Volume XXII, Issue XVIII | www.thejewishvoice.org Serving Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts
9 Kislev 5777 | December 9, 2016
HANUKKAH PLANNING
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas, on his 100th birthday, looks back – and ahead BY TOM TUGEND LOS ANGELES (JTA) – Kirk Douglas – actor, director, producer, author, philanthropist and Torah student – is celebrating his 100th birthday on Dec. 9, and there’s a special treat in store for the centenarian. Douglas has been under strict medical orders to abstain from alcohol, but his cardiologist, Dr. P.K. Shah, promised the actor that if he made it to 100, he could have a glass of vodka. So at an afternoon tea party at an event space in Beverly Hills, Shah will be in attendance to personally administer the medication. Some 150 other guests will fete Douglas, ranging from his extended family, including three sons and seven grandchildren, to old friends and Hollywood luminaries. Also on hand will be Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in West Los Angeles, who has directed Douglas’ weekly Torah
studies for many years. Wolpe also officiated at the actor’s second bar mitzvah, when Douglas – then only 83 – declared, “Today, I am a man.” Hosting the event will be Kirk Douglas’ son, Oscar-winner Michael Douglas, and his wife, actress Catherine ZetaJones, who will also welcome leaders of numerous charities and institutions in the United States and Israel that have received approximately $118 million over the years from Douglas and his wife, Anne. “You have to give back,” Douglas once explained. “I came from abject poverty. I didn’t dream of becoming a millionaire. So you have to pay back.” On Dec. 9, 1916, Kirk Douglas was born in the upstate New York town of Amsterdam as Issur Danielovitch, the son of an illiterate Russian-Jewish immigrant who supported his DOUGLAS | 25
PHOTO | VOICE FILE
9 things you didn’t know about Hanukkah BY JULIE WIENER (MyJewishLearning via JTA) – Hanukkah, which starts at sundown on Dec. 24 – Christmas Eve – is among the most widely celebrated Jewish holidays in the United States. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing new to learn about this eightday festival. From the mysterious origins of gelt to an apocryphal beheading to Marilyn Monroe, we’ve compiled an item for each candle (don’t forget the shamash!) on the Hanukkah menorah. 1. Gelt as we know it is a relatively new tradition — and no one knows who invented it. While coins – “gelt” is Yiddish
for coins, or money – have been part of Hanukkah observance for centuries, chocolate gelt is considerably younger. In her book “On the Chocolate Trail,” Rabbi Deborah Prinz writes that “opinions differ” concerning the origins of chocolate gelt: Some credit America’s Loft candy company with creating it in the 1920s while others suggest there were earlier European versions that inspired Israel’s Elite candy company. Prinz notes, as well, that chocolate gelt resembles a European Christmas tradition of exchanging gold-covered chocolate coins “commemorating the miracles of St. Nicholas.” 2. The first Hanukkah
celebration was actually a delayed Sukkot observance. The second book of Maccabees quotes from a letter sent circa 125 BCE from the Hasmoneans, the Maccabees’ descendants, to the leaders of Egyptian Jewry describing the holiday as “the festival of Sukkot celebrated in the month of Kislev rather than Tishrei.” Since the Jews were still in caves fighting as guerrillas during Tishrei, 164 BCE, they had been unable to honor the eight-day holiday of Sukkot, which required visiting the Jerusalem Temple. Hence it was postponed until after the recapture of Jerusalem and the rededication of the Temple. HANUKKAH | 18