#chanukah night 8

[irresponsiblereader]

Chanukah Night 8: Hanukah Sameach Everyone, May light continue to fill our homes and lives til the next hanukkah ✡️🕎

[jerusalemstraycat]

Happy Chanukah 5785!

Fun fact: this menorah was a school project. It is probably the only school project menorah that has ever been used as an actual menorah.

[whitebookposts]

And do, my yearly tradition of drawing Hannukah related Sky art continues

I'll be honest, I wasn't sure I would make one this year- I didn't have any interesting ideas for an art.... up until I didn't come across THIS glorious post and I KNEW that I had to redraw this masterpiece as Tsadi

So yea! Tsadi wished you all a Happy Hannukah! Let your light shine stronger together!

(also, heres a version that is closer to the original gif under the cut... beware of tsadititties)

(Shotout to @dogedepan for giving me the idea for this pun DGHEJHGDJHGED)

[picturebookshelf]

The Very Hungry Caterpillar's 8 Nights of Chanukah (2020)

Story and Art: Eric Carle

[killing-time-w-kaz]

[misguidedandperplexed]

"average jew lights 3 candles the first night of chanukah" factoid actualy just statistical error. average jew lights 1 candle the first night. Candles Shammai, who lives in judea & lights 8 candles, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

[kittyoverlord]

Night 8! Featuring my Chanukah nails. (vid has no sound)

It's about time to re-do my nails but I missed shul last shabbat so I'm thinking of stretching these to Sunday to show them off.

Chanukah feels very significant to me as a queer jew. The idea of being proud of who you are in the face of those who seek to extinguish your light is a common thread. I pray we all can weather the coming year and stay proud and bright through it all.

Chag Sameach!

[mommybard]

This is going to sound bad but does hanukah have a santa?

God dammit I almost snorted my tea when reading this. No, Hanukkah doesn't have a Santa figure. It's also not a big thing like Christmas, its one of our smaller celebrations throughout the year. Chanukah also didn't used to have a gift-giving element to it, but eventually got one cause it kinda sucks for kids when you see your friends showing off the toys they got for christmas and you got diddly squat for your holiday. The holiday itself celebrates an event during the Maccabee rebellion against the Seleucids. The rebels were able to reclaim the second temple and rededicate it, only issue was that by tradition there's supposed to be light always lit in the temple and they didn't have enough oil. They only had enough for a single night. So while they rushed to get more oil, they lit what they had, and by some miracle it lasted all 8 nights, long enough for them to get more to the temple. So we celebrate the 8 nights. No Santa figure though xD

[inimitablereel]

so you want to watch a Hallmark Hanukkah Movie

Last year @heliological and I watched all 7 Hallmark Hanukkah Movie that were out at the time (plus the one lifetime hanukkah movie, Menorahs and Mistletoe) to make a cool fanvid. Actually, you don't need to have seen any of these movies to watch that so I'm going to shamelessly stick that in the body of this post

I've just watched the two movies that came out this year, so, below the cut, my personal ranking of every Hallmark Hanukkah Movie (plus mistletoe and menorahs which I'm declaring an honorary hallmark movie)

Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that watching 10 Hallmark* movies set in December means a lot of exposure to that other December holiday. Personally I avoid Christmas as much as possible, but I hear some people love it, so I'll rate each of these movies on 3 axes:

Hallmark: how much christmas is in a movie (higher is worse imo)

Hanukkah: how much this movie knew (or got wrong) about Judaism (according to me, one Jew on the internet)

Movie: okay but was it actually fun to watch (again, according to me)

Round and Round (2023)

Rachel gets stuck in a timeloop on the seventh night of Hanukkah. Hallmark: 1: Christmas barely exists in this movie, and every character we know celebrates a holiday specifically celebrates chanukah. A 1 instead of a 0 because there are a few moments of Christmas existing in the world (true to life in north america in december, unfortunately)

Hanukkah: 8: loses a point for a couple of incorrect props, but generally seems like it knows what it's doing about hanukkah/feels like a reasonable portrayal of Jews

Movie: 10: this is the only one of these that I told people irl to go see: I genuinely liked and would recommend this movie! I love timeloops, I found the romance genuinely very compelling and handled well with the context of the timeloop, it was really charmingly nerdy, so I'm 100% the target audience for this one. Dropout fans may note that one of the leads is played by Vic Michaelis.

Hanukkah on the Rocks (2024)

An old town dive bar turns into a Hanukkah party when just-laid-off lawyer Tory gets pulled into the community.

Hallmark: 0: I just finished this movie and I honestly don't remember there being any Christmas in it at all? It was mentioned as existing once? A real breath of fresh air as compared to the other Hallmark Hanukkah movie from this year

Hanukkah: 9: This gets bonus points for remembering that Jewish holidays other than Hanukkah exist. It was a little hokey at times about shared jewish experiences or whatever, but such is hallmark. Deducted the last point because I am mad about "Hanukkah in July"

Movie: 7: The description of this movie doesn't do it credit - it's surprisingly fun to watch! The main actors are pretty good and it was fun to watch everyone interacting. The pacing was a little wonky and the ending was a little rushed because this was way more focused on figuring out what you want in life/forming community than the actual romance plot. But I love the kind of romance that's actually a late coming of age story and this overall worked pretty well.

Hitched for the Holidays (2012)

Nice Jewish Girl Julie and Catholic boy Rob find each other on Craigslist looking for fake dates for the holidays. Shenanigans ensue when Rob pretends to Julie's family to be Jewish.

Hallmark: 5: this definitely had a fair bit of Christmas in it, since his family celebrates Christmas, but we're grading on a curve here because if I recall correctly this at least doesn't try to explain Christmas to the Jewish girl or do a kiss under a Christmas tree. It's set over pretty much the whole month of December so it's as much a new years movie as a christmas movie in that sense.

Hanukkah: 7: I'm giving this a relatively high rating despite it mostly showing Hanukkah celebration that's messed up on purpose as a joke about how the goyish boyfriend doesn't know anything about Hanukkah. So we get things like him blowing out a menorah, but hey, them including that as a joke means that the creators of this movie know that you're not supposed to blow out a menorah!

Movie: 6: I thought it was a pretty good romcom. It has a real plot arc, and it's doing some fun tropes. I will say that this movie runs on cringe humor, which I don't love but at least it's doing something. This is one of two movies I watched in 2022, so I may be underselling it a bit because I've forgotten, but it was actually pretty memorable.

Holiday Date (2019)

Nice Jewish Boy Ethan is hoping to get an acting gig in a play that involves small town Christmas, so he volunteers to pretend to be Brooke's boyfriend when her real boyfriend dumps her just before going to her parents' for Christmas.

Hallmark: 10: this is a Christmas movie that has a Jewish boyfriend

Hanukkah: 4? this didn't get anything wrong about hanukkah iirc but it's really not a movie about Hanukkah and it doesn't have a ton of screentime. They light some candles and have latkes and soufganiot

Movie: 8: Ethan's actor, Matt Cohen (who imdb tells me was on a few spn episodes back in the day?), made this movie. He was just shockingly charming and enthusiastic about everything in a way that made it somehow work for me even though I simply would not be anything like that level of enthusiasm in his place. And the fake dating plot worked pretty well. It does run into the classic hallmark conservatism, so even grading on a scale that ignores the Christmas of it all I don't want to give it full marks, but it was a notably way better, more cohesive, and more fun to watch movie than a bunch of these. This did make me say oh if I liked Christmas some of these movies would be fun vs many of the hanukkah ones are deeply mediocre in a way that isn't really fun, but that may mean if you have a tolerance for Christmas you have choices that are even better than this one. This one actually has the worst rating on letterboxd of every movie here, which, again, suggests that if you like Christmas there are better movies (with fewer Jews) and if you don't like Christmas this is so much Christmas.

Eight Gifts of Hanukkah (2021)

Who could be leaving Sara all these Hanukkah gifts? Surely not her good friend who used to be the boy next door. How will she choose between the mystery gift giver and the chef she just met online?

Hallmark: 2: I'd forgotten about this one honestly but it's really not about Christmas! They do have a half-Hanukkah-half-Christmas display because Sara's business partner is Christian, but honestly, it's pretty cute! The chef isn't Jewish but he doesn't force Christmas on her and is interested in her family's hanukkah celebration which is honestly very charming, so maybe this movie really deserves bonus points for knowing that Christmas exists but not being obnoxious about it

Hanukkah: 8: detracting some points for the JCC running a "Hanukkah hunt" which I personally hate. Also at one point someone carries a lit menorah? I don't think that's not kosher it just seems dangerous. Gets a bonus point for having a hanukkah song that isn't made up for the movie in it as instrumental background music!

Movie: 6: I have this in my notes as "perfectly functional romcom". Tbh this one may have been a worse watching experience just because I watched too many mediocre movies all at once, I think it was pretty okay. Also gets bonus points from me for not being set in NYC

Hanukkah on Rye (2022)

Jacob and Molly have a meet-complicated when they realize that the delis that they're both inheriting are competing .... but also secretly they've been paired up by a matchmaker at the same time.

Hallmark: 1: Tragically this is our last one that is not about Christmas. a 1 instead of a perfect 0 because the magical matchmaker who wears red and white and has glasses that glint in a particular way felt Christmassy to heliological, the Christmas Movie Knower of the two of us (also there's a Christmas tree in the lobby of the building they live in)

Hanukkah: 9: sure yeah this one knew about Hanukkah and was generally reasonably culturally aware. Detracting a point because their latkes do not actually look good to me (and imo deli latkes aren't really a big hanukkah thing?) but this is just me looking for reasons to mark it down [EDIT: apparently this is in fact an NYC thing, so like this movie reflects A Jewish Experience just not MY Jewish Experience]

Movie: 4: Unfortunately this one wasn't so much bad as boring, which is the worst crime in a movie imo. I wasn't super drawn in by the leads or their romance. Hallmark movies love having family screentime, but there was a little too much family in this one and they didn't really get individual personalities. If you're the kind of person who wants to watch a hallmark hanukkah movie you may still like it? Certainly some folks on the internet thought it was the best one up to that date. The one good part of this movie to me was that there was grandma yuri.

Leah's Perfect Gift (2024)

Nice Jewish Girl Leah loooooves Christmas (because she's been poisoned by living in a hallmark universe) so she's thrilled that her boyfriend has invited her to his family's Christmas celebration. Unfortunately, when she gets there, his mom is... not super welcoming?

Hallmark: 10: this is a Christmas movie

Hanukkah: weirdly, also 10? The problem with this movie is after about the first 15 minutes the fact that Leah is Jewish was almost never addressed again. (I'll get to that more in the movie section, I think it actually let down the plot.) But those first 15 minutes of establishing? They must've gotten some Jews involved with making this movie! In very little time they showed more Jewish culture (and Jewish culture that isn't specifically about Hanukkah) than several of these that were nominally all about Hanukkah. They know about another Jewish holiday! They namedrop Maimonides!!! The mom is PERFECT. Anyways wish this had been visible in Leah in the rest of the movie.

Movie: 6: hallmark is simply too cowardly to follow through on the premise they set up here: how do you navigate a holiday you don't celebrate with a family that really doesn't want you there. This was trying to thread the needle of things are going wrong for her because she's Jewish and doesn't have the right cultural expectations around Christmas ... but also all of the problems are specific to this family and will be dealt with by the individual problem causers realizing they were wrong (on their own) and apologizing. It's doing something as a movie! That's a bold choice! Unfortunately it doesn't pull it off, and the failure to pull it off made me go from liking to hating the boyfriend because he subjects Leah to the gauntlet of his garbage family Christmas and then doesn't really do anything to support or protect her. Leah should've gotten together with Tricia the general store clerk who as far as I can tell is only in this movie to hype Leah up and listen to her problems. Also thematically I would've liked more moments of Leah bringing her own background into this celebration - it didn't really feel like her failures at this family's Christmas were because she's Jewish or even because she doesn't celebrate Christmas - this family's Christmas was just very bad and weird.

Love, Lights, Hanukkah! (2020)

Christina is adopted but she gets a DNA test that reveals that she's biologically Jewish and therefore she obviously wants to reconnect with her birth family at the "most magical time of the year"... Hannukah.

Note: I watched this one in 2022 and it did NOT make a big impression so this will be my least accurate review

Hallmark: 6: I think there was a bunch of Christmas

Hanukkah: 7: I don't think this did anything egregiously wrong but it wasn't particularly good about Jewish rep either. There's a fundamental problem with your main character is adopted and her first view of Judaism is going to be all about Hanukkah...

Movie: 4: forgettable :p

Mistletoe and Menorahs (2019)

Christy loooooves Christmas and doesn't know anything about Hannukah but she needs to know about it for work. Nice Jewish Boy Jonathan needs to decorate his apartment for Christmas to impress his goyish girlfriend's father. Surely these are equivalently unknown cultures that they can have a nice time sharing.

Hallmark: 9: not a Full On Christmas Movie but it spends a lot of time Explaining Christmas

Hanukkah: 6: I don't think this is super informative about Hanukkah and doing it as a Teaching Experience when it's super basic stuff to me is kind of annoying. Also some truly garbage looking latkes made by Christy. But it gets the bonus point for knowing that another Jewish holiday exists!

Movie: 3: let's learn about Christmas was never going to be a compelling plot to me, and Christy is also just not very good at coming up with toy ideas for someone whose job that is? My notes say this is "pretty middle of the road for these" which is more damning of the whole Hallmark Hanukkah Movie concept than this movie in particular

Double Holiday (2019)

Nice Jewish Girl Rebecca is tragically forced to throw the office Christmas party with her work rival. At the end of this they do get together, obviously

Hallmark: 9: Sooo much Christmas. Did you know that dinosaur cookies are insufficiently Christmas for Christmas cookies? There is a kiss in front of a Christmas tree

Hanukkah: 5: they get big into spinning dreidels upside-down? Why. And their latkes don't look good. I don't remember them doing anything else Obviously Wrong but it wasn't good.

Movie: 3: I didn't like this one, which was mostly about the Christmas of it all but also it wasn't good

Congrats on making it all the way here Hallmark you should consider making a movie for Any Other Jewish Holiday sometime. My mom tells me that there is at least (and perhaps exactly) one decent Hanukkah romance novel so it's not like the options are so much better book-wise

[mbtitypesby]

MBTI Types As Non-Traditional Hanukkah Songs

Figured everybody on Jumblr could use some introduction to the full potential range of diversity of Hanukkah songs (though I did include the classic of Light One Candle as it felt the best fit for that type) instead of always hearing the same few as imagine if Hanukkah even got 1/8 of the mainstream attention Christmas got and we could actually hear some of this shit on the radio (and imagine if that got Jewish artists who've already charted to make Hanukkah albums of their own)

ESTJ - Miracle Of Light by 8th Day

ESFJ - Hanukkah by The Living Sisters

ESTP - How Do You Spell Channukkahh by The LeeVees

ESFP - Give You Everything by Buzzy Lee

ENTJ - Dreidel Dreidel by Kosha Dillz

ENFJ - Eight Flames by Nissim Black

ENTP - Puppy For Hanukkah by Daveed Diggs

ENFP - Miracle by Matisyahu

ISTJ - Hanukkah In '96 by Alex Frankel

ISFJ - Light One Candle by Peter, Paul & Mary

ISTP - Like A Maccabee by Joanie Leeds

ISFP - My Eight Favorite Nights by Distant Cousins

INTJ - When Is Hanukkah This Year by Melee

INFJ - Chanukah - The Same Light by Danny Raphael

INTP - I Won't Be Home For Chanukah by TeamMate

INFP - More Like A Candle by Eric Hunker

[postcardsfromheapside]

Third night: watching classic noir movies and working on crosstitching.

One thing I love about Chanukah is that because it's not technically a major holiday, and there are 8 nights to cover, gifts can be very practical. The jokes about socks are true. Today dad bought me a running/hiking cowl because I'm his most delicate child and liable to hack up my lungs in the cold dry air.

He also suggested I watch “The Third Man” (because it's the third night? 😒) so that's what I'm starting with.

[girlactionfigure]

🕎HOSTAGE DEAL NEWS, BLOOD NEEDED - Real time from Israel  

ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

🕎🕎🕎🕎🕎🕎🕎🕎HAPPY CHANUKAH - night 8 !

( PHOTO - the eighth candle lit on a hill at the entrance to Shlomit, overlooking Gaza and Egypt - where the emergency squad fought off the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 saving hundreds at the cost of their own lives. )

🩸TYPE O BLOOD NEEDED.. MDA warns of a shortage of type O blood units. MDA calls on the public to come and donate blood, especially those with type O.  Locations - https://www.mdais.org/en/blood-donation

🎗️HOSTAGE DEAL NEWS.. Hamas demands a ceasefire to prepare a list of hostages: “Hamas proposes a week-long ceasefire, at the end of which it will hand over to Israel the list of hostages it can release. During that week, no hostages will be released, the IDF will remain in Gaza, and displaced Gazans will not return to their homes.”

.. Tikva Forum of Kidnapped Families: We started this morning with the report that Hamas has backtracked and is once again demanding a cessation of the war. In other words, Hamas wants to release a small number of hostages in exchange for a weeks-long ceasefire that will allow it to rehabilitate, to capture houses and alleys, and to better hide most of the kidnapped people who will remain with it.

It should not be surprising that Hamas is once again pushing if we continue to ask for negotiations and are perceived as weak by the very request.

We demand that the Israeli government announce the cessation of negotiations and the introduction of another division into Gaza that will completely occupy the northern part of the Strip, drain the population south, and control food and fuel. The kidnapped people have no time for futile negotiations that only endanger them!

▪️DEF. MIN. THREATENS.. "If Hamas does not soon allow the release of the Israeli hostages from Gaza, despite Israel's willingness to make far-reaching compromises in accordance with the principles outlined by the US president, and continues to fire at Israeli communities, it will receive blows with a force not seen in Gaza for a long time," Katz says during a visit to the southern city of Netivot.

▪️(SECULAR) NEW YEARS BABIES.. About 15 women in labor were rushed to the hospital during New Year's Eve, and the first baby born with the help of the MDA team arrived at 3:41 AM in Beit Shemesh.

▪️AI & IDF.. The Ministry of Defense is establishing an AI and Autonomy Directorate at the IDF.

▪️PROTEST - PRO-DEAL.. "Mishmat 101", which includes mothers and daughters of kidnapped families, blocked, along with dozens of other civilians, the Gaza-Matulda intersection in Jerusalem.

♦️Israel takes responsibility for the September commando operation in Syria: During the operation, IDF forces destroyed an underground facility operated by the Iranians and defined as an "Iranian strategic capability" in the country.

♦️GAZA - During a raid in the northern Rafah area, IDF forces located, exposed, and destroyed a rocket and weapons manufacturing complex containing medium-long-range rockets.

[adreama-writes]

The holiday fics continue! 8 days and 8 nights of Nora celebrating Chanukah (or Hanukkah, if you prefer that spelling)

Featuring heavy doses of Junora, lots of friendship and family time. Nora gets to share her Chanukah celebrations with June, as well as with Alex & Henry, with her family, and other friends.

Tagging some folks again like yesterday!

@onthewaytosomewhere @typicalopposite @xthelastknownsurvivorx @suseagull5914

@iboatedhere @tailsbeth-writes @14carrotghoul

[spoonbenders-archive]

adam sandlers 8 crazy nights has the blood of thousands on it . the smoothness of the animation and the effort put into the most fucking sickening scenes and the character design being somewhat cohesive i can practically hear the tortured screams of every animator and character designer that worked on this movie. and its not just them. the fact that its currently the only mainstream chanukah movie. do you have any idea how many unassuming jewish people have watched 8 crazy nights thinking it was an unassuming mid 5/10 movie and got the fucking eldtrict abomination that is 8 crazy nights. it feels like a hatecrime and adam sandler is literally jewish. the entire movie reeks of hate and terror its like. candle cove. i wouldnt be surprised if i tried to watch 8 crazy nights again and it was just a blank static screen. if i bought a dvd of it it would bleed endlessly. there is a curse on that movie. every night i see adam sandler in my nightmares and he says that i will never escape the torment labyrinth he has put this world in. adam sandler is the most powerful dark wizard in the universe and noone knows. noone knows. but i do. everybody in this room has been associated with whitey

[liviz223]

Chanukah Night 8 2023!

[pandabibble]

So the reason you can't do a Channuka version of those hallmark christmas movies

is because they're christian conversion narratives. This is almost a tautology as the hallmark style movies are made by weirdo evangelicals but even with other classic "christmas" stories you still see it: A Christmas Carol, Dinner For One, A Miracle on 45th street, Trains Planes & Automobiles, David Cronenberg's The Fly, Die Hard, Its A Wonderful Life, The Irony of Fate, The Snowman, The Grinch etc... The crux of a "good" christmas story seems to be that:

usually over the course of a night, generally christmas night or near christmas,

someone or a group is changed as people by events outside their control,

which causes them to be transubstantiated into "good people" or at least "better" people (the cop in die hard learns to kill again, for instance)

This is one of those things that I end up thinking about during hanukkah because the concept of a "chanukka movie" has had a few dybbuks inflicted upon it in the form of the Adam Sandler movie "8 Crazy Nights" as well as the weird christian-media style "Channuka movies" that are produced with equal artlessness to any hallmark christmas movie to trick grandparents desperate for jewish media into buying them. The standard model for these supposed chanucha movies has the exact same stupid christmas narrative of any overt christmas movie, with someone learning "a lesson" and becoming a "better person" because of the holiday: again, basically a conversion story, and even worse in 8 Crazy Nights because Adam Sandler is in it.

But enough about what a chanukah movie isn't, it's important to go over what Chanukha itself is and isn't: it's not a "festival of lights" (it's not really about the light, and I feel a festival of light by its nature tends to very specifically limit the maximum number of candles involved) but it is about lighting things on fire and them burning, nor is it really a winter festival despite it's timing in winter, but it is about persevering longer than expected which works as a thing to have in mid winter. That persevering element also comes along with the sanctification/reclamation of a space that has been violated or threatened in some way... and also it's really a hyper-specific celebration of specifically the minorah itself. In theory there really should be some sort of nationalistic, militaristic aspect to the holiday but even if you try to focus on that as a core feature it collapses back into just a "resanctification/reclamation" because it's not really about the maccabi revolt itself (except for when minorah makers take liberties and put an elephant motif in reference to that one son of the high priest who got stepped on), it's much more about the revolt ending and the hasmonean kingdom beginning the rebuilding after the war. It's V-E or V-J day, not pearl habour.

So taking all that and condensing it down again and trying to apply it to movies, a hanuchah movie we should be looking for themes of:

A community or communal space suffering some sort of tragedy or threat

2. Survival against the odds (ideally over multiple nights) ideally through their own abilities rather than external forces

3. at the end of the story the community or space must be reclaimed or strengthened by the events of the story

This gives us some weird condidates: a lot of zombie movies work slightly too well for this, as do a lot of creature feature type movies... not Alien or Aliens on account of... the obliteration of the colony and the ship respectively, but Tremors and Tremors 2? WEIRDLY, yes, John Carpenter's The Thing brings a lot of flame, and while the research base is fucked, they save the world. By lighting more and more things on fire as the nights pass.

Anyone who brings up Mad Max 2 or any other Mel Gibson movie is getting shot. Can't we all get beyond thunderdome?!?

On a brighter note, probably the best example of a movie that fits the bill for a khanucha movie is Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - you could object to it on the basis that the movie SORT OF is about the main characters being changed by the events of the movie but a christmas movie where the protagonists are all deeply traumatised at the would form almost a negative image of a christmas movie. On the other hand, Gondor and the battle of Pelennor Fields? Survives longer than anyone expected. And what saves it? that's right, the beacons were lit, one after another.

And was not Denethor covered in oil? And did not Denethor burn longer than anyone would have expected?