'It deserves its own respect': Jewish Delawareans celebrate Hanukkah

By Rachel Sawicki
Posted 12/3/21

Every year, Abbie Lobley scours stores in Lewes and Rehoboth Beach for Hanukkah items, usually leaving empty-handed.

The gifts she gives her children are often covered with snowflakes or snowmen — it’s nearly impossible to find paper without Santa Claus, she said.

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'It deserves its own respect': Jewish Delawareans celebrate Hanukkah

Posted

Every year, Abbie Lobley scours stores in Lewes and Rehoboth Beach for Hanukkah items, usually leaving empty-handed.

The gifts she gives her children are often covered with snowflakes or snowmen — it’s nearly impossible to find paper without Santa Claus, she said.

But this year, she spent extra to order paper with menorahs.

“I spent, like, $50 because I wanted Hanukkah wrapping paper,” she said. “I think it’s crap that in Sussex County, Delaware, I can’t find a box of Hanukkah candles. I don’t need 16 options, but I feel like somebody should sell something. Little things, like … matching family Christmas pajamas, and I’m like, ‘Would it kill you to throw like a dreidel on one of those sets?”

Last year in Lubbock, Texas, an extremely conservative town, University of Delaware graduate Blair Sabol couldn’t find a menorah anywhere for her home.

“I think it gets misconstrued a lot that Hanukkah and Christmas are like the same thing when they are really two very different holidays,” she said. “For a long time growing up, I always associated them together, like they’re just different times that you get presents. But as I got older, and I recognized the value of Hanukkah for what it is, it’s actually kind of nice when it doesn’t coincide with Christmas because it deserves its own respect.

“Christmas gets so much recognition, and even Hanukkah, sometimes, it’s mistaken as sort of part of the celebrations.”

Ms. Sabol is 24 and originally from White Plains, New York. Her family isn’t very religious but celebrates Hanukkah and Christmas for cultural reasons and treats the holidays as a time to gather with family.

Her mother grew up Jewish, and her father Catholic, but they were married and raised their kids in a Unitarian Universalist church. However, She said that preserving Hanukkah traditions has become more important to her as she’s grown older.

“I view Hanukkah as more of a way to be close to my family and my roots and my mom,” she said. “I’ve never been a religious person, but I’m really proud that I come from this long line of Jews.”

Ms. Lobley’s spouse grew up Pentecostal, and she recalls worrying about what his family would think of him “bringing this Jewish girl home.”

“He was raised in a very religious family, had preachers on both sides of his family. They were hardcore,” she said. “But it was easy for us because he was kind of burnt-out over religion, and he didn’t really have any interest in it by that point. So it was never really needed to decide which religion to raise our kids with. It was pretty easy.”

Ms. Lobley and her children attend Seaside Jewish Community in Rehoboth Beach, which has more than 600 members, representing over 360 households.

All levels of Jewish observance are welcomed at the Seaside synagogue, and there are educational, spiritual and cultural activities for all ages. Both her children have had their bar and bat mitzvahs, which her husband and his family were joyfully a part of.

She said her in-laws are happy their grandchildren have religion in their lives, no matter what denomination.

Ms. Lobley added that Hanukkah isn’t the biggest Jewish holiday. Its dates vary from year to year: Sometimes, it is in November. Other times, it lines up with Christmas.

It came early this year, starting Sunday and ending Dec. 6. Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year and Day of Atonement, respectively, are the big observances, but in her experience, not many non-Jewish people realize that.

“I think that Christmas has become super-commercialized, and sometimes, if there’s more emphasis put on those gifts than the religious meaning behind the holiday, that’s not actually celebrating it,” Ms. Lobley said. “We try to keep our Hanukkah humble because it’s about a miracle that happened, not the gifts.”

David Udoff and Jennifer Kappeller live in Magnolia and also attend Seaside Jewish Community. Before their daughter, Julia, was born, they decided they would raise her in the Jewish faith.

Ms. Kappeller comes from a Catholic family but knew it was more important to her husband to keep his religion instilled in the next generation.

“I guess for me, the holidays are more about spending time with family than any religious observance,” she said. “I kind of explain (to Julia) what the Christian traditions are in a general way, but it really is more about the family traditions than about religious observances.”

The couple also enrolled their daughter in a Judaism school, which they worried could be a problem because Ms. Kappeller is not Jewish.

“I (was) told that it wasn’t (a problem), so long as (Julia’s) religious schooling consisted solely of her going to Seaside and getting a Jewish education, without any other religious education mixed in, and that is exactly what we’ve done,” Mr. Udoff said.

He added that Seaside has been welcoming to his wife, and he has likewise been welcomed into her family and hometown church during Easter and Christmas services.

Describing himself as more culturally than religiously Jewish, Israel Rudinoff, 22, of Smyrna, doesn’t always go to synagogue but practices in his own way at home.

“I also do it for my family because I am a descendant of Holocaust survivors,” he said. “Reading stories and listening to my family’s stories about the Holocaust and how these things were taken away from them, I don’t ever want it to be taken away from me, and so I celebrate living on for them and being able to do this in their memory and their honor.”

Mr. Rudinoff grew up celebrating Christmas, too, with his father and two half-sisters. He said his parents didn’t want any siblings feeling left out, so every year, they come together to celebrate both.

His sisters aren’t strictly religious either; therefore, the holidays are usually treated as a time for family to gather and exchange gifts. In their family, Santa Claus was always thought of as an Americanized tradition, rather than a Christian one.

“My brother and I were the only Jewish kids in our school system, so I don’t think (my parents) wanted us to go to school and be like, ‘Hey, Santa is not real. My parents told me because we don’t celebrate Christmas,’” he said.

Though these families do choose to give gifts for Hanukkah, some that are more conservative do not.

“A lot of our holidays are about Jewish people surviving all of the major things that have happened to us,” Mr. Rudinoff said. “Truthfully, I think people will lump them together because they’re like, ‘You get eight days of presents, just like how on Christmas, I get presents,’ when, in fact, not everyone who celebrates Hanukkah gets presents.”

He also expressed disappointment regarding time off during this time of year. He says it’s not feasible to take eight full days off, which shows how Hanukkah isn’t largely recognized by many people in the United States.

“Hanukkah is going to be over way before Christmas this year, and if people say, ‘Merry Christmas,’ it doesn’t bother me at all,” he said. “I just want them to respect my belief system and be OK that I celebrate Hanukkah, and for other people who don’t celebrate Christmas at all, to not think that’s weird.”

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