Episode 31: Happy Early Chanukah: History from the Maccabees to Now

CW: war, death, Antisemitism

Chag sameach! This upcoming weekend on the 18th is the first night of Chanukah, so we thought we’d talk about the holiday a bit. Unfortunately, a lot of people either don’t know many/any Jewish people and/or aren’t taught much about Jewish culture and history. The point of this podcast is to learn always, so if all you know about Chanukah is 8 days and presents, we hope this episode gives a starting point to go seek out Jewish creators to get an even deeper look at this holiday (and the others too). We’re going to talk about where Chanukah all began back in the 2nd century BCE, touch on how U.S. consumerism and the pressures of immigration influenced how the holiday is celebrated here versus elsewhere, and we’ll talk about Judith.

I’ll start this off right away with a list of Jewish creators I would encourage you to go watch more from. They are the best to learn from as this is their culture:

TikTok (these are ones I personally follow): @therealmelindastrauss , @sj_rachel , @lilyebert , @thewildamalia, @miriamezagui

YouTube: This list has a great selection for you

Jewish YouTubers

Let’s just start with the obvious beginning. Chanuka isn’t just Jewish Christmas. We address this in the episode, but here’s an article for it.

Not Christmas

This map shows the location where the Chanukah story takes place.

The Geography

We started out this episode discussing why the Books of Maccabees weren’t in the canon and the theories historians and scholars have surrounding that. So here’s an article discussing that.

Why Non-Canon

This article talks about which parts of the Chanukah story we can definitively find to be true.

What We Know

Here’s a little article from My Jewish Learning about the origins of Chanukah.

Origins

This video will explain the difference between the regular menorah and the chanukiah and why there is one. And honestly, the channel itself is a really good one.

Two Different Menorahs

At the end of the episode, we talked about how immigration of European Jewish people into the United States applied pressure to them that they should become “Americanized.” I sourced a good bit of information from this book by Dr. Jenna Weissman Joselit, a historian focusing on Jewish culture in America.

The Wonders of America

Here in this article it discusses ads running in papers starting in about 1902 for Chanukah presents. They were prented initially in Yiddish and were for things like coffee and toothpaste. This article will show you ads and explain why they were printed in the first place.

Chanukah Ads

Finally, here’s the story of Judith all printed out with quotes from the Book of Judith for you, and there’s a few different versions of Judith in artwork in here, including the one by Artemisia Gentileschi that I really love. It’s at the bottom.

Judith

Episode 31: Happy Early Chanukah: History from the Maccabees to Now

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