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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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French Court Rejects Antisemitism Charge in Murder of 89-Year-Old Jewish Man
Tens of thousands of French people march in Paris to protest against antisemitism. Photo: Screenshot
A French court on Thursday tossed out antisemitic-motivated charges against a 55-year-old man convicted of murdering his 89-year-old Jewish neighbor in 2022, in what appears to be yet another instance of France’s legal system brushing aside antisemitism.
French authorities in Lyon, in southeastern France, acquitted defendant Rachid Kheniche of aggravated murder charges on antisemitic grounds, rejecting the claim that the killing was committed on account of the victim’s religion.
According to French media, the magistrate of the public prosecutor’s office refused to consider the defendant’s prior antisemitic behavior, including online posts spreading hateful content and promoting conspiracy theories about Jews and Israelis, arguing that it was not directly related to the incident itself. The jurors ultimately agreed and dismissed the presence of an antisemitic motive.
In May 2022, Kheniche threw his neighbor, René Hadjadj, from the 17th floor of his building, an act to which he later admitted.
According to the police investigation, Kheniche and his neighbor were having a discussion when the conflict escalated.
At the time, he told investigators that he had tried to strangle Hadjadj but did not realize what he was doing, as he was experiencing a paranoid episode caused by prior drug use.
After several psychiatric evaluations, the court concluded that the defendant was mentally impaired at the time of the crime, reducing his criminal responsibility and lowering the maximum sentence for murder to 20 years.
Due to the defendant’s age and assessed risk, the magistrate also asked for 10 years of supervision after his release in addition to the maximum prison time.
Kheniche was ultimately sentenced on Thursday to 18 years in prison and six years of “socio-judicial monitoring.”
The three-day trail, which began on Monday, focused specifically on the alleged antisemitic motive being contested to determine the sentence, as Kheniche’s guilt for the murder was already determined. He has denied that antisemitism played any role in his actions.
However, Alain Jakubowicz, counsel for the League Against Racism and Antisemitism (Licra) and the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), both civil parties in the proceedings, argued that the defendant was “obsessed” with the Jewish religion.
Kheniche previously referred on social media to “sayanim,” a conspiracy term used to refer to a sleeper agent for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. He also reportedly took passport photos and a text in Hebrew found in his victim’s jacket and cut them out. But the magistrate argued that the law required the court only to consider the facts “at the same time as the crime committed,” thereby dismissing past antisemitic and conspiratorial comments.
The court’s decision “is a reflection of our society,” Muriel Ouaknine-Melki, counsel for members of the victim’s family, told AFP. “It is simply a reflection of the way France deals with the scourge of antisemitism.”
This is far from the first case in France to spark such alarm, as courts have repeatedly overturned or reduced sentences for individuals accused of antisemitic crimes, fueling public outrage over what many see as excessive leniency.
Last year, the public prosecutor’s office in Nanterre, just west of Paris, appealed a criminal court ruling that cleared a nanny of antisemitism-aggravated charges after she poisoned the food and drinks of the Jewish family she worked for.
Residing illegally in France, the nanny had worked as a live-in caregiver for the family and their three children — aged two, five, and seven — since November 2023.
The 42-year-old Algerian woman was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for “administering a harmful substance that caused incapacitation for more than eight days.”
First reported by Le Parisien, the shocking incident occurred in January 2024, just two months after the caregiver was hired, when the mother discovered cleaning products in the wine she drank and suffered severe eye pain from using makeup remover contaminated with a toxic substance, prompting her to call the police.
After a series of forensic tests, investigators detected polyethylene glycol — a chemical commonly used in industrial and pharmaceutical products — along with other toxic substances in the food consumed by the family and their three children.
Even though the nanny initially denied the charges against her, she later confessed to police that she had poured a soapy lotion into the family’s food as a warning because “they were disrespecting her.”
“They have money and power, so I should never have worked for a Jewish woman — it only brought me trouble,” the nanny told the police. “I knew I could hurt them, but not enough to kill them.”
The French court declined to uphold any antisemitism charges against the defendant, noting that her incriminating statements were made several weeks after the incident and recorded by a police officer without a lawyer present
The nanny, who has been living in France in violation of a deportation order issued in February 2024, was also convicted of using a forged document — a Belgian national identity card — and barred from entering France for five years.
In another shocking case last year, a local court in France dramatically reduced the sentence of one of the two teenagers convicted of the brutal gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl, citing his “need to prepare for future reintegration.”
More than a year after the attack, the Versailles Court of Appeal retried one of the convicted boys — the only one to challenge his sentence — behind closed doors, ultimately reducing his term from nine to seven years and imposing an educational measure.
The original sentences, handed down in June, gave the two boys — who were 13 years old at the time of the incident — seven and nine years in prison, respectively, after they were convicted on charges of group rape, physical violence, and death threats aggravated by antisemitic hatred.
The third boy involved in the attack, the girl’s ex-boyfriend, was accused of threatening her and orchestrating the attack, also motivated by racist prejudice. Because he was under 13 at the time of the attack, he did not face prison and was instead sentenced to five years in an educational facility.
Just this week, a court in Paris denied a Jewish family from Baghdad compensation for their former home, which was seized from them and now serves as the French embassy in Iraq.
The plaintiffs, descendants of two Jewish Iraqi brothers, filed a lawsuit last year seeking $22 million in back rent and an additional $11 million in damages from the French government.
According to their account, the French government leased the house as its embassy starting in 1964 and paid their family through 1974, but has made no payments for more than 50 years.
In the 1950s, the Iraqi government seized Jewish property and stripped Jews of their citizenship, yet the family retained legal ownership of their Baghdad home even after being forced to leave in 1951.
Last year, Philip Khazzam, grandson of Ezra Lawee, told The Globe and Mail that, under pressure from Saddam Hussein’s government, the French government stopped paying rent to the Lawee family and appears to have diverted the funds to the Iraqi treasury.
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Vance Defends Trump’s Iran Approach, Says Tehran ‘Can’t Have a Nuclear Weapon’
US Vice President JD Vance delivers remarks at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles, California, US, June 20, 2025. Phone: REUTERS/Daniel Cole
US Vice President JD Vance defended President Donald Trump’s approach to reining in Iranian aggression during an interview with podcaster Megyn Kelly, arguing that Tehran’s acquiring a nuclear weapon would prove disastrous for American interests.
“Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. That is the stated policy goal of the president of the United States,” Vance said.
Vance pushed back against critics who have suggested that the president shouldn’t engage in “diplomacy” or “negotiate” with Iran, explaining that Trump will “keep his options open” while trying to advance American security interests “through non-military means.” However, Vance stressed that the president would be willing to engage militarily if left with no other options to dismantle Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
“I am very cognizant that the Middle East leads to quagmires,” he said. “Trust me, so does the president of the United States.”
Trump has discussed targeted strikes on Iranian security forces and leadership, partly as a way to pressure the regime over its violent suppression of demonstrators while also seeking to expand talks to address nuclear and missile issues. The protests, which began on Dec. 28 amid deep economic distress and mounting public frustration with Tehran’s theocratic leadership, quickly spread across the country. Security forces have met demonstrators with lethal force, mass arrests, and a near-total internet blackout that has hampered independent reporting and documentation of abuses. Some reports indicate that up to 30,000 protesters may have been killed by Iranian forces in just two days. Regime officials put the death toll at 2,000-3,000.
Vance also highlighted the importance of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, explaining that Tehran is the “world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.”
“What happens when the same people who are shooting up a mall or driving airplanes into buildings have a nuclear weapon? That is unacceptable,” Vance said.
The vice president added that in the event that Iran obtains nuclear arms, other states such as Saudi Arabia will rapidly seek to secure their regimes though acquiring nuclear weapons themselves, triggering a new era of “nuclear proliferation on a global scale.”
“The biggest threat to security in the world is a lot of people having nuclear weapons,” he said.
Vance suggested that decreasing the overall number of nuclear arms in the world would help secure long-term peace for the global community.
Vance also pushed back on the chorus of critics within the Republican Party who claim the president has expended too much energy and time on foreign affairs, arguing Trump has “gotten a lot done” for the American people and most of his accomplishments are within the realm of domestic policy.
The vice president has come under scrutiny in recent months over his chummy relationship with controversial podcaster Tucker Carlson, a pundit who has repeatedly argued that the US should not attempt to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program.
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Patriots Owner Robert Kraft Unveils New Super Bowl Ad Aimed at Combating Jew-Hatred
Robert Kraft. Photo: New England Patriots/Wikimedia Commons
An initiative that focuses on combating antisemitism and was founded by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has unveiled a new advertisement set to air during Super Bowl LX on Sunday that calls on people to stand up against Jew-hatred.
The ad released by Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, formerly known as the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, is set in a school hallway and shows students whispering and laughing as a young Jewish classmate passes by. When the Jewish student reaches his locker, he discovers a hateful sticky note placed on his backpack by classmates that says “Dirty Jew.” Another student then walks over, covers the note with a Blue Square, and tells the Jewish kid, “Do not listen to that.” The video ends with the fellow student standing next to his Jewish classmate with another Blue Square placed on his chest, as an act of solidarity.
A message on the screen then states that two in three Jewish teenagers in the US have experienced antisemitism, which was first revealed by the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish youth movement BBYO in 2024. Gen Z is also three times more likely to witness antisemitism.
“For the third straight year, the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate is proud to show up on sports’ biggest stage and speak directly to more than 120 million Americans with an urgent message: Stand up for each other and stand up to hate wherever you see it,” Kraft said in a released statement.
He told CNBC he is very worried about the hatred and division taking place across the US. “You’re not born with hate, it’s learned and you have to find ways to push back on it,” Kraft said. “It’s about education and making sure every day Americans understand that this is happening.”
On Sunday, the Patriots will take on the Seattle Seahawks in Santa Clara, California, and hope to win their seventh Super Bowl title.
Kraft founded the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism in 2019 in response to the rise of antisemitism and all forms of hate across the US. The Blue Square was first introduced in 2023 as a symbol for expressing solidarity with the Jewish community and Kraft launched the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate in 2025.
A survey from the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate released in December 2025 revealed that Americans are displaying more antisemitism than in the past, but are also “less aware antisemitism exists, less likely to think it’s important enough to fight, and less likely to stand up to prejudice against Jews when they encounter it.”