SAM LIPSKI

ALL I want for Chanukah is a fluffy doughnut with lots of jam throughout, not just a shmir in the centre. I’d also welcome a good seminar on the history of post-Maccabean Judea.

Oh, and one more thing: I don’t want to see a chanukiah alongside Christmas decorations, a tree, or plastic replicas of Santa Claus. Not in a shopping centre, a bank, or a market.

Too late, apparently. Still, this is one Jewish customer who isn’t buying the faux multiculturalism, the ersatz interfaith display, or the well-intentioned, but misplaced, PR efforts, represented by the Malvern Central Shopping Centre deal in Melbourne this coming Festival of Lights.

What’s next? I fear that one day I’ll end up in Target listening, willy-nilly, not only to Jingle Bells and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, but to Maoz Tsur and Sevivon, Sov, Sov, Sov. Please Hashem. Save me.

Now, before I’m accused of sounding like a Reb Scrooge muttering “humbug” in Yiddish, I’d better say that I love Melbourne’s Chanukah in the Park with its spectacular fireworks and great festive spirit.

More power to Joseph Gutnick and his Chabad chevreh for staging it every year. More recently, Sydney has had similar celebrations. Yashar koach to everyone involved.

But these are one-off communal events for Jews, not external public displays for everyone else.

Some more distinctions need to be made. Outside Israel, where celebrating Chanukah in the street in the Jewish State is natural, joyous and doesn’t require anybody’s permission, I’ve always opposed the proliferation of Chanukah symbols and activities in the public places of western, predominantly Christian, societies. In this I hope I’m consistent.

As an Australian citizen, I oppose the public display in city squares, shopping centres and sporting arenas of all religious expressions. Except, and it’s a basic exception, for Christian ones.

That’s because, historically, this country’s public religion has been Christianity. And even in an increasingly secular society, where Christmas is no longer a religious holiday for many nominal Christians, and even amid its commercial transformation into a marketing orgy, I respect the holiday’s religious origins and significance, and therefore its claim on the public space.

But for all my support of multiculturalism and interfaith dialogue, I don’t support extending the same right to any other religion. That’s so whether it’s Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Shintoism, Confucianism or Calithumpianism.

And I certainly don’t claim such a right for Judaism, a faith followed by less than half of a per cent of all Australians.

Of course, I know that nowadays I’m in a minority, and that opposing Chanukah in the City or Chanukah in the White House or Chanukah in Parliament House is a lost cause. Sadly, I also know my views disappoint many of my Chabad friends.

After all, going back some 30 years and more, and acting on the late Lubavitcher Rebbe’s instruction, they’ve been the enthusiastic drivers of public Chanukah celebrations all over the world.

But while I admire and support them for their dedication to spreading the joy of Judaism in so many other ways, I hope they might understand some of my concerns about their public Chanukah ventures.

Not that nowadays these events are only Chabad affairs. Far from it. The Jewish Community Council of Victoria is only one among many communal bodies and non-Chabad congregations internationally that have joined the Chanukah “out there” movement, for that is what it has become. A movement and a media event. But it started with Chabad. And I doubt if it would continue if they lost interest.

Still, it’s one thing to light chanukiahs around town, and another to involve mainstream political leaders and non-Jewish public figures. We can agree to disagree about the wisdom or value of such PR activities.

But surely there’s something bizarre about a chanukiah alongside Christmas decorations in a shopping centre. To me, importing this kind of cognitive dissonance from Brooklyn into Malvern Central at Christmas is turning a religious holiday into a retail transaction.

Which raises the question: how does this fulfil the mitzvah, which the rabbis mandated, of pirsumei nissa, the “publicising of the miracle”? It sounds more like pirsumei kniah, the “publicising of the shopping”. Nisht mein simcha. Not my holiday.

As for suggesting that a chanukiah twinkling away alongside dear old Santa outside the Safeway might make Jewish kids feel pride in their identity -– a pseudo-educational argument that’s been put around -– I beg to differ. On that issue I’m a dreidel-change sceptic, and I’ll vote against it in the Senate.

Sam Lipski is the chief executive of The Pratt Foundation and a former editor-in-chief of The AJN.