, investigation finds appeared first on The Forward.
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Former Moscow rabbi says he rebuffed proposal to convert a million Russians discussed in Epstein files recording
(JTA) — When newly released audio recordings revealed former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak discussing mass conversion and selective immigration with Jeffrey Epstein, disgraced financier and the convicted sex trafficker, the reaction in Israel was swift and deeply political.
Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, accused Barak of seeking to “select” Jews for immigration and charged that Israel’s political left was trying to “replace the people” after failing at the ballot box — an echo of contemporary conspiracy theories about immigration that appear to have been treated as a serious idea at the time.
The recordings, released this week as part of the U.S. Justice Department’s latest disclosure under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, capture Barak in a wide-ranging conversation with Epstein, who died in federal custody in 2019. The audio appears to date to around 2013, when Barak — a longtime leader in the liberal Labor Party — was 71 years old and transitioning into the private sector.
In the recording, Barak argues that Israel should weaken the Orthodox rabbinate’s control over conversion and open the door to large-scale conversion as a demographic strategy.
“We have to break the monopoly of the Orthodox rabbinate — on marriage and funerals, the definition of a Jew,” Barak says. “Open the gates for massive conversion into Judaism. It’s a successful country. Many will apply.”
Over more than three hours, Barak speaks candidly about population trends in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, warning that without a two-state solution, Jews could lose their demographic majority.
“It will be an Arab majority,” Barak says of the territories. “It’s a collective blindness of our society.”
Barak also expresses concern about the growing proportion of Arab citizens within Israel, noting that Arabs made up about 16% of the population four decades ago and roughly 20% today. He contrasts that growth with the ultra-Orthodox Jewish population, which he says is expanding more rapidly.
As a counterweight, Barak proposes immigration, conversion and minority inclusion. He praises the Druze and Christian minorities as highly integrated and points to immigrants from the former Soviet Union as prime candidates for conversion.
“We can control the quality much more effectively, much more than the founding fathers of Israel did,” Barak says. Referring explicitly to immigration from North Africa, he adds: “They took whatever came just to save people. Now, we can be more selective.”
Barak lauds the post-Soviet aliyah of the 1990s, which brought more than 1 million Russian-speaking immigrants to Israel, and says the country could “easily absorb another million.” He recounts telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that Israel about this idea and joking about mixed Russian-Israeli names in the military as evidence of rapid integration.
The remarks drew sharp criticism from Pinchas Goldschmidt, who spent more than three decades leading Moscow’s Jewish community before leaving the country after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In an interview, Goldschmidt said the recording echoed conversations he encountered repeatedly during his years in Russia.
“I spent 33 years in Moscow, and there was talk like this,” Goldschmidt said. “Not necessarily among the heads of the agencies dealing with aliyah, but among employees and officials who felt this was their opportunity to stop Israel from becoming a Levantine country.”
Goldschmidt said those attitudes occasionally surfaced in direct encounters with Israeli political figures. He recalled a meeting with former Israeli minister Haim Ramon, who asked whether Orthodox rabbinical courts could convert large numbers of non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
“He came to me with a number,” Goldschmidt said. “He mentioned 100,000.”
Goldschmidt said his response was categorical. “Halacha doesn’t speak in numbers,” he said, referring to Jewish law. “There is no number on the top and no number on the bottom. Halacha speaks about standards and conditions. If 1 million people are ready to convert according to Jewish law, then we will convert 1 million people. And if they are not ready, we will not convert even one.”
Goldschmidt said the meeting took place after Ramon had left government following a sexual misconduct scandal but emphasized that it was not a casual exchange.
“It was more than a conversation,” he said. “It was not a conversation over tea. If he came to see me officially, with a question like that on the table, then it meant something.”
For Goldschmidt, Barak’s claim in the recording that he discussed such matters with Putin was particularly striking. “Why do you have to speak to Putin about converting a million Russians?” he asked. “People can leave Russia without permission. The person he needed to speak to was me.”
Goldschmidt said Barak’s framing of conversion and immigration would be widely perceived in Israel as offensive. “Anyone from Middle Eastern backgrounds would hear this whole conversation as extremely racist,” he said. “And anyone who is traditional or religious would also find it very offensive.”
In his comments, Netanyahu also said Barak’s close relationship with Epstein proved that Epstein did not work for Israel or its intelligence services, saying it would make no sense for an Israeli asset to be closely associated with one of the government’s most vocal opponents.
Barak’s ties to Epstein — including repeated meetings years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction — have been reported previously, and there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Barak.
The post Former Moscow rabbi says he rebuffed proposal to convert a million Russians discussed in Epstein files recording appeared first on The Forward.
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Ex-Head of NYC Office to Combat Antisemitism Discusses Being Abruptly Fired by Mamdani, Replaced With Israel Critic
The Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, led by Moshe Davis, held its first meeting on July 17, 2025, at City Hall in New York City. Photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
Moshe Davis was replaced this week as the executive director of the New York City Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism and spoke with The Free Press about his firing, which came without notice, while also sharing a message for his replacement, liberal Zionist Phylisa Wisdom.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office announced on Wednesday that Davis was being replaced by Wisdom, 39, who recently served as the executive director of the New York Jewish Agenda. NYJA is made up of “liberal and progressive Zionists,” according to its website. The group has criticized Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip and opposes the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. “NYC deserves a mayor who will stand up for Palestinians in the face of state-sanctioned violence,” Wisdom previously posted on X.
The Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism was established in May of last year by Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams.
Davis, 28, told The Free Press he was not told in advance that he was being replaced, and found out only after it was publicized online and in the news.
“I was reporting to work like I do every day … at some point, I get a text and then a tweet and then see an article that they have named a replacement for my position. Not something that was told to me in advance,” he explained. “At some point they came to my desk and said, ‘Let’s talk,’ and they were sorry for the way it was done. But they said they were looking to go in a new direction.”
“I’m a loud, proud Jewish person who walks with a kippah on my head,” he added. “A proud Zionist. Someone who takes their Judaism to heart and it means a lot to me and my family … And I think this administration maybe felt that was too much for them.”
Anti-Jewish hate crimes in New York City increased by 182 percent in January during Mamdani’s first month in office compared to the same month last year, according to newly released statistics from the New York City Police Department (NYPD). There were 31 anti-Jewish hate crimes in the first month of 2026, which was more than half of all the hate crime incidents reported in January.
Davis told The Free Press this week that in the last month, he has been trying to push forward efforts to combat antisemitism in New York and protect Jewish New Yorkers but hasn’t “found much traction” from Mamdani’s office.
“You’re gonna put a new director in? Get to work. Jewish New Yorkers are on edge, are fearful of the rise of antisemitic incidents,” Davis said. “That’s what Jewish New Yorkers want to see: they want to see someone who cares about their concerns. If you can’t correctly understand where this hatred is coming, where this propaganda and [activism] is coming from, and how it effects Jewish New Yorkers, it’s gonna be a hard job.”
“I’m afraid if you’re giving too much leeway to propaganda and activism, Jewish New Yorkers are going to be targeted,” he added. “They’re going to be unsafe … that’s something that scares me.”
Wisdom said in a released statement that she was “honored and humbled” to be the new executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.
“New York City has long been a beacon of hope for the Jewish community,” said the Jewish Brooklyn resident. “We will continue to ensure that Jewish safety and belonging remains at the core of this administration’s vision for a more livable city. In a time of rising hatred and fear, I look forward to embracing this solemn responsibility — both to represent the diverse array of Jewish voices to City Hall in this critical moment, and to demonstrate the power of pluralistic democracy in the greatest city in the world.”
Mamdani’s office said that as head of the New York Jewish Agenda, Wisdom “successfully advocated for legislation in Albany to combat antisemitism and other forms of hate and testified before the New York City Council in support of increased funding for hate crime prevention.” Wisdom also previously worked in advocacy through the Union for Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center. She supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state but, like Mamdani, opposes the IHRA definition of antisemitism, a reference tool for identifying antisemitic hate crimes that has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and governing institutions around the world.
Some Jewish leaders have expressed concern about Wisdom’s past work for Yaffed, an organization that pushes for more oversight of secular education in New York’s ultra-Orthodox yeshivas. Wisdom was Yaffed’s director of development and government affairs before joining NYJA in 2023.
“The leader of the Office of Antisemitism cannot have a contentious relationship with the Hassidic yeshiva community,” Yaacov Behrman, who heads public relations for the Chabad Lubavitch Headquarters in Brooklyn, wrote on X in early January.
“When the office was created, I was part of the early conversations about its purpose: ensuring that Jewish New Yorkers feel protected and free to live openly and proudly,” he added. “And in New York, a large share of antisemitic hate crimes target Hassidic and Yeshivish Jews. It is difficult to understand how someone who has spent years publicly antagonizing yeshivas could build the relationships or provide the reassurance needed for the community most often targeted by antisemitic attacks. This is not politics. It is common sense.”
Those who support Wisdom’s appointment as the new executive director of the Office to Combat Antisemitism include US Rep. Jerry Nadler; New York City Comptroller Mark Levine; State Sen. Liz Krueger; former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism; and Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.