NO CHRISTMAS: The Valley’s 220,000 Jews began...

NO CHRISTMAS: The Valley’s 220,000 Jews began celebrating Hanukkah on Sunday by lighting menorahs, or ritual candelabra, in an eight-day observance that ends Dec. 24. Contrary to popular belief, Hanukkah is a minor holiday and no “Jewish Christmas.” It is a time when the Anti-Defamation League is “inundated” with complaints about Christmas-heavy school pageants, said Valley director Roni Blau.

WAR NO MORE: Hanukkah marks a military victory by a band of Jewish rebels--the Maccabees--over the Greek Syrians in 164 BCE. By waging war against their oppressors’ army, the Maccabees recaptured their desecrated Jerusalem Temple and asserted their religious freedom. But rabbis of yore were so uncomfortable with promoting swords over plowshares that they excluded the Book of Maccabees from the Jewish Bible.

LITTLE CANDLES: Instead, Hanukkah’s focus has been “the miracle of the oil” that lasted a week for the ruined temple’s menorah. That’s why one candle is lighted each night until eight are burning at once. . . . Students from Valley Beth Shalom School in Encino acted out the importance of light last week, above. Wise men once debated whether to start with lighted candles and subtract one a night to symbolize the diminishing oil. But the appeal of an ever-growing miracle prevailed.

TRUE BELIEVERS: Another lesson is “maintaining our own customs and not imitating someone else’s,” says the University of Judaism’s Rabbi Charles Arian, who thinks the Maccabees would flinch at today’s Hanukkah bushes and blue lights. Rabbi Stewart Vogel of Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills says Hanukkah should be “the quintessential anti-assimilation holiday.”

MODERN MIRACLES: Vogel also views Hanukkah as a reminder to try to find “miracles in a skeptical world.” So, just as the Maccabees rededicated their temple, the ADL restored its earthquake-damaged office in West Hills and rededicated it last week with a pledge to keep fighting bigotry.