The final candles of Hanukkah were lit Wednesday, and Jewish communities across Ohio have been celebrating the eight-night festival of lights in style.
Near Columbus, the Hanukkah hero descended from to light the menorah. A giant menorah decorated Glass City Metro Park in Toledo. And a Jewish community around Akron hosted a with menorah topped cars.
But the relatively minor Jewish holiday isn鈥檛 celebrated so grandly everywhere in the world. It in the United States largely because of the actions of a pair of rabbis with Ohio ties.
, the executive director emeritus of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati and an expert on Reform Jewish history, joined the Ohio Newsroom to explain.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
On why Jewish immigrants settled in Cincinnati
鈥淐incinnati became a very burgeoning commercial center starting in the first decades of the 19th century. So at first, a small number of Jews came here in the 1820s. They were interested in taking advantage of the commercial growth of the city, and providing stores and all the goods that people need for a growing community.
鈥淏ut then in the 1830s, and especially in the 1840s, large numbers of German immigrants came for a variety of reasons, but largely because of the difficulties earning a living in Central Europe for younger people. Cincinnati was an appealing place, both in terms of the similarity of its environment as well as its commercial opportunity. And with that immigration came a large number of Jews, such that by the middle of the 19th century, Cincinnati, Ohio, had the second largest Jewish community in the United States, following New York.鈥�
On how early settlers celebrated Hanukkah
鈥淚nitially, in the 1840s and 1850s, they probably celebrated it very modestly because it was a very minor holiday. And what that probably meant is that in their homes, they lit the holiday lights and said the blessings and that was that. All that would change with the innovations that were launched by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise of Cincinnati and his partner in crime, Rabbi Max Lilienthal, who were here starting in the mid-1850s.鈥�
"It's not at all an exaggeration to say that Cincinnati's Jewish community in the 19th century played an oversized role in guiding Jewish life in America.鈥�Rabbi Gary Zola
On the Cincinnati rabbis that popularized Hanukkah
鈥淏oth of these men were Americanizers. They felt very strongly that Jewish life would flourish if it was able to insinuate itself into American culture. But they were also innovators and very forward thinking men. Wise had created, as soon as he got here, a newspaper, which gave him the opportunity to deliver his ideas and his opinions to American Jewish communities all over the United States. And somewhat later, Lilienthal becomes the editor of a newspaper that he starts called 鈥楾he Sabbath Visitor,鈥� which was designed for little children in religious school. The two of these people were constantly looking for ways to instill within their communities and, of course, within young people, a sense of pride in who they were as Jews, not to toss off Judaism, but to find a way to Americanize it so that they could take pride in their past.鈥�
On the rise of Hanukkah festivities
鈥淚n the 1870s, as Christmas festivals began to take over in America with Christmas trees and Kris Kringle and all the drinks and songs, it occurred to them, 鈥榃e could do the same for this holiday, which is often coterminous with Christmas, and that鈥檚 Hanukkah.鈥� And they take this holiday and they aggrandize it. They make it bigger in its celebration than it was traditionally. So there become Hanukkah festivals.
鈥淭heir idea was not only to help Jewish young people and adults feel that they could celebrate along with their neighbors in their own way, but also to give them pride in who they were as Jews. And it becomes a success. And the two rabbis make sure it's successful and well-known because both, in their separate newspapers, promote their successes and explain what they did so that other communities begin to emulate what was going on here in Cincinnati. It's not at all an exaggeration to say that Cincinnati's Jewish community in the 19th century played an oversized role in guiding Jewish life in America.鈥�
