Peggy Pearlstein: I greeted you this morning as president
of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington,
and as a delegate to the Southern Jewish History Conference here
in Washington.
Well, now I'm wearing my other hat, and my other badge
as an employee here at the Library of Congress
[ the Library ]
. Remember I told you this morning what my son wondered about;
if God or the government made the rain.
Well little did I know that I would wind up working for the government.
I don't think he sees me as a god at all, but I've been here 25 years,
all of them in the Hebraic Section of the Library of Congress.
I'm head of the Hebraic Section -- the Hebraic Section,
the Near East Section, and the African Section,
form what we call the African and Middle Eastern Division
of the Library of Congress.
And we do acquisitions and reference for all the countries from the tip
of Africa all the way up to the Caucuses, as well as take care
of acquisitions and reference queries about, for me,
Jews and Judaism all over the world.
I would just like to introduce the chief
of the African/Middle Eastern Division, Dr. Mary Jane Deeb,
and she's wearing another hat today too.
She's the photographer, so Dr. Deeb.   [ applause ]
Most of you probably know that Sunday begins Jewish,
National Jewish Book Month.
It's the annual event in the American Jewish community dedicated
to the celebration of Jewish books.
So how appropriate that this year's Southern Jewish Historical Society
Annual Conference, which focuses on the history, research
and publication about Jews in the South is here this weekend,
and that you're spending part of the conference
at the Library of Congress today.
The medieval philosopher and physician, Judah ibn Tibbon said,
[ speaking Hebrew ]   , "Make books your friends."
Well, this is the place to do that.
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world,
almost 30 million cataloged books
and other print materials, in 460 languages.
We have 58 million manuscripts, the world's largest collection of maps,
films, recordings, sheet music, legal materials,
and one of the best collections in the world of Hebraic rarities
and materials relating to Jews, Judaism and Israel.
More than 10 million
of the Library's 130,000,000 items are available free of charge
on our Web site, and our home page is
on the plasma screens in front of you.
We also webcast many of our programs and make them available
on our Web site, and if you look in the rear of the room,
you'll see that today's program is being webcast.
It will become available   [ laughs ]
on our Web site in about two months; 24/7, you'll be able
to come back, take a look at it.
Today I just want to briefly tell you a little bit about the Web site,
and then to show you some of the materials that we have
on the tables in front of you.
I have one thing from the Hebraic Section,
a few things from the General Collections,
and have some other items that I'm happy to say come
from the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress,
and one of the specialists there, Rikki Condon,
is sitting all the way in the back of the room.
This is the first time that I've ever spoken to a group,
and I've been here 25 years,
that any other division has allowed materials to be brought out,
so you're quite special, and I wanted to make sure
that you were treated special as well.
I also want to mention -- think about it a bit --
that the Bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth will be commemorated
across the nation beginning in February of 2009.
There will be a major Lincoln exhibition here at the Library
of Congress, with more than 250 items on display.
There will be an exhibit at Ford's Theater,
which is where Lincoln was shot, currently undergoing renovations,
but it'll be ready in 2009.
And the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is also going
to mount an exhibit about Jewish life in Mr. Lincoln's city.
So because there's all of this hype now that's going on,
I certainly feel it here at the Library of Congress and Laura has it
on every single meeting agenda at the Jewish Historical Society,
I thought that what I would do would be to show you some items that deal
with Lincoln, and deal with Jews of the South, and then there
on this side of, they're on this side of the podium, on this table,
and then on this side, I have some more contemporary materials.
And then following Dr. Ashton's presentation, a representative
from our Visitor's Service   [ s ]
Office will tell you about the remarkable building that you're in,
and you will be able to break up into three different groups.
You'll be able to see the Great Hall, which is one level upstairs.
There's an elevator.
You'll be able to go to the overlook of the main reading room,
and if you choose not to do either one of these,
you can head right back to the bus.
So hopefully we will be back on schedule.
My presentation is short, and I already talked
to Dianne Ashton, so let me get started.
Okay. So this is the Library of Congress Web site,
and if you go to "Researchers," and then you kind of scroll
down the screen to "All Reading Rooms and Research Centers,"
and you click on "African & Middle Eastern," you'll see
that on the left here is the Hebraic Section.
We have lots of different materials here.
This is from our 1478 manuscript Haggadah, which we've digitized
and is available online, 24/7 to look at.
It's our prize; a beautiful, illuminated Haggadah.
We also have 30 some cuneiform tablets that have been digitized
and put online, and you can read all
about the Hebraic Section where I work.
You can read about some of the special collections,
and this wonderful little guide, which we have in hard copy,
is also available online, beautifully illustrated,
and then you can see some of our other wonderful collections.
But I'm going to go back to the home page --
I want to go right back to the home page --
[ inaudible ]   To the Library of Congress Web site.
It's really easy.   If you look up here, it's loc.gov.
LibraryofCongress.gov.
Right up here, this URL, this address section.
Okay? So back here.
Here we are at the home page, and what I'm going to do is go
to "Exhibitions," although there's lots of stuff in "American Memory"
about Jews and Judaism, and I'm going to type on "From Haven
to Home," which many of you may have seen when it was here in 2004,
and it celebrated 350 years of Jewish life in America.
We also produced a catalog from that exhibit, which is available
for sale, and some of our presenters here also were consulted
on the exhibit, and wrote essays for the book.
So I'm going to type in, "From Haven to Home,"
just because that's the quickest way for me.
Okay. So here's the exhibit.
And I'm just going to show you a few items that were in the exhibit
that I have here today so that you can have an opportunity to go back
and take a look at it when you want, 24/7.
Under, "Confronting Challenges," there are a number of items,
and here you see a two dollar bill of the Confederate States
of America, picturing Judah Benjamin.
That's in the Hebraic Section.   How did we acquire it?
Pretty unusual way; on eBay.   [ laughter ]
But the Library does have a number of these bills and lots
of Confederate bonds that also have images of Judah P. Benjamin on them.
So that's over here on this side.
Then right below that and this first item right here is the diary
of Eugenia Levy Phillips.
Like me, she's a native Charlestonian,
but she was very fiery, very forthright, very outspoken.
She married at the age of 16, a Phillips.
He became a Congressman, and they were living here in Washington
in 1861, and she was pretty testy and made some remarks
about the Union, because she was certainly a Southern sympathizer,
and she was imprisoned along with her two daughters in 1861.
And the very first page of her diary begins on the day
of her imprisonment, and that's what we have opened up to,
so you'll have an opportunity to take a look at it later.
Then she and her husband and her nine children went to New Orleans.
I know Kathy knows all about this, because that's
where they thought things would be safer with hostilities breaking out.
Not so. Of course the Union came, captured the city and again,
she made some remarks about being a Confederate sympathizer,
and she was jailed again.
She was jailed in a place called Ship Island under very harsh,
unsanitary, difficult conditions.   But she was a tough woman.
She survived, and I think Eli Evans writes about her,
and I think Rosen writes about her, and she lived to be 83 years old.
But we have her diary here at the Library of Congress.
Lots to read here, but I'm going to move on down
and here you see General Grant's "   [ General ]
Order No. 11,' where he expels the Jews as a class from the territories
of Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee because there was lots
of objection to their trading.
Many of the sutler who's supplied the soldiers with items
that they couldn't get through the Army were able to supply them,
but the prices were very high.
There were also issues about cotton trading.
Everyone wanted to capitalize on the bales of cotton that were available,
and to supplement a poor private's pay.
So we have here, and it's in one of the book's here upfront,
it's not the actual order itself.   That we don't have.
What we do have is the copy, because all of these orders were written
in copy books, and although we all call it "Order No.
11," if you look in the book, it's actually "Order No.
12". And what happened was there was some kind of misnumbering
in the copying, and in the transmission of the numbers.
So here you'll see that, and what you see also here are two responses
from the Jewish community; The Board of Delegates
of American Israelites responded in Jan.
8. Grant's "Order No.   11 or 12" was issued Dec.17, 1862.
This was a response Jan.
8, and this was a national organization that attempted
to unify the Jewish community in responding
and in protecting the civil rights of Jews, both at home and abroad.
Another response came from the Missouri Lodge
of B'nai B'rith a few days earlier, Jan.
5, 1863. And then you can see it says that on the envelope
in which the B'nai B'rith protest came, Lincoln rescinded the order.
You can see that right there.   "I have today, Jan.
5, 1863 written General Curtis about this."
AL, Abraham Lincoln.
And it's right behind a lovely letter with the red seal, and again,
this is something that you can take a look at.
Moving on to this side of the table, and moving on to the end
of another world war, World War II, I'm going to go
down to the section called, "Home."
I'm going to go right back up here and come down a bit.
Okay. Right here.
Okay. There was special Victory Day services that were held
in Goldsboro, North Carolina.
I think I heard Leonard say he knows all about this,
so you can ask him afterwards.
But this is a scroll that we have in the Hebraic Section,
and it was based on a service that was done
with the congregation's rabbi, J. Gerson Tolochko, Tolochko.
He was born in Poland around 1903, passed away in 1969.
He served a congregation, I think, in Ohio, and also in Mississippi,
and then he settled in North Carolina
and that's where he passed away.
But, in addition to this scroll, which is very patriotic,
and in which they talk about the United Nations and the singing
of the National Anthem,
I also pulled from the General Collections three items
that Rabbi Tolochko produced himself
on Southern printing presses, so to speak.
Two of them are Hebrew readers.
One of them has a foreword by Golden of the Carolina Israelite,
and another one is a book about Jews and Judaism, but he also has,
in the back, a section about a Southern Jewish Institute
on Comparative Religions.
So he doesn't just talk about Judaism, but about Buddhism
and about other religions as well.
So you never know what you're going to find here
at the Library of Congress.
And I hope that you will explore our Web site.
I hope that you will come back and visit,
and I hope that you will use our collections and I just want
to say thank you again for coming today.
And now I'm going to turn the program over to the individual
who will be introducing our speaker, Dianne Ashton.
[ applause ]
I told you I was going to get you back on schedule.
[ inaudible ]   This exhibit is up forever.
All of our exhibits are now up online.
We have an exhibit that we did
on the Dead Sea Scrolls back in the '90s.
That's online.
So all of the Library's exhibits you will find online now.
And also, all of our webcasts.
So you're going to look for this webcast in about two months,
or e-mail me and ask me how we are doing about getting it on, online.
I just asked about another webcast that we did.
Laura Cohen Applebaum came and spoke about the new book,
about the Washington Jewish community, and I said, "Well,
when is it going to be up on the Web site?"
The response I got in the e-mail was,
"There are 70 webcasts ahead of you, so be patient."
So this is number 71.   Okay?
[ applause ]   Ellen Umansky: Well good afternoon.
I'm Ellen Umansky.
I'm a longtime member of the Southern Jewish Historical Society,
a recently elected member of the board,
and it gives me great pleasure this afternoon
to introduce our speaker, Dr. Dianne Ashton.
Dianne is professor of religion and director
of the American Studies Program at Rowan University in Glassboro,
N. J., where she has taught since 1992.
Her publications include three books, and more than 20 articles
on Jewish life in America.
Among her books is her 1997 work, "Rebecca Gratz: Women in Judaism
in Antebellum America," published by Wayne State University Press.
Having been a reader on Dianne's dissertation committee
when she was a Ph.D. candidate way back when at Temple University,
and her dissertation was on Rebecca Gratz, and having read her book,
as well as biographical essays that she's written,
I can attest to the fact that Dianne Ashton is the world's expert
on Rebecca Gratz.
And it really is through her work on Gratz who, if you don't know,
was the founder among other things
of the first Jewish Sunday school in the United States.
It's really been through Dianne's work
that Gratz has now been restored to her important place
in American Jewish history.
The work that Dianne and I did in preparation
for our co-edited sourcebook, "Four Centuries
of Jewish Women's Spirituality," which was published by Beacon Press
in 1992 brought other little-known or not fully recognized Jewish women
from around the world into the foreground.
Since our early collaboration, Dianne has not only written her book
on Gratz, which as I said was published in 1997,
but has also published another book in 1998
on Jewish life in Pennsylvania.
For the last two years Dianne and I have been working on a new addition
of "Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality."
Coincidentally enough, actually it's a miracle that the two
of us are standing here, we sent the manuscript off
to our editor two days ago, on Wednesday.
Our editor actually received it yesterday morning
and tells me she's very excited about publishing it.
This'll be through Brandeis University Press, under the imprint
of the University Press of New England, and if all goes well,
will appear in the fall of 2008.
Dianne Ashton's current research is on ways
in which American Jews celebrate Hanukkah.
This project has been generously funded by the National Endowment
for the Humanities, the Gilder Lehrman Institute,
The Hadassah Brandeis Institute, and the American Jewish Archives.
Her talk today explores the ways in which Jews
in Southern states modified their Hanukkah celebrations.
She calls her talk, "Quick to the Party: Southern Jews
and the Americanization of Hanukkah."
Dianne Ashton.   [ applause ]
Dianne Ashton: Thank you.
I would also like to thank Peggy Pearlstein, who was so helpful
when I came to use the materials at the Library
of Congress, which are extensive.
My interest in Hanukkah began at a garden party,
when a non-Jewish friend, a librarian, told me that she thought
that Hanukkah was Judaism's most important holiday.
I told her she was wrong.
That in fact, it was only a minor festival.
But I began to wonder if perhaps I had missed something.
By the 21st century, Jews had made Hanukkah
into the most easily recognizable Jewish practice,
at least one of the most easily recognizable Jewish practices.
And I decided to explore how a minor festival grew
into an emblem of American Judaism.
So far, it seems that Hanukkah achieved its exalted status
in three stages.
First, American Jews explained Hanukkah's meaning to themselves
in ways that reflected their own desire
to blend their Jewish and American heritages.
Those explanations lent themselves to inter-religious conversations.
Second, in addition to Hanukkah's domestic ritual,
involving the blessing and lighting of candles, usually by adults,
American Jews organized communal children's festivals,
either in the synagogue, or in some other Jewish public venue.
Concern for Jewish children growing
up in a non-Jewish world lent Hanukkah greater significance.
Third, Hanukkah became the Jewish alternative
to the most widely celebrated religious holiday
in the country, Christmas.
As Christmas grew into a national celebration
in the late 19th century,
Jews elaborated upon Hanukkah's traditional customs in ways
that reshaped it to conform to the national festival.
Those changes gave the holiday a public face that looked
like America's larger religious culture.
I'll talk about four indicators of that change: a new Hanukkah hymn,
published in 1842; the first synagogue based Hanukkah children's
festival, in 1874; Hanukkah greeting cards, which appeared in 1926;
and in the 1970s in New Orleans, Hanukkah doors
that instructed Gentile neighbors in Judaism's symbols.
Judaism's guides for Hanukkah's observance give no hint
that this holiday would lend itself to good inter-religious relations.
Talmud tractate Shabbat 21B says the holiday celebrates the drop
of pure oil which miraculously burned for eight days
until priests could provide more.
After the Maccabean revolt, we took the Jerusalem Temple
from Syria's Antiuchus IV.
Hanukkah candles commemorate that oil.
The Talmudic traditions codified in the
[ Hebrew ]
in the 16th century, and widely consulted as the guide
to Jewish practice by Jews in Europe reiterated that the rite
for Hanukkah, honored the oil through which God conveyed to Jews
that divine intervention had carried them to victory.
The rite focused Jews' attention on a moment in their past
when they believed God had rescued them from oppressive Gentiles,
hardly an enticement to engage with non-Jews.
Nor did Hanukkah songs encourage conversation with non-Jews.
By the 16th century, it had become customary for Ashkenazi Jews
to sing a hymn called "Ma'oz Taur," sometimes translated
as sheltering rock, immediately after lighting the Hanukkah candles.
Sung to the tune of an old German folk tune,
"Ma'oz Taur" probably was composed three centuries earlier.
Its six verses praise God and offer thanks for saving Jews
at the various occasions in the past.
The song's first and last verses beg God to speed the day
when Jews will be restored to their former land and so escape the perils
of living among non-Jews.
Sephardic Jews who trace their ancestry to Iberia
and the Mediterranean area customarily sang Psalm 30
at Hanukkah, noted in the Bible as,
"A Song for the Dedication of the House."
The Word Hanukkah means dedication.
Its four stanzas begin, "I extol you oh Lord, for you have lifted me up
and not let my enemies rejoice over me."
It thanks God for being merciful, and promises to praise God for ever.
Neither of those customary songs sufficed for a group
of early American Jews in Charleston South Carolina.
In 1842, Charleston's Penina Moise wrote a new song
that voiced a new approach to the holiday.
It was one of several new songs written for a collection to be used
by her congregation, and it blended Jewish
and American religious viewpoint.
Moise enjoyed a reputation as a fine poet,
and Charleston called her its poet laureate.
Moise also ran her congregation's Sunday school.
At the time she penned her song, her congregation, Bethelohim,
had just reunited after a breakaway group called, the Reform Society
of Israelites, demanded modifications to the worship service
that they hoped would make it more meaningful to congregants
who did not understand Hebrew, and Moise was part of that group.
Shortly afterward the congregation reunited,
they purchased a new building
and added organ music to augment its worship.
A new songbook, largely Moise's work, suited the new situation.
Moise changed the traditional Hanukkah perspective.
First, unlike both Psalm 30 and "Ma'oz Taur,"
her song is intended specifically for Hanukkah,
suggesting that her congregation felt the need
to sing something special for that holiday.
Borrowing her Protestant neighbors' terminology for religious songs,
she titled her work, "Hanukkah Hymn."
Second, it mines Hanukkah's story for ways
to describe an individual's spiritual crisis.
When Antiuchus installed Greek worship in the ancient temple
in Jerusalem, he deprived Jews of the best place
to obtain forgiveness for their sins.
Moise's hymn begins by imagining the personal anguish
of an ancient Jew whose temple had been desecrated.
She uses the defiled temple as a metaphor
for our contemporary blemished heart.
Her hymn speaks of virtue, whose guiding light may be waning,
and addresses the inner turmoil that results
from such a spiritual crisis.
She does not ask for an end to exile, as does "Ma'oz Taur,"
but for a comforting, personal salvation
that soothes religious torment.
Jews might sing it during synagogue worship
or at home during the candle lighting ceremonies.
Now neither the Talmud nor the Mishnah and Gemara identify Hanukkah
as a special occasion to ask for the forgiveness of sins.
Why did Moise focus upon sin?   I think because of where she lived.
Moise's hymn shares a particular religious discourse that reigned
in her area of the U.S. Born in 1797,
Moise lived in a South dominated by a Protestantism
that emphasized the anguish suffered by individuals
who are unsure of Jesus' mercy.
A half century before her birth, evangelicals spilled into the south
from the mid- Atlantic region,
and began transforming the established Anglican border.
Presbyterians, Baptists
and Methodists challenged the religious status quo by reaching
out to women, workers and slaves.
After the American Revolution, dismantled legal and tax support
for Anglicanism, now called Episcopalianism,
evangelicals expanded their influence.
By the time the Moise wrote,
Southern women evangelicals helped their family, friends,
and neighbors to find salvation in Jesus.
The procedure would be the same; convince the neighbor
of their deep unhappiness and fear
because their sins would provoke God's vengeance,
then offer salvation through accepting Christ as God.
Moise's hymn suggests that she had heard those arguments.
She offered American Jews a way to speak
of their own religious confusions or turmoil using Jewish images,
and provided a well formed Jewish plea for God's reassurance,
at a particular time in the Jewish religious calendar.
She provided an individual voice for prayer, and an expression
of an inner need for God and tied those elements to Hanukkah's story
through the hymn's imagery.   Finally, by not mentioning exile,
Moise implies that Jews are satisfied with life in America,
an idea we find expressed in letters written
by American Jews since the 1700s.
Moise's hymn proved so popular that it was reprinted many times,
as late as 1959, in publications used
by both Reform and Conservative Jews.
With Moise, American Jews began reshaping Hanukkah
to fit their American experience.
Four years asked after Moise published her hymn,
Rabbi Max Lilienthall sent the text of a Hanukkah sermon
that he had delivered before his two congregations in New York City
to the Jewish congregation in Augusta, Georgia.
Lilienthall addressed his audience, primarily as Jewish parents,
urging them to do everything for the holy heirloom that is Judaism.
Lilienthall stands out among his peers for his attention
to the needs of Jewish children.
His early career focused upon Jewish education.
Born in Munich in 1815, and educated at the University there,
Lilienthall became the first principle
for the newly established Jewish school in Riga in 1840.
After a few years, Lilienthall left Europe and came to the U.S.
After a decade in New York, where his liberal views brought him
into conflict with more traditional Jews, he settled in Cincinnati,
the center for Reform Judaism in America.
There he served as congregational rabbi, educator,
and author until his death in 1882.
He was among the first to argue that American Jews ought to make Hanukkah
into a more important holiday.
In the 1840s, when Lilienthall and Moise penned their Hanukkah works,
Christmas was not yet the widespread national festival
with decorated trees, Santa, and gifts that we know today.
The Calvinist/Protestant tradition disdained those practices
as pagan and too Catholic.
Early 19th-century American fathers typically gave small gifts
to their children on New Year's Day, not Christmas.
But when 5 million German immigrants added
to an already substantial German American population over the course
of the 19th century, their customs reshaped American standards.
When Queen Victoria adopted her husband's German Christmas customs
for the royal family, she made them fashionable
in the U.S. as well as in Britain.
And the heavily German settlement of Cincinnati, Ohio,
Lilienthall noticed that many Jews, who were themselves immigrants
from Germanic lands, enjoyed the German Christmas customs.
Between 1820 and 1870, almost 150,000 Jews
from Central Europe came to the U.S.,
but rabbis viewed the German Christmas customs
as too Christian for Jews.
Lilienthall addressed what he saw as a religious problem
for Jewish children with a new Hanukkah activity held
in a synagogue.
In 1874, the Sunday school Hanukkah celebration held
at Lilienthall's Cincinnati Temple entertained 200 pupils.
Lilienthall read a prayer and lighted the holiday candles.
Members of the school committee delivered speeches.
The choir sang musical selections.
Gifts were given to the teachers from the children.
The children were treated to a snack,
and were sent home before a social dance planned by the women
of the congregation lasted into the night.
Lilienthall's national magazine, "The Hebrew Sabbath School Visitor,"
urged readers to organize similar Hanukkah festivities
in their own communities.
The pro-Reform magazine "The Israelite," and Jewish magazines
that opposed Reform soon joined in.
Encouraged by national Jewish periodicals, communal,
child centered Hanukkah celebrations quickly appeared in towns as distant
as Baltimore and Denver, New York and Atlanta.
Lilienthall did not invent the new celebration out of whole cloth.
Like much of 19th-century Jewish innovation,
it drew upon Jewish rites, customs remembered from Europe,
and practices learned from Christians in America.
He blended the Hanukkah candle lighting ceremony
and customary songs with elements
of a contemporary Christian Sunday school Christmas festival,
where students sang hymns, heard lectures by their clergy
and congregational leaders,
and thanked their teachers before enjoying sweets.
From Purim, he borrowed the carnival atmosphere.
The social dance after the event elaborated upon the Hanukkah
socializing, popular among Ashkenazi Jews in Europe,
and mirrored the Purim ball that raised funds for Jewish charities
in many 19th-century American Jewish communities.
Despite the novelty of the new Hanukkah event, it felt right.
To mount those Hanukkah festivals, rabbis relied upon the women
of local congregations, whether as Sunday school teachers,
mothers of students, or members of sisterhoods or ladies auxiliaries.
Women organized the events, managed the children and provided the food
and other items used in the celebrations.
Those voluntary responsibilities soon became annual duties.
Women's free labor made the Hanukkah festivals possible--
what a surprise-- even for small congregations like those
that might be found in the South.
When the reform movement's National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods,
organized in 1913, its committee
on religion marshaled national resources
to promote these communal Hanukkah events,
as well as the traditional domestic Hanukkah rites.
When Mrs. Leon Goodman of Louisville, Ky.,
chaired the organizations committee on religion in the 1920s,
she began instructing local chapters in preparing for Hanukkah
in her September letter, and reminded members,
each month thereafter, until January.
In 1925 she wrote, "The Hanukkah festival is one of the few instances
when the religious atmosphere may permeate the household."
The next year she explained, "That it is especially our desire
to overcome the practice
of observing Christmas in Jewish homes."
More elaborate Hanukkah celebrations were designed to do just that.
In 1926, the Reform Sisterhoods embarked upon a new Hanukkah
project; the sale of specially designed Hanukkah greeting cards.
By then, commercial greeting cards for Christmas had been available
to American shoppers for 50 years.
Among Jews, local benefactors might occasionally provide souvenir cards
with Hanukkah designs for children who attended Hanukkah festivals.
But Jews typically did not exchange greeting cards at Hanukkah.
Yet because the sisterhoods national membership provided many potential
customers for this project, one manufacturer agreed
to supply them with two simple cards.
The first, a modified version of a Christmas card,
featured a single lit candle in a dish, with a trail flowers in front.
The second, displayed a plain candle, along with the first stanza
of Emma Lazarus's poem for Hanukkah which began,
"Kindle the taper like a steadfast star."
The card instructed families in what to do; light the candles.
And why to do it; to be steadfast.
It offered a famous, accomplished Jewish woman's work
to inspire other Jews' pride in being Jewish.
By exchanging Hanukkah cards, Jews underscored the Jewish identities
of both the sender and the recipient.
The cards provided American Jews with another way to participate
in widespread activities associated with Christmas,
while performing a Jewish act.
The sisterhood's national leadership urged members to sell cards at two
for a nickel, to their congregations to assure sales.
Hanukkah cards became an annual feature
of the Reform Sisterhood's work, and established a new Hanukkah custom.
Ultimately, their success
with Hanukkah cards convinced manufacturers and retailers
of a new niche market for their holiday goods.
By the 1970s, and certainly earlier in some areas,
Hanukkah cards could be purchased alongside Christmas goods in stores.
Their blue and silver or white color scheme, reminiscent of both Taleysim
[ prayer shawls ]
and the Israeli flag, mark them as Jewish.
Greeting cards gave Hanukkah a distinctive,
recognizable place in American stores.
This week Hallmark's Web site offers seven different Hanukkah cards,
all with that color scheme.
Thus far I've been talking mostly about Reform Jews,
but one custom among Conservative Jews shows us
that Hanukkah provided an occasion for many Jews
to both elaborate upon their own Hanukkah customs,
and to present Judaism to their Gentile neighbors.
In 1978, "The Women's League Outlook," a magazine published
by conservative women, printed their local chapter reports
on Hanukkah events.
Amid many familiar activities for Jewish children conducted in homes
and synagogues, one custom among New Orleans Jews stands out.
In New Orleans garden clubs encouraged members
to decorate the front doors of their homes during December according
to one of three thematic categories; religious, seasonal or novelty.
For several years, some Jews participated in this local custom
by using their front doors to educate their neighbors
about Judaism, calling them a "Hanukkah doors" They used everyday,
inexpensive materials; paint, bottle tops, egg cartons, plastic spoons,
sock hangers, styrofoam cups, drinking straws, rice, beans,
Mardi Gras beads, acorns, pine cones, popcorn, typewriter spools,
nuts, barley, flash cubes.
Out of those humble objects, they created Menorahs,
scenes of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai,
the Western Wall or the eternal light.
To help their neighbors understand an image,
each home owner placed an explanation beside the door.
Those four examples, Moise's Hanukkah hymn,
Lilienthall's Synagogue Hanukkah children's festivals,
the Reform Sisterhood's Hanukkah cards,
and the New Orleans Hanukkah doors demonstrate an early
and continuing interest
in Americanized Hanukkah activities among Southern Jews.
They were among the first to redefine the holiday to align
with American values, and to offer the new communal Hanukkah
celebrations touted by Reform.
Rabbis and women joined forces to enhance Hanukkah's importance
for American Jewish children,
even in small communities with few resources.
Some Southern Jews also took unusual steps
to explain their distinctive customs to their neighbors.
Their Hanukkah activities support Mark Bauman's argument
that Southern Jewish life conformed to national models
because Southern Jews were not isolated.
Jews arrived in the South from other parts of the country,
and often maintained those connections through business ties.
Southern Jews traveled outside the South to visit family and friends.
Jewish press linked Jews around the country, and encouraged activities
and attitudes promoted by the editors.
National organizations like the National Federation
of Temple Sisterhoods and the Women's League
for Conservative Judaism further linked widespread communities
and urged them toward common activities.
Southern variations in the national trend are ultimately part
of the overall movement of Hanukkah toward greater significance
to American Jews, and greater visibility for Judaism.
We see these steps to enhance Hanukkah most clearly among
Reformers, underscoring that movement's sense of providing,
"An alternative to assimilation," as Alan Silverstein phrased it.
Jews selected and found elements within Judaism that corresponded
to elements in Christianity in order to resist Christianity.
Moise's hymn did this by assuring individual Jews
of personal salvation.   Lilienthall injected a typical
[ Christmas ]
Sunday school party with Hanukkah's ritual.
The National Federation of Temple Sisterhood redesigned Christmas
greeting cards for Hanukkah.
In each instance, new Hanukkah customs provided Jews with a way
to explain their Jewish religious life to inquiring Gentile neighbors
by referring to ideas and activities they held in common.
But we also see that Jews in the South,
especially understood the contours of Christianity,
as it impacted their lives.
Memoirs by Southern Jews attest to their close, everyday contact
with their Gentile neighbors.
Moise could point to her own hymn whenever confronted
by an evangelically minded friend.
More than a century later, the doors of New Orleans Jewish homes,
with their homemade visual emblems of Jewish themes,
reflected their Roman Catholic surroundings,
where visual images explain divine mysteries.
Those American Hanukkah elaborations helped Jews to feel part
of a national celebration, and to ease what Durham,
N.C.'s Eli Evans described as, "The emotional reality
of religious isolation that came crashing grimly
into life during the Christmas season."
None of the new Hanukkah customs that I described voiced a fear
of non-Jews, suggested by the holiday's traditional rite
and its historical songs.   Synagogue festivals, greeting cards,
and decorated doors lent Jews engagement
with the American Christmas season, a lighthearted tone.
Through those Hanukkah re-castings, Jews provided themselves with a way
to talk easily with their Gentile neighbors
about their own religious lives at any December party.
Thank you.   [ applause ]
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