Jewish in a Gentile World

As I was driving home on Friday afternoon, I heard on the radio a Chanukkah song I had not heard before: "How Do You Spell Channukkahh" by The LeeVees. It was a catchy tune, and at first it was refreshing to hear something other than the perennial Adam Sandler songs. But as the song went on, I was increasingly bothered by the fact that the song had nothing to say about the holiday other than the fact that it was hard to spell! And it's not that hard to spell; it's simply hard to represent any Hebrew word in the Roman alphabet. By the last verse, my brain was screaming CHEIT-NUN-VAV-KAF-HEI!!! THAT'S HOW YOU SPELL IT! But if the topic is confusing enough to justify a song, maybe it's worth a blog entry. The name of the Jewish winter holiday is not hard to spell in Hebrew. The preferred spelling is Cheit-Nun-Vav-Kaf-Hei, shown at right below. An alternate but equally legitmate Hebrew spelling is shown at right. The letter Vav in the middle of the version at righ...

If you follow the weird news as I do, then you have probably already heard the story about the New York grocery store that was selling hams marked "Delicious for Chanukah." The news articles all point out that ham and other pork products are forbidden under Jewish dietary laws, making this shelf tag ironic at best. But every news article I've seen has missed the most peculiar aspect of this advertisement: the forbidden status of pigs is at the heart of the Chanukkah story! The Jews of Seleucid Greece were being oppressed by a tyrant who wanted uniform religion in his lands and outlawed the practice of Judaism. Torah study was forbidden and so forth. But the last straw came when the Jews were compelled to sacrifice pigs on the altar in the Temple in Jerusalem. This outrage sparked open rebellion against the oppressive Greek government and the assimilated Hellenistic Jews who chose Greece over Torah. So ham is certainly a part of Chanukkah... but not in the way that the gro...