G Which Is It ?
Rivki D. Rosenwald Esq., CLC, SDS
Chanukah Gelt or Chanukah Guilt that is the question?!
Somehow, we’ve trained ourselves to give Gifts for this holiday. And it wouldn’t be so bad if it was just a one day holiday. But, the true Chanukah miracle is that we make it through 8 days.
I found it easy when my kids liked candy bars. Oh, and make no mistake, they still like candy bars. However, they don’t accept them as gifts any more.
The lists and requests get longer and more costly. And what exactly do the gifts have to do with the holiday anyway?
So, let me tell you a bit about the etiology. There is a Rambam that says, “the Greeks stuck their hands into our money”. Couldn’t it just say they took our money?
But there’s a message there: They wanted to get involved and influence our use of the money. Kind of like sticking one’s nose into someone else’s business.
The Greeks wanted us to use our money for material pursuits not spiritual or purposeful ones. After all, they weren’t trying to get rid of Jews, they were just trying to get rid of Judaism- Jewish values.
They didn’t want us taking our wealth and using it for spiritual purposes. Such as to give charity, build shuls, make brises, celebrate Shabbas. They wanted us to just be spending it on becoming more involved in the physical world.
In fact, during the war they touched all the jugs of oil in the temple. They were trying to make their point. They were saying oil is oil. It will still burn even if its defiled. They didn’t want holy attributes given to it.
Therefore, the miracle of finding an undefiled jug became one of the great miracles and messages of the holiday.
In tribute to the fact that we have preserved our right to elevate our material possessions, there became a tradition to give money/ gelt to our children. Through it we are saying to our children you can choose how you will use your money. You can elevate it by giving a tenth to charity or you can even use the whole thing for higher purposes. But either way you can give it greater meaning.
So why give gifts to our kids, we should just be giving gelt?
Maybe we ourselves are just trying to use our money in a more purposeful way. We are sharing our joy through conveying to our kids that we are so happy that Jewish values survived. And that we are glad we have preserved the right to use our money for higher purposes.
Such as letting our kids know how much they mean to us rather than, for instance, going on an all-expense paid cruise; Which is almost as much as much as we seem to be spending on gifts.
The true gift of this holiday is having our children around us; These precious jewels in our lives. And having the opportunity to spread the light of Jewish values, especially family closeness, with all the world around us!
Rivki Rosenwald is a certified relationship counselor, and career and life coach. She can be contacted at 917-705-2004 or rivki@rosenwalds.com