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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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‘Brazen Attacks’: Antisemitism Turns Increasingly Violent in the West
CCTV footage of a Jewish man getting stabbed by an attacker in Golders Green area, which is home to a large Jewish population, in London, Britain, April 29, 2026, in this screengrab taken from a social media video. Photo: Social Media/via REUTERS
Across North America and Europe, antisemitism appears to be entering a new, more dangerous phase, with Jewish communities facing a growing wave of shootings, assaults, arson attacks, and violent intimidation even as overall incident totals in some countries begin to dip after the surge that followed Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities in Israel.
In Canada, early 2026 data already indicate the country is on track to see its most violent year against the Jewish community in recent memory, with more violent antisemitic attacks recorded so far this year than during all of 2025, according to the Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith Canada.
In total, 11 violent antisemitic attacks have already been recorded across the country since the start of 2026, surpassing the 10 violent incidents documented during all of last year, when more than 6,800 antisemitic cases were reported nationwide.
“These brazen attacks on Jewish Canadians are a sign of a crisis of antisemitism that has spiraled out of control,” Simon Wolle, chief executive officer of B’nai Brith Canada, said in a statement.
“Violence such as this, which has escalated from targeting synagogues to targeting Jewish people directly, does not occur in a vacuum. It is what happens when governments fail to act despite mounting evidence that antisemitism is becoming more normalized and dangerous,” Wolle continued.
Last week, a group of Jewish worshippers standing outside the Congregation Chasidei Bobov synagogue in Montreal was targeted in a drive-by shooting, leaving one person with minor injuries.
A week earlier, three visibly Jewish residents were targeted in a separate antisemitic attack when suspects opened fire with a gel-pellet gun, causing minor injuries.
In the United States, overall antisemitic incidents declined in 2025, but violent attacks against American Jews remained at alarmingly elevated levels, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
In total, 6,274 antisemitic incidents — including assaults, harassment, and vandalism — were recorded across the country last year, averaging roughly 17 incidents every day.
While antisemitic assaults rose modestly by 4 percent to 203 incidents in 2025, attackers increasingly wielded deadly weapons, with such cases surging nearly 40 percent compared to the previous year.
According to the ADL’s recent report, this broader escalation was marked by the return of fatal antisemitic violence in the US, with Jewish victims killed in such attacks for the first time since 2019.
Last May, two Israeli embassy staffers were shot dead in Washington, DC, followed weeks later by a firebombing in Colorado that killed one person and left 13 others injured.
In Spain, an anonymous group has launched an interactive online map called “BarcelonaZ,” which its creators describe as a mapping of “Zionism” across Barcelona, prompting growing concern within the local Jewish community over an increase in targeted attacks and violence.
The interactive tool functions as a geolocated blacklist of Jewish, Israeli, or allegedly Israel-linked businesses and organizations, which its creators accuse of complicity in what they describe as a “genocide” in Gaza.
On the platform, each entry includes a business name, address, category, links, contact details, and political accusations, which Jewish leaders have denounced as resembling a modern-day “Nazi list.”
The map has intensified an already hostile climate in Spain, where reports of antisemitic harassment and violence have surged in recent months. In one of the latest incidents, an unknown individual attempted to set fire to a Jewish-owned pizzeria in Madrid while customers were still dining inside.
In the United Kingdom, Jewish communities have also faced a mounting wave of antisemitic violence, intimidation, and street-level harassment amid growing fears over public safety.
Recently, an increasingly popular antisemitic TikTok trend in London has led to arrests and convictions after young men filmed themselves using cash to mock and harass members of Orthodox Jewish communities.
Videos circulating on social media show young men walking through heavily Jewish areas of London carrying fishing rods with money attached to the line in an apparent attempt to “fish for Jews.”
In a separate incident over the weekend in Stamford Hill, north London, a man allegedly whipped several Haredi Jewish women with a belt before spitting at volunteer responders who arrived at the scene. Witnesses said he also shouted racist insults, antisemitic slurs, and threats at both the victims and the volunteers.
Hours later, in nearby Amhurst Park in north London, a Jewish child was allegedly assaulted outside a school after a woman screamed antisemitic insults and punched the minor.
These latest incidents come amid a wider surge in antisemitic violence in London, including the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green — an attack that prompted the British government to raise the national terrorism threat level from “substantial” to “severe” for the first time in over four years.
Across the English Channel, three teenage boys assaulted a 14-year-old Jewish girl and threatened to kill her in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles in March. The attack occurred weeks after a 13-year-old boy on his way to synagogue in Paris was brutally beaten by a knife-wielding assailant. France has seen several high-profile antisemitic attacks over the past year.
Meanwhile, the commissioner to combat antisemitism in the German state of Hesse sounded the alarm in January after an arson attack on a local synagogue in the town of Giessen, warning that it reflected a “growing pogrom-like atmosphere” threatening Jewish life across Germany. The environment has become so hostile that the Jewish community in Potsdam, a city just outside Berlin, fears it may not be safe to open a new Jewish daycare center amid growing security concerns.
In Ireland, the Jewish community has also reported a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with community leaders warning that violent threats and intimidation are becoming increasingly commonplace.
One Irish Jew said he and his wife no longer attend community events together out of fear that a mass-casualty antisemitic attack could leave their young son orphaned — a stark reflection of the deepening sense of insecurity gripping parts of Ireland’s Jewish community.
“If there were another community that felt that sense of siege and that they had to take steps to protect themselves in moments where they’re visible, I think there would be a sense of moral outrage about it,” Sunday Times journalist Jon Ihle told “The Claire Byrne Show.”
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Debating Zionism is fair. Protesting Israel’s president at commencement crosses the line
I am grateful for Noam Pianko’s recent essay, “Debating Zionism is good for Jews, actually.” Pianko argued that criticism of a small group of graduating seniors at the Jewish Theological Seminary who objected to JTS’s invitation to Israeli President Isaac Herzog to serve as this year’s commencement speaker was misguided, citing JTS’s long history of internal debates over Zionism.
I was among those critics. In a May 3 blog post for The Times of Israel I argued that even six students publicly opposing Herzog’s presence was six too many — not because Jewish institutions should avoid debate, but because there is a difference between debate premised on a shared commitment to Jewish peoplehood, and debate that rejects of one of Jewish peoplehood’s central expressions.
Pianko rightly reminds readers that JTS has never been ideologically monolithic. Its history includes tensions between tradition and change, particularism and universalism, theology and modernity. Those tensions are part of what has made JTS so influential in American Jewish life for nearly 140 years.
The history of debate over Zionism within the seminary’s intellectual culture does not weaken my concern. It sharpens it.
The crucial issue is conceptual precision. Expressions of skepticism about Zionism in earlier periods of JTS history were often very different from today’s anti-Zionism.
In some cases, they reflected a classical religious view that Jewish return and sovereignty would come through a messianic process rather than through human political action. That position was a theological claim about timing and agency, not a negation of Jewish national aspiration. In others, like Ahad Ha’am’s cultural Zionism, for example, an emphasis was put on Jewish renewal through language, spirit and civilization, while questioning whether political statehood should be the immediate or primary goal. That was an internal argument about how Jewish national life should unfold — not over whether such a life was valid.
Contemporary anti-Zionism, in contrast, frequently challenges the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty itself. That is not simply another version of an older seminary debate. It is a different claim with different consequences.
To be clear, the students’ letter is not a simple declaration of anti Zionism, and it should not be caricatured as such. Their stated concerns include the devastation of the war in Gaza, the moral responsibilities of Jewish leadership, and the fear that honoring Herzog without sufficient public reckoning sends the wrong message about Palestinian suffering.
Those concerns deserve serious engagement. But seriousness also requires asking what this protest communicates in institutional context. At a moment when the Jewish people and Israel’s legitimacy are under intense assault, opposing the presence of Israel’s president at a flagship Jewish seminary risks turning anguish over Israeli policy into a symbolic rejection of Israel’s legitimacy as a central part of Jewish life. That is the line I believe JTS must be careful not to blur.
So while Pianko is right to highlight ideological range in JTS’s past, we should not flatten the past into the present.
Zionism did not become central to Jewish life by accident. It emerged as the primary vehicle through which the Jewish people reclaimed agency, safety and a collective future after centuries of vulnerability. The establishment of the state of Israel transformed Jewish existence. That fact does not erase earlier debates, but it does change the center of gravity.
Institutions like JTS have a responsibility to teach that complexity honestly — which Herzog’s presence at commencement, and thoughtful, well-informed debates around it, will help to do. Seminaries should expose students to the range of Jewish thought, including theological reservations, cultural critiques and internal disagreements about Zionism.
At issue is not whether the varieties and history of Zionism should be debated at JTS. Of course they should. Instead, this incident is a reminder that a flagship institution of Jewish learning can and should remain clear that Jewish peoplehood, Jewish sovereignty and the state of Israel are not peripheral to contemporary Jewish identity. They are central.
The post Debating Zionism is fair. Protesting Israel’s president at commencement crosses the line appeared first on The Forward.
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UK Man in Court Charged With Arson at Former London Synagogue
Orthodox Jews stand by a police cordon, after a man was arrested following a stabbing incident in the Golders Green area, which is home to a large Jewish population, in London, Britain, April 29, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
A British man charged over an arson attack at a former synagogue in east London last week was in contact with someone using an Iraqi phone number shortly before the fire, prosecutors told a London court on Tuesday.
Moses Edwards, 45, appeared in the dock at Westminster Magistrates’ Court and was remanded in custody until a further hearing next month. He gave no indication of any plea.
The fire at the former East London Central Synagogue was caused by wine bottles filled with an accelerant, which exploded damaging the outside of the building, prosecutors said.
The incident followed a series of arson attacks on Jewish targets in previous weeks, with police saying they were investigating possible Iran links to some of the fires.