Saturday, December 9, 2023

The End of Hanukkah House?

For years, our local Reform synagogue here in Binghamton, New York housed a Hanukkah museum called Hanukkah House in part of the building once occupied by the Jonas M. Kilmer House. 

Here are some of my previous posts about Hanukkah House.

Hanukkah House, Binghamton (showing some of the mansion's detail)

The Dolls of Memory (honoring Roberta King, who died in a mass shooting event in 2009).  Madame Alexander dolls and dollhouses were two of her passions.

Figurines of Hanukkah.

I had been going to that museum even before I started this blog in 2009.  Each year it had a different theme.  Some were fun posts, about Jewish cuisine around the world.  Some, though, were grim.  Grim but necessary.  One had artifacts of the Holocaust.  I can't seem to find that post, but I intend to look for pictures I took at that 2012 visit.

One year, Hanukkah House asked this question:  Would you help a neighbor?  Its theme was the Righteous among Nations, spotlighting non-Jews who helped Jewish neighbors or members of their community being persecuted.  Many died.  Others lived.

It's a humbling question to think about, in these times.

But one thing is missing from the discussion.  Hanukkah House.

It didn't open in 2020 or 2021, due to COVID.  I went to the Kilmer mansion in 2022 (there's a small Judaica gift shop in there) to buy some Hanukkah gifts for my son, and talked to someone.

In 2022, the mansion (the part not occupied by the synagogue) was in the process of renovation.  It's now an event venue.  The people there doubted Hanukkah House would ever reopen. It didn't reopen this year.

We need it more than ever.  We need to educate our young about the price of violence and hate. No, not just our young.  Everyone. Recent polls show alarming numbers of people who think the Holocaust never happened, just for starters.

You may have heard of the synagogue in Albany, New York where shots were fired outside earlier this week.  One of my late aunt and uncles lived in the Albany area. 

This was their synagogue.

A Facebook friend lived for years in Charlottesville, Virginia and attended the synagogue targeted by the infamous protesters in Charlottesville in 2017.    Things have gotten much worse since then.

I mentioned Roberta King briefly at the beginning of her post.  She was a volunteer at Temple Concord.  I have reason to believe I had spoken to her for a few minutes during one of my visits to Hanukkah House.  She loved to educate, and died in a mass shooting doing what she loved - educating.

I wonder what she would have thought about the ending of Hanukkah House.  At the very least she would have been saddened.

I'm saddened, also.

10 comments:

  1. ...I find it difficult to keep all of the insanity that is happening lately straight. I've become numb to it!

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  2. It is sad. Maybe it closed because they felt no one would want to come back and see it....

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    1. Maybe more a matter of the venue that now has that part of the mansion building wanting to rent out the space for holiday parties and the like, which coincides with the Hanukkah holiday (this year Dec 7-15). What is interesting, though, that no alternate location was found for the seasonal museum. The Judaica shop is still there, but it has always been a small space.

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  3. Hopefully, Hannukah House will reopen, even if big pressure has to be put on the involved authority. If you give it up, deterioration of jewish interests might follow.

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    1. I hope it will reopen next year. Adjacent to Temple Concord (they are in one part of the mansion and what is now the event venue is in an adjacent part) was a great location for it but I fear people are hesitant about renting space for this - in the past it was only open for a month, in and around Hanukkah.

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  4. I loved your posts about Hanukkah House. We live in scary t8mes, where I had to consider whether I should put out Hanukkah lawn signs and thus invite antisemitism to my front yard. We need to educate people.

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  5. The degree of polarization in the world is becoming truly alarming. Rational discourse seems to be almost impossible and it is particularly distressing to see old antisemitic tropes being revived. It’s easy to conclude, sometimes, that hate is the one thing we are good at. Hate and blind prejudice. Happy Hanukkah despite it all.

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  6. I bet you're not the only one who misses it. I guess they'll have to find a new venue. I bet if enough in the community put pressure, they would figure it out.

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  7. We need to use the Festival of Lights to repair the world. Enter anti-otherism. Eradicate hate and prejudice. Leemtting peace reign among and over us.

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