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Happy Hanukkah to all our Jewish readers around the world. On this penultimate "crazy night", I thought it appropriate to look out a slab of Hanukkah Hollywood, but the pickings are thin, save for this 2002 offering from my sometime fellow Granite Stater Adam Sandler. Born in Brooklyn, Sandler grew up in New Hampshire and was discovered in an LA comedy club by Dennis Miller, who recommended him to "Saturday Night Live". Eight Crazy Nights was a flop on its first release but has become something of a cult film, and is in its way a significant cultural artifact: a...

The following picture has been posted by the office of PM Netanyahu in his Facebook page. My question is: why is he lighting the shamash after the first Hanukkah candle is already lighted? I am not criticizing, I am a Christian who is trying to learn.

2 Maccabees 10 1 When Maccabeus and his companions, under the Lord's leadership, had recovered the temple and the city, 2 they destroyed the altars erected by the Gentiles in the marketplace and the sacred enclosures. 3 After purifying the temple, they made a new altar. Then, with fire struck from flint, they offered sacrifice for the first time in two years, burned incense, and lighted lamps. They also set out the showbread. 4 When they had done this, they prostrated themselves and begged the Lord that they might never again fall into such misfortunes, and that if they...

BERLIN. -- A cold dampness hovers over the streets and the skies turn bleak and dark early in the afternoon. Nevertheless, 'tis the season to be jolly. More than 50 Christmas markets celebrate the season, and none is as unusual as the one here at 14 Lindenstrasse, behind the provocative new Jewish Museum, lighted by a huge Channukah Menorah and traditional Christmas decorations celebrating an exhibition entitled "Chrismukkah." Christians and Jews gather to share a warm glass of Gluhwein, the seasonal spicy red wine, to warm the hands and lift the spirit, and to nibble a potato latke or a...

NEW YORK -- Christmas in America is not a clash of civilizations, but rather a celebration of diversities. But to lots of people, it doesn’t seem that way. Across America school districts are forbidding the singing of Christmas carols, nativity scenes are being banned in public places, and in malls the “Christmas” sales” are now “Holiday” sales. Although we are part of the 20 percent of Americans that are not Christian and the 5 percent that do not celebrate Christmas -- unless the giving of gifts and gratuities constitute “celebrating,” and if that is true then we are part of...

WASHINGTON -- Oh, this vexatious season is almost over. How to greet my fellows Americans amid statues of Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rangifer tarandus? Merry Christmas? Happy Hanukkah? Something about Kwanzaa? Happy Holiday? Have A Good One? There are so many choices and so many possibilities of giving offense. Loath as I am to give offense (unintentionally!) I have been avoiding the whole subject. Then along came Charles Krauthammer who is surely the most sensible pundit in the land, as well as one of the best informed and most agreeable -- though the burden of good sense...

Hanukkah mystery: Eerie Blue Images caught on camera at Menorah lighting Posted: December 8, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com WASHINGTON Was it a bird? Was it a plane? Was it a sign from heaven? Mysterious blue images captured during menorah lighting in Washington, D.C. That's what Carrie Devorah wants to know after she inadvertently photographed some mysterious blue light images hovering heavenward while taking pictures of the lighting of the Chabad menorah on the first night of Hanukkah on the Ellipse in the nation's capital. "I took this shot as I was walking to get into place," she...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mel Gibson (news), whose hit film "The Passion of the Christ" was attacked as anti-Semitic by some critics, says he is now intrigued by the revolt of the Maccabees -- the story behind the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. "The story that's always fired my imagination ... is the Book of Maccabees," the actor and director told ABC Radio talk show host Sean Hannity on Tuesday. "The Maccabees family stood up, and they made war. They stuck by their guns and they came out winning," he said. "It's like a Western." The Maccabees led a three-year war,...