How 7 Jewish Women Are Celebrating Hanukkah In Australia

For many, the thought of Hanukkah conjures up the image of flickering candlesticks held by the eight curved branches of the menorah or hanukkiah. For each day of Hanukkah, a new candle is lit by the shamash, the “helper” candle, and by the end of the Jewish festival of lights, 44 candles will have been lit.

But the undulating candelabrum is only one part of Hanukkah's festivities. A lot of food, prayers, and sometimes presents and Adam Sandler songs are some of the rituals Jewish communities participate in.

Here, we chat to seven Jewish Australian women about how they're spending Hanukkah this year.

Jewish with Eastern European heritage. 

The lead-up to Hanukkah is usually me frantically Googling ‘when is Hanukkah this year?’ because the dates change from year to year. The Jewish calendar is lunar, and the Gregorian calendar (aka the one we all use) is a solar calendar. So Hanukkah dips and weaves all over late November/December, but I know Hanukkah is close when I start hearing Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You blasting in Coles. I’d love to hit December 1st and hear Chanukah Song by Adam Sandler start blaring at a Chemist Warehouse or in a waiting room.

Hanukkah is such a nostalgic holiday for me. Family, lighting candles, watching A Rugrats Chanukah, gifts, eating gelt (chocolate gold coins) and other amazing foods like latkes, which are like hash browns but the potatoes are more shredded (makes it sound like the potato has been hitting the gym in preparation) and sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts).

Jewish food is just so good! I love being Jewish because our holidays are either us fressing (Yiddish for devouring/eating without restraint) on amazing food in celebration, or starving ourselves/fasting to remember the suffering. We’re a very dramatic people, it’s simply the only way!

I went to a Jewish school so there’d always be activities around Hanukkah time, like an assembly with prayers, music and the Hanukkah story told by a Rabbi. In class, we’d make a Hanukkiah, which was iconic because as five-year-olds with no artistic ability or much dexterity, we’d smoosh clay and other materials together to make essentially a nine-branched candlestick holder, take it home and our parents had to pretend they loved it. And then, every year the siblings and I pull ours out, light them up and sit around, comparing, reminiscing and looking at the specific ‘artistic’ choices made; etchings, crappy details, glitter.

My writing partner, Delia, and I have just finished writing a Hanukkah feature film which we’re trying to pitch and sell next year — there is such a hole in the holiday rom-com film world for a Jewish POV. Despite us being more culturally Jewish and not so much hard-core believers of Hashem (God), we’re going to throw a fun Hanukkah ceremonial celebration of this creative milestone, and send up a cheeky prayer to whoever might be up there to bring us success in the coming year with our project. I’ll also be having a Shabbat dinner with extended family, where we’ll sit around gabbing, no doubt about our Hannukiah craftsmanship, while eating too much. 

I am a Jew ethnically, culturally and spiritually. Specifically Ashkenazi Jewish — my ancestors all come from Poland and other places in Eastern Europe. 

Hannukah is a very fun, chilled, low-pressure time as far as Jewish holidays go. Because it’s at the end of the year, non-Jewish society has turned it into this big Christmas equivalent, when really it's not even a major holiday. It’s ironic because the ‘original’ meaning of Chanukah is celebrating a victory over how the Ancient Greeks tried to assimilate and destroy us, but we survived and continued. It’s all about celebrating a strong Jewish identity and community despite being a minority amongst a larger culture, which I really resonate with. I'm cynical of all the silly commercial stuff that's shoved at us by corporations in December but I still do like when Channukah is acknowledged in the 'holiday season'. That time is sometimes isolating,  but it's ok, Jews get like five other major holidays in the year. 

Hanukkah took on a new meaning for me when I reconnected with a side of my family that hadn’t been in my life since childhood, after we found each other on Facebook and they invited me to their Hanukkah dinner. That was the first time I was at a real Channukah family celebration with all the fried foods and doughnuts. 

When I was a kid, my parents would give me eight little presents for the eight days of Chanukah... it was the absolute greatest. My best memory is when I was eight, they got me my first Tamagotchi! I don’t know if I’ll ever be that ecstatic again. We would light the candles, sing Hebrew songs and make bets on which candle would be the last one standing. I feel like a lot of Jewish families do the whole present thing to compensate for the otherness you can feel as a Jewish kid immersed in a society that goes so hard for Christmas, which I definitely felt coming from a family with no real relation to Christian or ‘Aussie’ culture. 

Probably the same as usual; coming back from a hot summer day at the beach just as it gets dark, figuring out which night it is, saying the blessings over the Chanukiah with my mum or whoever's around, singing a little song, hugging, watching the candles flicker in the dark after bedtime. I'm playing a gig on Christmas Eve, which is day six of Channukah — maybe I'll take some candles to the pub.

You may have noticed all the different ways I've managed to spell Hanukkah here. I'll also be spending it figuring out which way is the best. 

We're Moroccan on our dad's side so we're Sephardi Jewish, and our mum's side is Ashkenazi Jewish, with Romanian and Polish Australian backgrounds.

We absolutely love Jewish holidays. We are much more traditional than religious, and the holidays are always a beautiful opportunity to get together with family, eat delicious things and take part in rituals. These are the things that really fill us up with connection and love. 

Hanukkah was so much fun as a kid. There's this myth that you get eight days of presents and that definitely never happened in our household! But our grandparents would always give us Hanukkah gelt which are pieces of chocolate wrapped up to look like gold and silver coins. We would also always eat latkes, which are similar to hash browns and are so delicious, and sufganiyot, which are jam doughnuts dusted in icing sugar. Like pretty much all Jewish holidays, this one totally revolves around the food!

When we tell people we don't celebrate Christmas, they often look sad and respond "why not?!" until we tell them we're Jewish. Since the show The O.C. coined the term, we often do "Chrismukkah" parties with our friends, which is a nice way for us to get involved in festivities around Christmas time. We'll usually light the Hanukkiah on a couple of nights with our younger cousins and grandfather, or with one of our parents. And we never miss an opportunity to get involved in all that good food — we often take sufganiyot into our office for the people we work with to try. One time, we even handed them out at a TWOOBS pop-up store we were running. We really love being able to share our traditions with others.

South African parents. Born and raised Kiwi. Melbournian of 12 years. Culturally Jewish. A bit of a mixed bag!

Hanukkah has been one of the Holy Days that have passed me by over the last few years. The extent to which I've observed the last few Hannukahs has been watching the candles on the Menorah multiply, not daily, but every few days when my parents remember to light the Shamash and say the blessing at their house when I go home to visit. 

When we were still in New Zealand, we'd get together with the few other Jewish families in town and enjoy balmy summer evenings with a smorgasbord of latkes, Hanukka gelt (chocolate coins), sufganiyot (doughnuts) and kugel (like a baked potato-ey thing). Me, my brother and the other little kids would play dreidel and run amok — it was a good time! When I would spend Hannukah in South Africa, it would be celebrated with family at my Safta and Sabba's house over a candle-lit dinner and retellings of the story of the Maccabis. 

I'm currently on holiday with my family in South Africa. Half are Jewish, half aren't. But being that I'll be with my Mum's side of the family for the latter half of December, I'll be swapping a Menorah for a Christmas tree; celebrating Christmas over Hannukah this year. 

This has proven to be quite a loaded question for me, as previously I would always separate my religious practice from my heritage or ethnicity. I didn’t fully understand the way Jewish practice is so much more than just a religious belief, and how much more history and culture are welded into one’s identity of being Jewish. As time (and antisemitism) has evolved, I’ve realised my Jewishness is not merely confined to religious beliefs or practices, but carries the weight of my family’s heritage and their struggles and triumphs with them. I’ve come to value the melding of my Jewish heritage, culture and background into more of my identity, and proudly recognise my Polish-American Ashkenazi Jewish heritage as my ethnicity and background. 

Celebrating Hanukkah has always felt a little like being the younger sibling who isn’t the golden child. For my family at least, Hanukkah isn’t as important in the Jewish calendar as other High Holy Days such as Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) or Pesach (Passover), but due to where it sits in the Christian calendar, Hanukkah has always felt very inferior compared to Christmas. For me, Hanukkah is a time to sit down with my family, alter the prayers we would say regularly at the Shabbat dinner table, and eat. So much eating. Lots and lots of crispy latkes (the best hash browns you’ll ever have in your life), with mountains of apple sauce and sour cream, and of course, chocolate coins to win by playing ‘Spin The Dreidel’. 

I grew up in a town of 3,000 people in rural Texas, where, unsurprisingly, we were the only Jewish family. This meant my celebration of Hanukkah was always overshadowed by the world turning red and green for the entire month of December. My child self couldn’t fathom why all my friends were receiving these amazing presents every year and I wasn't, even though Hanukkah is celebrated over eight days and Christmas is only one! I think my brother and I definitely pressured my mother into giving us guilt presents one year, just because we weren’t Christian.

But when I think of Hanukkah as a child, I think of the Rugrats Hanukkah special: being so thrilled that such a childhood love of mine retold the Hanukkah story in the most incredible way, and in a way that I could show my non-Jewish friends what this was all about! I also picture the Hanukiah in the corner of our kitchen, beautifully old and worn with time and memories. My family doesn’t do a lot to celebrate Hanukkah, but the lighting of the candles and saying prayers each night for the eight days of celebration are lovingly burned into my memory. 

Hanukkah this year, for me, will be travelling to my auntie’s house, saying prayers and lighting candles with my cousins, drinking as much wine and eating as much oily food as we can possibly stomach. Funnily enough, I’ve been invited to more Christmas parties than Hanukkah parties this year, but I’m going to try and make this Hanukkah just as festive for my household! If I have to write my own Hanukkah rom-com movie to fill the gaping hole of a Jewish holiday film, so be it.

I am a Jewish Australian.

Hanukkah is a festival of lights, light being a representation of strength and resilience in the face of antisemitism. I think that there has been a major rise in antisemitism in general in Australia, but particularly in pop culture, affecting me as I am chronically online. That's why being proud of my Jewishness is super relevant and important to me, now more than ever.

I remember coming home from school as a kid and lighting the menorah. On the Shabbat that falls on Hanukkah, I remember our table was decorated with gelt and we would have latkes (Jewish potato pancakes similar to hash browns) and sufganiyot (doughnuts) for dessert. 

I have been working in retail over the last Hannukah and have been working throughout the majority of the eight days. 

As someone who went to a Jewish school, I have often taken for granted the acknowledgments of Jewish festivals as they were celebrated at school. As an adult outside of the Jewish school system, I find celebrating Jewish festivities is harder because I am the only one out of my work peers who is Jewish. However, I am super proud of my Jewish identity and am always keen to share Jewish culture (food, family history and Yiddish words) with my non-Jewish friends.

This year, I will be in-store selling Christmas presents to eager shoppers, as well as bringing my coworkers Hannukah gelt, a few dreidels and heaps of ponshkas and sufganiot.