'Celebration of Jewish resilience': Hanukkah endures amid rise in antisemitism

Oil expected to last one night burned for eight as Maccabee Jews in 164 B.C. revolted against their Syrian-Greek oppressors.

For Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, the enduring light shining through the darkness of those eight nights is emblematic of the Jewish spirit and the core of Hanukkah.

“It’s really a celebration of Jewish resilience and Jewish survival that we’ve always been a tiny minority living among a larger majority that generally have not been receptive to us,” Yanklowitz said. The 41-year-old rabbi spoke to The Arizona Republic as his family prepared to celebrate the fifth night of Hanukkah on Thursday, observed this year from Dec. 18-26.

As of 2022, Arizona's Jewish population comprises 123,000, which is about 1.7% of the state's overall population, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.

The Anti-Defamation League found that antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high in the United States in 2021, with a total of 2,717 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism reported to ADL. This represents the highest number of incidents on record since ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979 – an average of more than seven incidents per day.

Yanklowitz, who heads the Scottsdale-based Jewish nonprofit Valley Beit Midrash, has seen firsthand some of the hostilities toward Jews in Arizona.

There have been 12 antisemitic incidents reported in Arizona since 2020, according to the Anti-Defamation League. These include the vandalism of two synagogues and a Chabad center, and bomb threats to a Jewish community center, all within the last two years in Tucson.

The ADL also tracked the distribution of antisemitic flyers in October in a Tempe residential area, and in August 2020 and in November 2021 at Arizona State University.

Yanklowitz blames in part the popularization of the "great replacement theory," whose believers claim an imaginary network of Jews is pushing an influx of immigrants of color to shift the country's demographics from a white majority.

“Some people say, ‘Oh, it’s just a swastika,' or, ‘It’s just vandalism. Who cares?’ But when that stuff becomes normalized, it then leads to violence,” Yanklowitz said. He pointed to deadly incidents at synagogues across the country in the last four years.

There was the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre where a gunman killed 11 congregants. On the last day of Passover 2019 at a San Diego-area synagogue, a shooter took the life of a congregant. In January, worshippers at a north Texas synagogue were held hostage before being safely released by law enforcement after the FBI fatally shot the perpetrator.

Valley Beit Midrash has been the target of harassment and threats from a white supremacist and follower of QAnon conspiracy theories, Yanklowitz said. Rallies that Yanklowitz has organized and others he has attended have been heckled by people spewing antisemitic slurs and conspiracy theory tropes.

Yanklowitz also noted how public figures are normalizing the stigma against Jews.

“A lot of things looking to intimidate us,” he said. “It’s coming from all directions.”

Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, in October posted an apparent threat against the Jewish community on Twitter.

Late last month, former President Donald Trump dined at his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago with Ye and Nick Fuentes, a notorious antisemite and white nationalist livestream creator. Trump on Dec. 9 accused Jewish leaders of a “lack of loyalty” to him. This echoed a 2019 “great disloyalty” complaint Trump lodged at Jews who vote Democrat.

Meanwhile, NBA player Kyrie Irving in October promoted on Twitter and Instagram an antisemitic film that claims the Holocaust never happened, Yanklowitz also mentioned.

A lot of these local and national instances of antisemitism are unnerving to the Jewish community due to intergenerational trauma from the carnage wrought by the Holocaust and by pogroms, Yanklowitz said.

“Those wounds get opened up when those kinds of attacks happen, and they lead Jews to not participate in the community,” Yanklowitz said. “They lead many to hide because they’re afraid to participate or they have a negative identity that makes them feel bad about themselves."

Yanklowitz’s wife, Shoshana, 42, is the granddaughter of three Holocaust survivors who lost family to the concentration camps. Her grandparents then moved to New York where they suffered physical assaults because of their Jewish identity.

The "Festival of Lights" allows Jewish families moments of joy, as happens at the Yanklowitz home in Scottsdale. For Hanukkah, the Yanklowitzes light six menorahs. The main family menorah is oil-based and is lit by the rabbi, while his wife and their four children, between ages 4 and 10, each light a separate wax-based menorah. The family feasts on latkes, sings songs and each child receives a small gift.

During this season, the family has been wrapping presents for a toy drive at the Valley Beit Midrash.

This year, the Yanklowitz kids are participating in a donation project in which they receive a few dollars from their parents and decide where they want to donate.

“We try to model with our kids this giving back spirit,” Yanklowitz said. “Being a light for others, of realizing there are so many different people and populations that are suffering, having a hard time, and our need to go out and bring light to those spaces.”

Another yearly Yanklowitz holiday tradition is to invite refugees and asylum seekers for Thanksgiving dinner.

"More than any other mandate, Jewish texts instruct us to care for immigrants and refugees. Altogether, there are 36 references in the Torah to protect, guard and even love the stranger, obligating us to shelter, nourish and protect displaced people in our midst," he wrote in an April 2021 piece.

Hanukkah radiates with the same hope for Jews today as it did for their forebears, Yanklowitz explained.

“The Hannukah lights give us a sense of faith that we can survive through this just as the Maccabees survived,” he said. “A large oppressor will try and wipe us out. But we won’t let it happen, and God won’t let it happen.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Hanukkah endures for Scottsdale rabbi amid rise in antisemitism