With Hanukkah beginning on Dec. 24 and continuing through Jan. 1 this year, a number of Jewish families in Bradford and Olean, N.Y., plan to hold low-key celebrations during the holiday season.
The eight-day “festival of lights” celebration will include a nightly menorah lighting, special prayers and fried foods in homes.
The overlapping holidays of Hanukkah and Christmas have also inspired some clever merchants to to produce witty t-shirts with combined holiday symbols as well as ugly “Chrismakkuh” sweaters.
At Temple B’Nai Israel at 127 S. Barry St. in Olean, Dr. David Shulman and Diane Balaban, co-presidents of the synagogue, said a small celebration slated for Friday at the temple will be open to all those of the Jewish faith. Shulman expects to lead the service.
“Because of when it falls this year, a lot of people will be out of town,” Shulman said of Hanukkah. “A lot of people leave town for vacation that week because the schools are closed.
“So on Friday night, we’re having a little party” beginning at 6 p.m., he noted. “We’ll have a shortened Friday evening service and then have a dinner and get-together.”
Shulman said his wife, Dot, and Balaban will likely prepare fried foods for the occasion.
“It won’t be anything fancy,” Shulman added, noting the meal will include coffee, soft drinks and wine.
Balaban said the meal will include potato latkes, which are pancake-like patties fried in oil, for the occasion.
“The potato latkes are the usual food that we have, but I’ve found pasta shaped in Hanukkah symbols, the menorah, the dreidel and gelt and all of that,” Balaban said.
She noted the significance of foods fried in oil stems from the “holiday miracle” of oil that had been used by the ancient royal Hasmonean family to light a menorah. The oil, expected to last only a day, instead burned for eight days, which was the holiday miracle.
“That’s why we eat a lot of fried foods because you use oil for it,” Balaban said. “But I used the pasta because I thought it was cute.”
At Temple Beth El on Clarence Street in Bradford, congregant Kimberly Weinberg said members of the synagogue will celebrate Hanukkah on New Year’s Day, the last day of the holiday.
“With the overlap of Christmas and many of our members being out-of-town Christmas week, we will not be holding our Hanukkah party until the evening of the last day, the night of Jan. 1,” Weinberg said, noting the celebration will begin at 4 p.m.
“We will have latkes, which are traditional” and potluck vegetarian foods, she said. “I’m really not sure about whether there will be a service.”
