BURSTEIN: Hanukkah deserves more attention

This year, I won’t be home for Hanukkah, and I’m pretty bitter about it. I won’t be there for my mom’s homemade latkes, or to watch my family open all their gifts. And I won’t be there to beat my brother in an intense dreidel competition, which is the biggest tragedy of all.

But life goes on, and I, along with my other Jewish friends and schoolmates, have been trying to make the most of it by having my own makeshift celebrations.

A few days ago, I went into Target to find some Hanukkah décor, specifically some kind of electric menorah for my dorm room. I came across one display of Hanukkah decorations among the mountains of Christmas goods. On the display, there weren’t any more electric menorahs, so I chose a sticky menorah decal to put on our window. If I didn’t have any luck at other stores, it would have to do.

Then I checked CVS. But after perusing the entire holiday section multiple times, not only did I not find a menorah, I didn’t find anything Hanukkah-related. Nothing.

When I was younger, occurrences like this never annoyed me. In my northern New Jersey life, there were plenty of bar and bat mitzvahs to attend and plenty of friends to go to services with to celebrate the holidays. The omnipresence of Judaism in my life made up for the fact that I didn’t really see anything to celebrate Hanukkah in my local stores.

Then, I got older and started to pay attention. When I went to France sophomore year of high school, people told me not to wear my Star of David necklace because some people in France were anti-Semitic. But still I assumed that this was a special case, and I would never experience something like this at home.

Well, my naiveté got the best of me again when I observed non-Jewish people in my own hometown actually get offended when it became common to say “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.”

I noticed every year how only about four or five of the bulbs on the town menorah actually worked, but how the Christmas tree was bright and shining every night.

I heard stories from my mom about how when I was younger, our non-Jewish Girl Scout leader asked her if she had horns, not out of malice, but because she really didn’t know and thought it was a legitimate question.

The event that completely rid me of my optimism was when I was working at a popular café in town. Middle school students often frequented it after school to load up on candy and hot chocolate. One day, I saw my younger brother, some of his friends and some older boys ride up on their bikes. I then watched from inside the café as one of the older boys threw pennies at my brother while making “Jewish” jokes. I was horrified, and even though his friends came fiercely to his defense, I was shocked that people in my own town could think something like that was okay.

Religion is tricky. Personally, I don’t even think that I’m that religious. But like I said before, my Jewish identity is important to me. It has given me life-long friends and has helped connect me with my family, even through my obnoxious younger teen years. I also love the holiday season in general. I consider belting “All I Want for Christmas is You” as one of my main hobbies and am lucky enough to celebrate Christmas with some of my good friends and family.

But frankly, we live in a world where minority religions simply aren’t as accepted. We see it everyday when people try to equate groups like the Islamic State to Islam in general, even though a single Religion 101 class would tell you how terrorist groups do not embody Muslim principles in the slightest.

I’m so grateful that I have friends, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who make me feel comfortable during the holiday season. I love teaching those unfamiliar with the customs about our traditions and I love hearing about other traditions as well. This kind of openness is necessary to foster progressive and accepting dialogue.

We don’t like talking about religion, yet it has a huge presence in everything from world politics to family dinners (Thanksgiving 2015, am I right?). So, it’s my goal for this holiday season and for the New Year to learn more about other religions, especially minority ones that are portrayed in a negative light. Ignoring the fact that some religions are looked upon differently than others is only going to create an environment where it’s acceptable to be a bigot, and we all deserve better than that.