Lame!

Some of my younger, "hipper" readers might be familiar with the early 90s show Rugrats, which, among other things, was focused around an interfaith family. We never really saw any conflicts between the two sides of Tommy Pickles' family (and it was never really explained why his maternal grandparents acted as if they had just left the shtetl or Brighton Beach while his mother seemed WASPy par excellence), and the show had little qualms showing his folks celebrating both Christian and Jewish holidays.

The Rugrats Passover, for those who never saw it, was phenomenal. The premise of the babies re-enacting the Passover story was both funny as well as impeccably executed (the Simpsons did it ten years later, with fairly lamer results). But surprisingly, when it came time for a Hanukkah special, Rugrats choked. This time the show only had a few flashbacks, with most of the action centering on the babies trying to find the "Meanie of Hanukkah" and putting him down for a nap. While there was a nice reconciliation between Old Jewy Grandpa and Old Jewy Grandpa's Nemesis (apropriately named Shlomo for maximum comedic effect), I remember watching this and feeling cheated. Sure, Passover was cool, but what could be cooler than Hanukkah? Tough Jews with turbans, sandals and knives! Guerilla warfare, dead elephants!

I don't know whether it's the violence or what, but Hanukkah seems to be a trickier holiday to "gussy up" for children. Are you supposed to focus on that oil crap? No one I know ever did- in fact we all thought the oil was pretty damn boring. My family probably would have phased it out entirely except that the oil is what lets you have deep-fried food like latkes (I'm sort of surprised my folks have yet to look into Hanukkah sufganiyot, or, say, KFC). Are you supposed to focus on the anti-assimilation and fighting for religious freedom theme? Well that could kind of work, except that the Maccabees seem like they were more like religious extremists than the ACLU with guns (interesting debate here). When you start looking at the Maccabees as a kind of Jewish Taliban, it's a lot harder to justify whitewashing them the way we have the Pilgrims and Puritans (that is, for people who are uncomfortable with the rewriting of the P&Ps). This is all the more true for non-Orthodox Jews who exalt the "strong Jew" paradigm (hard-core secular Zionists come to mind) and who would have been on the wrong side of the Maccabees' knives. Lastly there's the fact that the Maccabees' military might didn't actually lead to really good things, as the rabbis themselves realized (in addition to being their political opponents).

So what to do with Hanukkah? Hard to say. But I find it interesting that this dilemma even seems to find itself in representations for children.


Take a look, folks. Fisher-Price has no issue making a "Little People" nativity scene.

Sure, there are no beards to be seen, and therefore we have to wonder if God hasn't just committed statutory rape, but it's fine, you have all the characters, let the kiddies play. Looks great.

But what do we get for Hanukkah?

Sigh.

Don't get me wrong, a Hanukkah village is fine, but where are my damn Maccabees?

(A few other interesting latke-for-thought pieces here and here.)