Why I Have to Teach My Kid About Both Hanukkah & Anti-Semitism This December

I remember hearing a bullhorn that woke me from sleep; I ran to the window where the sound was coming from. I peered over the windowsill, and saw that my normally-still suburban street was filled with tanks. One after another, the steel-green war machines paraded down the street. A man stood in one of the tanks, bullhorn pulled to his mouth, repeating: “All Jews must come out.”

I froze in horror. My worst fear — the one my father had warned me could always happen again — had become a reality. But then I woke up.

It was a nightmare, thankfully. But it was also a reality for millions of people who came before me. And it ended in ghettos and camps and death.

I was raised a secular American Jew two generations after the Holocaust. And that recurring nightmare of mine? It was a frequent visitor when I was a child — the side effect of my father planting stories of our ancestors’ fate: genocide. Sure, maybe he told us unnecessary tales of horror at too young an age. But the fact remains that he only spoke of reality; he was just one generation removed from the Holocaust.

It wasn’t until the past few years that I was able to fully appreciate that very real fear my father always instilled in me. Because under the Trump administration, I became actually worried that putting a menorah in the window might compromise the safety of my family.

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