When most think about the winter holiday season, the first one that comes to mind is Christmas. The trees, the lights, and the gifts are a huge part of American culture. For many Jewish families, though, the holiday season looks completely different, with their most meaningful traditions happening throughout the entire year. In order to learn more, I interviewed Bradley Gordon, a Jewish student at our school, who said there are major differences between the Jewish holidays and Christmas.
The first thing Bradley told me was that many people think Hanukkah is the “Jewish Christmas,” but that’s not the case at all. “Hanukkah’s not our most important holiday,” Bradley said. He said some major holidays in Judaism are Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, and Passover, in addition to Shabbat every week. Hanukkah still matters; however, its meaning is different. Bradley described how “you put out a menorah with nine candles,” and how one candle, the shamash, is used to light the others. Each candle stands for a day that the oil miraculously lasted when the Jewish temple was destroyed by the Greeks. “It was supposed to last one day, and lasted eight,” he said.
Whereas Christmas celebrates a birth, Jesus, and primarily involves family times, traditions, and the giving of gifts. Most Jewish holidays are based on history, survival, and reflection rather than celebration. For instance, Bradley stated that Rosh Hashanah is “the New Year in the Jewish calendar,” and families eat apples and honey to symbolize the sweetness of a new year. He further explained that they blow something called a shofar, which is a ram’s horn, signifying the start of the year.
Yom Kippur is even more different. Bradley told me, “Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement… you fast for a day and focus on atoning for your sins.” It’s a serious holiday where the goal is to reflect, ask for forgiveness, and reset spiritually.
Sukkot has a completely different type of tradition. Bradley explained that families build “a sukkah, which is a hut” just like temporary shelters Jewish people used while wandering the desert. You also “shake an etrog” – a lemon-like fruit – and some leaves in different directions for symbolic reasons connected to God’s presence.
Another major Jewish holiday is Passover, which Bradley went into great detail about. This is the story of the Jews escaping slavery in Egypt. He described the Seder plate and how “salt water represents the tears of our ancestors,” matzah is eaten because the Jews had no time to let bread rise, and the lamb bone represents marking the doors so the angel of death would “pass over” them.
Bradley also shared how holidays make him feel spiritually and culturally connected. “It’s my culture and what I believe in, he said. “It makes me feel connected to my family and to people I’ve lost.”
Overall, Christmas and Jewish holidays are meaningful, yet for very different reasons. Christmas speaks to celebration and joy, while Jewish holidays speak to history, tradition, and perseverance of our ancestors. Speaking with Bradley was a further realization of how deeply embedded in meaning and symbolism the holidays of Jews are.
