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Summary
Summary
Explores the ways American Jews have reshaped Hanukkah traditions across the country
In New Orleans, Hanukkah means decorating your door with a menorah made of hominy grits. Latkes in Texas are seasoned with cilantro and cayenne pepper. Children in Cincinnati sing Hanukkah songs and eat oranges and ice cream. While each tradition springs from its own unique set of cultural references, what ties them together is that they all celebrate a holiday that is different in America than it is any place else. For the past two hundred years, American Jews have been transforming the ancient holiday of Hanukkah from a simple occasion into something grand. Each year, as they retell its story and enact its customs, they bring their ever-changing perspectives and desires to its celebration. Providing an attractive alternative to the Christian dominated December, rabbis and lay people alike have addressed contemporary hopes by fashioning an authentically Jewish festival that blossomed in their American world.
The ways in which Hanukkah was reshaped by American Jews reveals the changing goals and values that emerged among different contingents each December as they confronted the reality of living as a religious minority in the United States. Bringing together clergy and laity, artists and businessmen, teachers, parents, and children, Hanukkah has been a dynamic force for both stability and change in American Jewish life. The holiday's distinctive transformation from a minor festival to a major occasion that looms large in the American Jewish psyche is a marker of American Jewish life. Drawing on a varied archive of songs, plays, liturgy, sermons, and a range of illustrative material, as well as developing portraits of various communities, congregations, and rabbis, Hanukkah in America reveals how an almost forgotten festival became the most visible of American Jewish holidays.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
American Jewish History editor Ashton (Rebecca Gratz) has written a scholarly but accessible guide to the evolution of the Festival of Lights in America. After a brief introduction to the origins of the eight-day celebration of the Maccabees' victory over the Greeks in the second century B.C.E., Ashton picks up in the mid-1800s, when the holiday "began to evolve from an often neglected occasion in the Jewish calendar to one deemed particularly relevant for American Jews." During the Civil War, Jewish soldiers fighting for the Union identified with their brave and persistent Maccabean forebears, while competing factions of American Jewry sought to lay claim to "the mantle of the Maccabees" in order to bolster their position. Most will be familiar with modern efforts to counter the pervasiveness of Christmas by boosting Hanukkah's significance, but Ashton's thorough treatment of her topic is sure to enlighten-she discusses everything from the official observances of Hanukkah at the White House to how the rise of the celebration affected mainstream ad campaigns and the number of opportunities available to Jewish women. It all adds up to powerful support for her thesis that Hanukkah now enjoys "a more significant place in the American Jewish calendar than it had known" since the events it commemorates. B&w photos throughout. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An American Jewish History editor details the modern development of Hanukkah's rituals and traditions Ashton (Religion Studies/Rowan Univ.; Rebecca Gratz: Women and Judaism in Antebellum America, 1997, etc.) begins her history of Hanukkah with a brief account of the second-century B.C. Judean revolt against Hellenistic rule and influence. While the Jewish calendar historically celebrated Hanukkah to commemorate the success of this revolt, it was seen as a fairly minor festival. However, during the late 17th and into the early 18th centuries, Jewish immigrant communities on America's East Coast felt that the influence of proximity to the Christian holidays of their neighbors and new Enlightenment ideas were posing threats of assimilation. Following a common Jewish theological practice, liberal reformers and ardent traditionalists alike looked to a shared religious history as a means to understand, define and defeat the problems of the present. Concurrent with America's decision to add to its holiday calendar--e.g., Thanksgiving (1863) and Memorial Day (1868)--Hanukkah's importance increased by demarcating developing traditions in a new land and offering the Jewish alternative to Christmas. Along the way, Ashton gives a nod to the role of women through an explanation of their crucial domestic job of making the home Hanukkah-friendly. The increasing malleability of the symbolism attached to Hanukkah first became evident in the 20th century, when the Hanukkah story was used to contextualize events associated with the Holocaust and the foundation of the state of Israel. Though occasionally too dense with information, this work shows how Jewish communities used "an element within Judaism that corresponded to an element of Christianity in order to resist Christianity." A fact-filled, mostly interesting account of Hanukkah's development in the United States.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Religiously, Hanukkah is considered a minor Jewish festival. Ashton's wonderfully readable, fact-packed history demonstrates, however, that in the U.S., Hanukkah isn't minor at all. From at least the middle of the nineteenth century, it has been a vehicle for asserting solidarity among a never-large American minority and establishing that minority's credentials as faithful Americans as well as faithful Jews. Further, Ashton asserts, Hanukkah has always played a role in response to the successive challenges American Jews have faced over the course of the last century and a half, as their numbers and varieties of religious practice varied with changes in immigration (wide open, then severely restricted), assimilation (increasingly tolerated), and family structures (as affected, especially, by better contraception and easier divorce). Fueling Hanukkah's success in both functions is its longtime association with bolstering the family, especially through the games, songs, school pageants, plays, and gift giving deliberately developed to popularize it. The scholarship base of Ashton's account is, judging from the enormous number of reference notes, massive; the illustrations scattered throughout the text are always pertinent; and Ashton's evenhandedness most admirable.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Children growing up in 21st-century America are encouraged to think that the December holiday season is an inclusive one, and that Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations carry equal import. Historically and liturgically, however, as many Jewish children learn after their bar or bat mitzvah, Hanukkah is a minor holiday, ginned up to compete with Christmas's dominance - a quandary known as the "December dilemma." Hanukkah's history was manipulated: the celebration of an unlikely military victory of the Maccabee-led Judean insurgents against Hellenic rule became a story, spurred on by Talmudic myth, of God's intervention to make one flask of sacred oil burn for eight nights. Ashton offers readers a lively account of the holiday's modern iterations. At various points, Hanukkah was a social enticement to join a Jewish congregation, a counterpoint to arguments that Jews were weak and a celebration to bond children to family. Hanukkah reflects both a general Jewish problem and a distinctly American one. On the one hand, it embodies the "essential project of the rabbis: With the Temple destroyed, they aimed to make it possible for Jews to extend the spirituality of the Temple into their everyday lives." On the other, for most of the 19 th century, "American Jewish life struggled along on the distant periphery of the Jewish world, an ocean away from the great centers of Jewish learning" and leadership. Celebrating Hanukkah in the home allowed the creation of an American Jewish tradition.
Choice Review
American Jews and non-Jews alike understand that, in the United States, Hanukkah has evolved in tandem with the extravagance of the American Christmas season. But Ashton (Rowan Univ.) offers a stunning history of this holiday that reveals just how much more there is to the story. Hanukkah in America draws on two centuries of diverse factors: Jews' desire to see their history as consequential; their aspiration to equate Jewish and Western values; their need to reengage increasingly disaffected Jews and keep Jewish children excited about Judaism; the emergence of Zionism; the Holocaust; and a host of factors pertinent to contemporary Jewish history and American life. Ashton demonstrates how such influences shaped a minor holiday into what today is perhaps the signal celebration of the American Jewish year. Through engaging and exacting detail, she treats her readers to an inside look at the evolving American Jewish psyche, as it is played out in American homes and synagogue celebrations. In so doing, she articulates an important point toward understanding religion in general: Hanukkah has evolved so as to narrate the story of the Maccabees in ways that meet the distinctive needs of successive generations of Jews. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers. A. J. Avery-Peck College of the Holy Cross
Library Journal Review
Ashton (religion studies, Rowan Univ.; Rebecca Gratz: Women and Judaism in Antebellum America) provides a thorough cultural history of Hanukkah in the United States, tracing the holiday's importance to American Jews. She argues that Hanukkah's popularity among Jewish Americans can be attributed to its family focus, its proximity to Christmas, and the opportunities it provides celebrants to discuss assimilation and God's intervention in history. Readers unfamiliar with Hanukkah will welcome the first chapter, "What is Hanukkah?" in which Ashton describes the Maccabean revolt that inspired the festival and goes on to discuss the holiday's historical evolution. Ashton details in subsequent chapters the uses to which American Jews put Hanukkah throughout American history, e.g., as an antidote to assimilation, an alternative to Christmas and, poignantly, a rallying cry during World War II and the Holocaust. The chapter "Hippies, Hasidism, and Havurot" describes Hanukkah's development since the 1960s, especially the influence of the counterculture, both Jewish and non-Jewish, leading readers to an understanding of the contemporary iteration of the holiday. VERDICT A successful and accessible history, Ashton's book will appeal to general readers and specialists with an interest in American Jewish history.-Matt Rice, Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.