Lighting the Way to Religious Identity

Potato latkes, chocolate coins, eight joyous nights of candle lighting and even Milton Berle are in store for Orange County’s more than 70,000 Jews once the sun sets tonight.

But Orange County rabbis are also eager to impart a more serious Hanukkah message to their congregations--that the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights should serve as a reminder to Jews to retain their identity.

“Especially for American Jews in Orange County, there are such great temptations to assimilate and to allow our Jewish identity to disappear,” said Rabbi Michael Mayersohn of Temple Beth David in Westminster.

“Hanukkah speaks to us not simply as a children’s holiday of food and games and music,” he said, “but as a call to all the members of our community to take part in their distinctive Jewish identity.”

Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 165 BC. More than 2,000 years ago, Syrians took over the temple and commanded Jews to worship Greek idols instead of their own God. But Judas Maccabaeus formed an army, defeated the Syrians and smashed the idols.

His followers, the Maccabees, needed to reclaim and cleanse the temple but only had enough consecrated oil for one day of light. But the flame burned for eight days--the Hanukkah miracle now remembered with the lighting of a menorah on each of the eight nights of Hanukkah.

The holiday is a minor one for Jews and is not marked by a religious service. But it has increasingly become important to American Jews because of its proximity to Christmas. That prompts varied reactions from the county’s rabbis, who stress the historic importance of Hanukkah as a holiday with a message, in addition to family fun.

Rabbi Joel Landau of the orthodox Beth Jacob Congregation of Irvine said he has been suggesting that his congregants give their children gifts only as a reward for an educational accomplishment that serves as a “rededication” to their Jewish identity.

“Hanukkah is a holiday of rededication, and it’s predicated on education,” said Landau, whose congregation will hold candle-lighting ceremonies twice daily at regular services. “It doesn’t make sense to turn Hanukkah into a Jewish Christmas by having eight nights of presents around the menorah. It’s a time for families to get together and do something special in a Jewish context.”

Most nonorthodox congregations will incorporate Hanukkah festivities into the traditional Sabbath service on Friday night.

Rabbi Arnold Rachlis of the University Synagogue in Irvine said that Hanukkah has evolved into the second-most-celebrated Jewish holiday in the United States, after Passover. Rather than decry that, Rachlis said, he accepts it as a necessary evolution for American Jews, who are saturated by the commercialism of Christmas.

“Today, you can turn on the television or go into a record store and you can find Hanukkah compact discs and Hanukkah specials,” he said. “It means that Jewish children growing up today can see their identity reflected.”

Children will commemorate the holiday by playing the traditional dreidel, or spinning-top game. A giant menorah outside the Jewish Community Center in Costa Mesa will be the site of symbolic lightings throughout the week, and families at Temple Beth David are participating in a creative menorah-making contest. (Past entries have included menorahs made of Lucky Charms and Legos.)

And in a historic event for Orange County’s Jewish community, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Monte Hall and 11 local children’s choirs will perform to a sold-out audience Sunday night at the Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

The benefit event sold 3,300 seats in three hours, making it one of the top-selling shows in the center’s history, a center spokesman said.

Gordon Fishman of Newport Beach, a retired eye surgeon who organized the event with his wife, Hannareta, said that the unexpected response from people as far away as San Diego, Long Beach and Palm Springs points out a thirst for community among Jews here.

“It’s very important for the Jewish community to have something for their children to participate in,” Fishman said. “In school, they are bombarded by Christmas, and I’m sure those children in class feel a little left out. Now they can have something that is for them.”