Nothing is more important than teaching our children to be charitable and spiritual.
So Rabbi Shmulik Greenberg of Chabad Jewish Center of Clark County told a crowd of about 100 gathered Tuesday at Esther Short Park for a Hanukkah celebration that he went online recently to find out more about the custom of giving chocolate coins to the kids. Why chocolate coins — or, as they’re called, Hanukkah gelt?
Turns out, he discovered, the chocolate part started in modern America, with the Lofts Candy Co. adapting a custom that was hundreds of years old and mixing it with a little sweet profit motive in the 1920s. Before that, children used to get real money to spend on their own Hanukkah treats — but also to give to their teachers.
What does that have to do with Hanukkah itself?
“Materialism is good when you connect it with spirituality,” Greenberg said.
He encouraged all of the parents in the crowd to give their children money for Hanukkah and to teach them how important it is to give some of that money to the needy.
The word Hanukkah means both “dedication” and “education,” Greenberg said.
This joyous Jewish holiday celebrates the unlikely victory of a small band of Maccabees over the Syrian King Antioch in 165 B.C., the subsequent rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and, chiefly, the miracle that occurred during that rededication, as one night’s worth of oil burned for eight nights. Because of that, Hanukkah is known as the “festival of lights” and involves lighting a menorah candle on each of the eight nights of the holiday — plus a ninth central candle.
