Happy Winter Solstice | CAEF Special Bulletin, Dec 22, 2025

Merry Christmas to Our Christian Friends and Allies

May the day be merry and bright, and may you enjoy good health and happiness throughout the year.

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Chanukah and the Eternal Challenge of Antisemitism

Last Friday, CAEF sent out the wrong D/var Torah from Judy Hazan. Below is what was intended for Chanukah and our current challenges.

Chanukah is a holiday filled with warmth—tiny flames, spinning dreidels, oily foods, family gatherings. At its core, Chanukah commemorates one of the most defiant stories in Jewish history; a story about a small people standing against a dominating empire. It is a story of cultural pressure, political oppression, and attempts to erase Jewish identity. And it is a story of spiritual resistance, stubborn hope, and the belief that Jewish life can thrive even in the darkest conditions.

Every year we light the menorah, and for eight nights we affirm that this ancient story still speaks to us. This year the relevance is even more painfully clear. Chanukah is about a world that tries to extinguish Jewish light, and about our responsibility to keep that light burning. And today we see once again how urgently that message matters.

When we think of Chanukah, many of us jump to the miracle of the oil—the cruze that should have lasted one night but burned for eight. But in the Talmud (Shabbat 21b), before the Rabbis even mention the oil, they tell a very different story. They describe decrees: the banning of Torah study, the violation of the Temple, and the attempt to sever Jews from their covenant. The Greeks tried to eliminate the practices that made Jews distinct—Shabbat, circumcision, the lunar calendar.

In other words, the miracle of Chanukah begins as a story about antisemitism, not the modern political form we encounter today, but the ancient form: the targeting of Jews because they are Jews, the attempt to replace Jewish identity with something else, the insistence that Jewish practice is unacceptable in the public square.

Read more to understand the ongoing challenges.