{"id":48100,"date":"2025-12-05T01:13:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T09:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=48100"},"modified":"2025-12-04T09:52:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T17:52:13","slug":"from-the-archives-hanukkah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2025\/12\/05\/from-the-archives-hanukkah\/","title":{"rendered":"From the archives \u2026 Hanukkah"},"content":{"rendered":"

The editorial in the Dec. 8, 1939, issue of the Jewish Western Bulletin.<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve come a long way in many ways, though some readers may disagree. I read, kind of in horror, the newspaper\u2019s Dec. 8, 1939, editorial in which the lesson drawn from Hanukkah was that, \u201cMore formidable than the most rabid anti-Semite is the unfaithful Jew in our ranks. More threatening than all the malicious libels and frauds of such papers as DER ANGRIFF and DER DEUTSCHE BEOBACHTER, is the Jew who is IGNORANT of his history, ignorant of his literature, his tradition, his TORAH and his God.\u201d<\/p>\n

I can appreciate the Maccabean victory \u201cwas not by a superior might but with a superior SPIRIT, that untrained Judean forces did meet the enemy and vanquished him.\u201d I agree that Jewish education is vital to Jewish continuity, but yikes. I\u2019m not sure all the \u201cyelling\u201d capital letters encourage the message that: \u201cThere must be a closer alliance, a sense of closer affinity, a warmer consciousness of brotherhood between Jew and Jew and between the individual Jew and Jewry at large if we are to succeed \u2013 nay, if we are to insure our future as a people!\u201d<\/p>\n

I am also always surprised at how much of the advertising in the early years of the Jewish Western Bulletin<\/i> was for alcohol. As but one example, given the time of year, is the Dec. 24, 1941, ad from United Distillers Ltd., \u201cThe Happy Holiday List\u201d that readers are asked to \u201ccut out and keep for reference,\u201d which I guess I\u2019ve done, though I don\u2019t think any of the brands still exist.<\/p>\n

I did enjoy some of the Hanukkah trivia that made the front cover of the Dec. 11, 1936, paper, though it was a jarring juxtaposition with the world news. As it happens, the first item, on the melody of the traditional Hanukkah song \u201cMaoz Tzur,\u201d mentions Martin Luther, as does the article on the cemetery in the German City of Worms that is featured in this week\u2019s issue \u2013 on this very page, in fact \u2013 which discusses briefly Luther\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

In his \u201cLights on Hanukah\u201d article, Rabbi Abraham H. Israelitan points out: \u201cThe familiar melody of \u2018Maoz-Tzur,\u2019 the well-known hymn that is sung after the kindling of the lights, is not Jewish at all, as is commonly supposed, but is really an adaptation of an old German folk song of the Middle Ages. This German folk melody has also been utilized by the Christians. The famous Martin Luther, for example, utilized it for his German chorals.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rabbi also notes, \u201cOne of the poems in Lord Byron\u2019s \u2018Hebrew Melodies\u2019 \u2013 \u2018On Jordans Bank\u2019s\u2019 [sic] \u2013 was set to the music of Maoz-Tzur by the great poet\u2019s close friend Isaac Nathan.\u201d He goes on to reveal \u201cthe origin of latkes,\u201d and a few more of what we now call \u201cfun facts.\u201d Israelitan was not a local rabbi. His article was distributed by Seven Arts Feature Syndicate, which, according to Google, was an American group that provided content to Jewish papers from the 1920s through the 1960s.<\/p>\n

Holiday parties, concerts, menorah lightings and more have always been promoted or covered in the newspaper, of course. Almost every Hanukkah issue has included recipes, gift ideas, personal holiday stories. And pretty much every Hanukkah-themed editorial aims to point out what the Maccabees can teach us today or what light we can shine to diminish the darkness in the world \u2013 though we do it a little less harshly than the editors of 80, 90 years ago, I think. Most certainly, we do it with fewer capital letters.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>
An ad in the Dec. 24, 1941, issue of the Jewish Western Bulletin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"image<\/a>
An article on Hanukkah trivia in the Jewish Western Bulletin Dec. 11, 1936.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The editorial in the Dec. 8, 1939, issue of the Jewish Western Bulletin. We\u2019ve come a long way in many ways, though some readers may disagree. I read, kind of in horror, the newspaper\u2019s Dec. 8, 1939, editorial in which the lesson drawn from Hanukkah was that, \u201cMore formidable than the most rabid anti-Semite is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5555,24447,24525,21777,4242,20102,24526],"class_list":["post-48100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-ji","tag-archives","tag-editorials","tag-fun-facts","tag-hanukkah","tag-history","tag-maoz-tzur","tag-trivia"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}