The following is a transcript of Episode 14 of the Perfect Jewish Parents Podcast. Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Joshua: Hello and welcome to Perfect Jewish Parents — Israel at War. My name is Joshua Ladon and I’m the Director of Education for the Shalom Hartman Institute.

Masua: And I am Masua Sagiv. I’m Scholar in Residence for the Shalom Hartman Institute and the Koret Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Joshua:Two months after October 7th, which is referred to in Israel as HaShabbat Hashkorah, the Dark Shabbat, the Jewish calendar gives us the holiday of light, Chanukah. In this moment, when both darkness and light are so present in our lives, we are dedicating this episode to the holiday of Chanukah, and specifically asking how we should think about Chanukah this year as parents and as educators.

Masua: Last week during the ongoing darkness that surrounds us since October 7th, I saw a story about Israeli culinary entrepreneur, Chenn Koren. Koren, an observant Jewish Israeli, is married to Alon, a secular Jewish Israeli, whose parents survived October 7th in Kfar Aza. The terrorists attempted to burn their house while they were in the safe room and somehow amidst the horrors and immense loss of that Shabbat, a miracle. The fire stopped before it reached the safe room and they were saved and later rescued on midday Sunday. 

Last week, Koren returned to her in-laws’ house in Kfar Aza and paraphrasing the words of Rav Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook, she said, “The truly righteous do not attempt to drive darkness away, rather they add light to it.” 

Today we are joined in conversation with Rabbi Mishael Zion of the Klausner community in Jerusalem and a faculty member at the Mandel Leadership Institute in Jerusalem. Misha is also a faculty and research fellow at the Kogod Research Center at Hartman, where we recently published his article “From Mourning to Resilience: Community Rabbis Face Israel at War,” in a special edition of Hartman’s award-winning journal Sources Israel at War. In our episode today, we will speak about what it means to celebrate the festival of light when Israel is at war and there is rising antisemitism in North America. We will be back with that conversation in a moment.

Masua: Mish, thank you so much for joining us today. The story of Chanukah usually has different meanings in Israel and in North America. I know that when I grew up in Israel, Chanukah was the national story of Jewish sovereignty, where the small army of the Jews defeated the stronger and larger army of the Romans against all odds. 

And Zionism and the history of the state of Israel is often perceived as a version of the story of Chanukah, where the army of the small and fragile country of Israel has won against all the Arab armies.

I’d love to hear from both of you, Mish and Josh, what messages of Chanukah did you grow up on? Mish, why don’t you start?

Mish: It’s great to be here, Josh and Masua, and to have this conversation trans-Atlantically, but it also feels very close. I just want to say, first of all, that for me, being a parent is a big part of my Judaism. And being Jewish is a big part of my parenthood, you could say. And that’s something that I learned from my father, Noam Zion, and from David Hartman in many ways, where I felt like whenever he was teaching us, he was always, first of all, a parent, and then afterwards all kinds of other things as well. 

And the two big holidays of parenting are Pesach and Hanuk. And I’m partial to Pesach for family reasons. But Chanukah is really the night of where we get to tell not one, but we have to come up with eight different stories. Even if your family doesn’t give eight different presents every night of Chanukah, you still sort of have to end up coming up with stories again and again. And we’re telling different stories of Chanukah to our children, I feel, every night. And so I think a lot about this question, like, what is the story of Chanukah that I’ve been told as a child? What’s the story I told my children? 

And this year, how will my story be different? I have a six-year-old, a 10-year-old, a 15-year-old, and a 17-year-old. And the stories have changed in our house over the last eight weeks enormously. The stories we tell, what we talk about, what it means to be Jewish, what are we hiding from our children and what we talk about with our children, all that has changed.

I grew up watching television at 8 p.m. with my parents watching the news. And my father would yell at the television and that’s how I knew who we liked and who we didn’t like and so on. And as a parent for the last 17 years, I never watched the news at 8 p.m. And I would not let my children, I wouldn’t watch the news with my children. That would be chilul hakodesh, that would be desecrating the holy task of parenthood to bring the news in, in that way into the home every night.

And for the last few weeks, not every night and not necessarily at 8 p.m., but we sit down to watch the news with our two older children, our teenagers, a few times a week. And it’s sort of like lighting our Chanukah. We sit together and we open that screen and we watch the story of the day. And then we talk about it. 

And thankfully, we can pause during the news. We make sure never to watch the livestream. We always watch, you know, a few minutes after the live stream so we can pause and discuss and talk. And our daughters know that it’s OK to get up and go and say, “I’ve had enough, I need a break, I don’t want to hear this story.” And sometimes we as parents say we don’t want to hear this story.

And the first thing I’m realizing is that this year when we light Chanukah candles it will be connected to that experience of sitting as a family and hearing a story and this time the story of the news and the story of of 2000 years ago, of the Maccabim, is gonna meld in some way. And that’s what I’m trying to figure out as we speak.

Masua: Josh, what’s your story?

Josh: Masua, before I sort of offer my own story of Chanukah, because I’m the one person on the podcast who grew up in America, I’m wondering Mish, I love that line of, oh, there’s eight nights and so there’s eight different stories. 

And I’m wondering when Masua was introducing the question and saying, oh, you know, as an Israeli, it felt like the story of the Maccabees was wrapped up with her vision of the state. Was that the story that you grew up on? Like, what was the conversations about Chanukah when you were younger?

Mish: So, to be fair, I grew up in the generation after the Israeli-Lebanon war. And so we were already in my left-wing home, cynical of the army, critical of the Maccabim, not rushing into, you know, we’re going to be the Maccabim, we’re going to be the soldiers, we need to recreate Jewish masculinity and become soldiers, not because we didn’t agree with it. We did agree with it. It was just our obvious already. 

When I joined the IDF in 1998, I was already the third generation of soldiers in my family. When my daughter joins the army in a year or so, she will be the fourth generation of Israeli soldiers in the Zion family. That’s crazy, that’s mind boggling. 

But part of what that means is also the story of the Maccabim was already our obvious. We grew up seeing men and women in green uniforms all the time. So we didn’t have that chidush, that innovation element that we have to tell the story as something that isn’t obvious. 

And so, for me, yes, we were aware that Chanukah is a story of bravery. But I think part of what I grew up with, and again, I don’t think this is necessarily typical of many Israeli homes. But we grew up with Chanukah being a story about how families took responsibility to save the Jewish people. 

And I’ll say what I mean, and I think it’s particularly relevant this year. Matityahu and his sons Yehuda and Elazar and Yonatan and the rest of the of the Maccabees, they were not high priests to begin with. They were not charged by God to save the Jewish people. No one told them to do it. They saw a vacuum of leadership and they filled it. 

And when I say those words now in 2023, that gets a whole new meaning because the story of these last few months has been about Israelis seeing a vacuum of leadership and filling it. And I’m welling up as I say that. 

Because it’s a story that we had told for so many years and we never saw that point of it as meaningful, when in the Book of Maccabees, Matityahu steps up and says, I’m gonna stop this action that I see as violent. I’m gonna stand and save my town and save my people. And we’re not gonna stop it just saving the town of Modi’in. We’re gonna move to Jerusalem and we’re gonna try and save the whole thing, even though no one asked us to, no one tasked us to do it.

In moments when I was angry at the Maccabees and I saw them as religious zealots, I thought this was an incredible chutzpah, and I was angry at their attempt to try and overtake Judaism. 

And there are groups like that in Israel that I argue with right now, that I think that they think that they are the Maccabees and they are trying to overtake Judaism. But now when I look at it in the light of the last few weeks, the vacuum of leadership, of military leadership, the vacuum of civil leadership, the vacuum of national leadership, and I see the people who stepped up and said, we’re going to fill the breach and we’re going to do it because we’re fighting for our family. We’re fighting for our living room. We’re fighting for our bedroom. That’s a very different story. 

Joshua: First of all, it’s powerful to hear, and being able to see your emotion, it really feels like you are putting your finger on the pulse of something that feels so alive in Israeli society right now. You’re talking about the story of Chanukah in ways that are so different from my own experience growing up in North America. It’s a story of religious freedom. 

Now, while that feels like a great version of an American interpretation, it has deep roots in America. Like in the late 1800s, there’s this amazing Yiddish novel. I think it’s a novel, but I don’t remember if it’s historicized novel or if it’s an essay, but that compares George Washington to Yehuda Maccabee in terms of religious freedom and democracy. We see Abraham Cahan, who’s the founder of the Forward, use Chanukah to talk about social democracy and socialist policy. 

So Chanukah has always been sort of used to tell the story of what it means to be an American, not just what it means to be a Jew. 

Mish: I mean, I think that we have to also, as you’re saying that, I’m sort of nodding because it’s not that what the Israeli secular Zionists or religious Zionists or what the Chabad movement used the Chanukah story for, it’s not that one is more right than the other. None of us are originalists on this conversation. 

I think as parents, we shape the stories of our ancestors and we tell it in a way that reflects our values, and that’s what Jewish tradition has taught us to do. So I agree with you. The American reinterpretation of Chanukah as a holiday of religious freedom is as authentic as the truth with which a parent will tell it to his child. And it doesn’t matter if the book of Maccabees 1, 2, 3, and 4, you know, thought that was the narrative as well.

Joshua: The one thing I was thinking about is how I feel similar to you, Mish, that the story that I grew up on, which at times has felt distant from me, actually feels like really important for this moment. Which is to say, I want my kids to hear a story of what America can be and what the Jewish contribution to America can be right now. 

And thinking about how to shape that conversation and to think about what it means to light my menorah, my chanukiyah, in our window, proudly, which I think is one of the major sort of legal conversations that happens is where do you put your chanukiyah to publicize the miracle? And in times of increased anti-Semitism, different rabbis say, no, you can light it inside your house and it feels to me like the important moment now is to not just light it in my window, but maybe figure out how to light it on my porch and to protect it and to have the light blazing. 

Masua, I’m wondering what you’re thinking about hearing us reflect on these different stories as the Israeli who’s now in America.

Masua: I have two thoughts on this, on what you were talking about. One is, Mish, when you’re saying that some of the stories that seemed extreme, or even dangerous when they were told by different sections in our people in Israel, are either getting a new meaning or even doubling down on their importance now when I’m talking about the story of, you were referring to the story of the void in leadership and us needing to step up in order to save our families. 

I’m talking about the story of Jewish vulnerability when I’m thinking about that, the story of Jewish vulnerability that I have been thinking for a long time, that it is being abused by some extreme groups within our country. 

I’m wondering too, I’m thinking about two things. One is, does that mean that we can maybe think about our discourse differently? Conduct our disagreements differently? Does that make me understand more the people who I considered extreme before that? And maybe understand some of their fear? 

And the second thing is, you mentioned David Hartman before. I’ve been returning in the past few weeks a lot to his essay about Auschwitz and Sinai, that’s talking about power and vulnerability, how we know what it means to be, or supposedly we know what it means to be an Auschwitz Jew, and Auschwitz Jew is basing his identity, their identity on being victims and on fear, and that’s dangerous, and we need to embrace what it means to be Sinai Jews, embrace agency of Jews to take care of the world, to have responsibility towards the world. 

And I’m thinking a lot about the fact that we are, maybe we’re both. And what does it mean to take more seriously being an Auschwitz Jew? And for me, it relates to the story of Chanukah and the story that maybe I kind of, I don’t know if I rolled my eyes at, but again, yes, the story of the Jewish people, who is very alone right now, not totally alone, but feel alone and feel outnumbered with the lies out there and the fake news and everything. What does it mean to be a moral and ethical Auschwitz Jew?

Mish: You know, I’m thinking about what the two of you just said and Josh mentioned the dilemma of where you light the Chanukah or the Chanukah menorah. Do you light it at the window or in the middle of your house? And Jewish tradition, halakha says, you light it in the window but if it’s a dangerous time, if there’s anti-Semitism, if this will put you at risk in any way, then just light it in the center of your home, not close to a window. 

And first of all, I want to say that as a parent, I always have an argument with my wife on this. Because I like lighting it by the window, but it actually makes for a not-so-successful parenting experience. Or not such a good Chanukah experience for my children, because if we’re all scrunched up against the window, right, then it’s going to be a mess. There’s always someone who’s afraid that the whole house is going to burn down, and it just makes for a not-very-good Chanukah candle-lighting experience. 

If you put it in the middle of the house, there’s a lot of room, everyone can stand around, we can put lots of aluminum foil everywhere, we’re not so concerned about the house burning down, something that, you know, I could say that as a joke, now it suddenly doesn’t sound so funny. 

But I want to I want to stress this point maybe as showing the bridge between the questions which is, when we light the Chanukah menorah, it is a family obligation, right? The Talmud calls it “ner ish u’veito,” the candle of a person and their home. It’s not something that you do as an individual, it’s something that you do as a family unit. You can be single, you can be married with kids, without kids, you can be empty nesters, but your Chanukah, your Chanukah menorah is your family unit. And ner ish u’veito, you’re bringing your whole home to that candle lighting.

And then you place that home, that candle lighting from the home, from the hearth, and you’re placing it in the window, you’re placing it in the public realm. You’re bridging between the private realm and the public realm. And in some ways we often speak about at the Hartman Institute about you know American Judaism being about private realm Judaism, and Israel being about public realm Judaism, and really what we need now, I think, is that bridge between those two. 

I think Israelis, one of the terrible blessings of this time is the resilience of the home and the power of the family stories, and literally people going out to war from their living rooms and from their bedrooms. That’s the image, because that’s where we were attacked, and because that’s where we literally went out to war from.

And there’s something very powerful about the importance of the home, which often in Israel has been overlooked, that we think about Israel from the public realm in and not from the Israeli homes out. So I think there’s actually an opportunity here to strengthen the Israeli Jewish home. 

And at the same time, I think on the American Jewish side and throughout world Jewry, this would be a natural time to just sort of to surrender into the home a little bit and move the chanukiyah from the window and from the town square into the house. And let’s just not make trouble, let’s lower our head and let’s be a community and let’s stop expecting the public realm to go with us. And I think it’s actually an opportunity to say, no, we are totally going to put our chanukkiyot in our windows, we’re going to put them in the streets. 

I think that there’s a famous argument between the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the president of the CCAR, I think it is.

Joshua: The head of Chabad and the head of the Reform Movement.

Mish: Right, about, do we put menorahs in the public square in America? And you sort of hear the older Reform voice saying, you’re ruining it for us. We want, in America, a space that’s clean of religious symbols. We don’t want the Nativity and we don’t want the Chanukah menorah either. 

And Chabad say, no, we’re going to put it in the public square. That is our mitzvah. I was never a big person for Chabad chanukkiyot, and I definitely wouldn’t take my children to a lighting in the public square. And this year, maybe I would. I wonder where you feel about that.

Masua: Is it more than religion though? Does what you say right now reflects the fact that this argument, the old argument was an argument about religion, but now it’s different. It’s not about religion, it’s about peoplehood? It’s about being? It’s about citizenship.

Mish: I don’t want to get academic here, but I don’t know what you mean when you say, right. We’re a faith community. We were attacked as a faith community, and we bear our moral universal message as a faith community. Those are the terms that help me more than religion or people.

Joshua: I’ll say, in that famous argument you referenced, Mish, both the head of the Reform Movement and the head of Chabad are saying America is about religious freedom, and this is why we should do what we do. Meaning, do you see religious freedom as about sort of creating a space where everyone can play in public? Or do you feel it’s like about religious freedom, meaning we don’t, we don’t have to, our public can be sanitized, I think is what you’re saying, or clean of religious experience. 

I think for what I heard, I think what Chabad lighting chanukkiyot in public does is it creates a sense of pride and it feels really powerful. We were once in Mexico during Chanukah. And to do this in Mexico, it felt really both scary and powerful. I guess, I think that sense of pride and that opportunity to say, oh, here in America, we take seriously the possibility of people being able to play out their religious lives in meaningful ways, even when they contradict with one another, feels like an important story to share right now.

Mish and Misua, I’m wondering, in thinking about this as a family holiday in America, Chanukah is often accompanied by the giving of lots of gifts. It is the competition with Christmas, and I’m wondering what it means to, I think many of us are comfortable with that. And many of us want to think about how to do that with intentionality and not only give, you know, not turn it into, you know, like a game show where you’re just getting present after present and prize after prize. 

I’m wondering, when you think about what it means to be in that moment of home that you were talking about, and what does it mean to do stuff besides light some candles, give some presents, is there stuff that can happen in that moment?

Mish: So we have a few traditions that are relevant every year. And then I want to mention one that I think is very relevant this year. The giving of gifts is one of the parts I hate about Chanukah the most. We can’t shirk that responsibility. And I know that it’s a big part of the excitement that my kids feel towards Chanukah. There’s something about getting something fresh and new. It’s the joy of the new candle that you really feel it through the present. 

One thing we think about a lot as parents is the relationship between our kids as siblings and how they have opportunities to give each other gifts throughout the year. And usually those are emotional gifts or supportive gifts or soulful gifts. And Chanukah is the time when we really they know that they have to give gifts to each other. 

So we play secret santa or whatever you call it in the Jewish version. In Hebrew we call it Gamad V’anak, right, the giant and the dwarf, and everyone gets a name and they have to give a present on the first night of Chanukah and they have to give someone else a present on the eighth day of Chanukah and we say that they can’t spend more than 40 shekels, more than $10 on their present, so that sort of sets the place of expectation.

And I think that part of what we’re trying to teach our kids through that is a that it’s not about the value, the financial value of the gift. And second of all, that they need to see themselves as siblings as people who give chesed and rachamim, compassion and mercy, to each other. And that’s what the presents are about. So that’s the way one of the ways in which we try and overcome the challenges of gift giving on Chanukah. 

I will say that I think the theme that I’m coming into with this Chanukah and relating to gift giving, in light of this war, is that I think in many ways, we’re in the middle of a very intense and scary campaign about childhood, the right to be children, what we think about when we say, you know, a child’s right to life. 

And when I say that, I think about Israeli children who have been killed and Israeli children who have been stolen from their homes. And I’m also thinking about Palestinian children, who, way too many of them have been killed over these last few weeks. And how do we recognize that we want children to be children? In other words, when we say that, we mean that they have an infinite right to life. They have a tselem Elohim, they were created in the image of God. We recognize their infinite value. 

And it’s easier to recognize that in a child than in an adult because the child has not yet been contaminated in beliefs and faiths and so on. And they can say whatever they want about our terrible education systems and we can say whatever we want about out there much worse education systems, I’m not going into the comparison debate. 

I’m just saying there’s something about childhood that we imagine as pre-national, as pre-ideological and therefore as pure and holy. And the desecration of childhood that we’ve experienced over these last few weeks has happened through the killing, the mechuvan, the intentional killing of Israeli children, the intentional abduction of Israeli babies. 

But it’s also happened in just mundane ways of my children hearing stories about the way children have been abducted. Or walkking with my six-year-old on emek refaim, and she says, “Oh, look, a picture of a cute boy. Why is he there?” And I have to lie to her and not tell her the reason why he’s there is because he was abducted from his home.

And so I want to fight this Chanukah for the right of my children to hang on to being children. My teenagers who will become soldiers and are realizing that more than ever before. And they’re rising to the challenge. I want them to have the right to be children a little bit longer.

And also recognizing that childhood is, thank God, a universal human value. And when I’m fighting for it, I’m fighting for my own children, but I have to be fighting for all children around the world. 

How do I give that as a gift on Chanukah? I’m not sure, but I think that there will be a theme of childhood in the gifts that we give and in the right to be naive, sweet, holy little children. And as I’m saying this, I’m realizing maybe those should be the gifts for the adults as well, allowing the children within us who have also felt very desecrated over these last few weeks the right to just be children.

Joshua: Allowing our kids to be kids and allowing us to be kids feels like the right segue to our last question, which is to note that this is the first holiday the Jewish people are celebrating since our last holiday, which was Simchat Torah, which was when the attacks happened and when hostages were taken. 

And as we explored with Elana Stein Hain in a previous episode, it can feel weird in this moment to celebrate something. It can be hard to be happy right now. And even in this short conversation, we’ve brought some seriousness and heaviness to a holiday that’s usually quite whimsical and joyful. And it also feels really important to bring light into the world right now.

And I’m wondering if Mish, Masua, if we can share, you know, one thing special your family does on Chanukah to bring joy and light. We’ve already shared some traditions, but I’m wondering specifically how are we going to bring joy and light to the world this year?

Mish: I appreciate that intro, Josh. I mean, I think that Chanukah happens on the darkest days of the year, right around December 21st, the winter solstice and on the winter solstice, on the darkest days of the year, we light candles. We recognize that in the natural cycle of the world, there is darkness. And Jews come together to light candles and bring more light into the world, more warmth, into a cold world. And we’re not the only faith tradition to light candles in December, and that’s great. I love that.

But in Israel, this year, we’ve already had the darkest day of the year. It’s not in December. It was on the 7th of October. And recognizing that actually helps us, I think, to recognize that we need to light even more candles, this Chanukah, and bring more joy. And I want to make a distinction that I heard from Avivit Granot. Avivit is the wife of Rabbi Tamir Granot, a Rosh Yeshiva in Tel Aviv, and their son was killed on the northern border, I think on the third day of the war.

And she said at the funeral, which was really a spiritual experience in so many ways, she said at the funeral, I want to make a distinction between pain and sadness. Sadness leads to despair. We need to be careful during these days not to fall into sadness, which can lead us into despair. And I’m not saying that to not recognize that we are all in an incredible amount of pain right now.

This is said by a mother who just lost her son. We are in pain, and from pain, you move into action. Pain doesn’t mean you can’t also find a path to joy without forgetting that you’re also in pain. 

So I think this is part of our challenge, this Chanukah, is to recognize that we are in deep pain, but that doesn’t mean that we need to be in sadness or mourning. We can also find a path to, we must find a path to action. And on Chanukah, our action is also an action of joy. And it’s a joy with history. And Jewish history can feel really depressing. If you think life is great, then why would you want to remember the lacrimose Jewish history? But if you think life is pretty depressing, then the lacrimose Jewish history can actually be quite comforting.

When we light candles, we say, “Asher kedishanu bemitzvotav v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Chanukah,” that we were commanded to light Chanukah candles. And the Talmud says, what do you mean we were commanded? We were never commanded to light Chanukah candles. There was no Chanukah in the Bible. And the Talmud answers, of course we were commanded to light Chanukah candles. How do we know? Because the Torah tells us, “Shaal avicha veyagedcha skenecha vyomru lach,” ask your father and he will tell you, your elderly and they will tell the story. 

The commandment that we do on Chanukah that tells us to light candles is to tell stories of history. And I think that finding that comfort and that joy, if Jews were able to be happy for 2000 years, they can definitely be also joyful on Chanukah 2023, in the right ways, in thoughtful ways, in painful, recognizing the pain that we are in. But Jewish history allows us to bring joy into that Chanukah. 

And I’ll say also that I recognize that, you know, I’m lucky enough to be at home and not having been drafted into the army. But in my community, 30% of the shul will have someone who will be in Gaza or will be on the northern border on Chanukah. Abba won’t be home for candle lighting or a big brother might not be home for candle lighting. And I can’t walk into that house and say, oh be joyful. I need to think very much about how I enter that house and how we help as parents, families that are in enormous amount of pain or loss or just in a vacuum of a missing father, a missing brother, a missing sister at the moment, and how they celebrate Chanukah, and what can we do to make sure their Chanukah is all the more joyful despite that?

Masua: That was beautiful. I’m just returning to the classical holiday. We have so many reasons to cry. I’m just gonna light as many candles as I can. We’re gonna have a Chanukah for each member of the house and we’re gonna light as many candles as we can.

I’m also remembering very similarly, Mish, to what you said before. Lavi Lipshitz was another soldier who fell in Gaza 20 years old, and he left a letter to his family and to his close people. And he also said that he asks not to sink into grief. It may be daily and exhausting, but the action that can grow from it, it is not exhausting, but constructive. Nothing has been more difficult for me than not doing, so I ask everyone around me, always do. 

And I think that the combination of, again, there’s so much darkness, but there are also a lot of light. So telling the stories of heroism. There were so many stories of heroism. Dafka now, like especially now, being happy with every single hostage that is returning while deeply crying for those who are left behind and lighting every single candle that I can find in the house, I’m going to light during this Chanukah. Josh, what about you?

Joshua: One of the halakhot pieces of Jewish legal tradition that I find interesting about this holiday is that you’re not supposed to use the Chanukah candles for your own light, right? You can use Shabbat candles. You’re supposed to like use, like you’re lighting for Shabbat because you’re going into Shabbat and presumably, until electricity, that was your light. Whereas the Chanukah candles you’re not supposed to use.

I’m thinking a lot more about really dedicating the 20 to 30 minutes that the candles are lit or after that the candles are lit, of really trying to be intentional as a family to spend time together to sing songs. I will plug my brother as a musician, he wrote this Chanukah album, it’s like four songs, but his band is Animal Farm Band, you can find the Chanukah EP on Spotify. 

But what he did is he did a different song in a different Jewish languages and we play that and sing along and that’s like, part A is like really dedicating the time to be together to sing together.

The second thing is, I think, for me, being in America, what has been a profoundly important moment or profoundly important experience since October 7th is trying to build and strengthen our community here.

And then I’ll say, I also have a portable mini fryer that I pull out every Chanukah and make, you know, sufganiyot, make donuts. So that, you know, there’s like the culinary piece. But I think being with other people, spreading that sense of Jewish peoplehood and being together as a family and singing feels like the ways we’re going to bring light together, bring light into this world together. 

Mish, thank you so much for joining us.

Mish: Absolutely great to talk to you both.

Masua: Perfect Jewish Parents is a production of the Shalom Hartman Institute where we tackle pressing issues facing Jewish communities so we can think better and do better. You can check out our world-renowned faculty, free live classes, and events at shalomhartman.org. This episode was produced by Jan Lauren Greenfield and edited by Ben Azevedo. Our assistant producer is Tessa Zitter, M. Louis Gordon is our production manager, and Maital Friedman is our vice president of communication and creative.

Subscribe to our feed wherever you get your podcasts to hear more episodes as we release them. We’ll see you then and in the meantime, take care.