It's going to take a miracle: fixing Hanukkah product mistakes

After 100 years of playing catch-up with Christmas, Hanukkah is finally getting its due, with decor and gift items for sale almost everywhere. Yes, even your bearded dragon can don an ugly Hanukkah sweater.

But the exponential growth of Hanukkah products has been accompanied by an increase in glaring product mistakes. As a rabbi and Jewish-product maker, I wonder what it will take to get retailers to vet their products before they hit the blue-and-white Hanukkah aisles.

Last year, the Mattel toy company came under scrutiny when it released a Cherokee Barbie; the packaging displayed the wrong Cherokee language symbols, so that it read "Chicken Nation" instead of "Cherokee Nation."

At the time, I hoped Mattel’s missteps would remind other brands to review their products for correct cultural or religious imagery. And yet, in 2024, in the age of Google and AI, somehow a large number of mainstream Hanukkah products just aren’t kosher, saddled with significant errors.

These past few weeks, in the 49 stores I visited in the metropolitan area — as a self-appointed watchdog of mass-market Judaica—I encountered two main categories of Hanukkah faux pas: incorrect or invented Hebrew letters and inadequate ritual symbols.

Three months before Hanukkah, I encountered the first Hanukkah "fail." The furniture-and-home-decor chain West Elm launched a new felt Hanukkah garland, with pom-poms and hanging 3D dreidels. Each side of the dreidel had a Hebrew letter on it, but one of those letters was invented (it resembled a pi symbol) while another — though an actual Hebrew letter — is not one that belongs on a dreidel. Fortunately, after a few emails to the folks in the West Elm C-suite, the garland was removed.

My kids and I drove to Barnes & Noble one day in mid-November, after I got a tip to check out their challah-shaped menorah. It was adorable — and ritually correct. Yet the packages of four "Dreidel Surprise Balls" (dreidels filled with confetti), prominently featured in the Hanukkah display, had only two of four Hebrew letters correct. My eight-year-old proudly belted out the four letters, noting which ones did not belong.

And then there was Target’s Hanukkah Nutcracker, which I discovered online. I ordered one from Target’s website (the item, sold by a third-party vendor, has since been removed). The blue-and-white nutcracker is holding a dreidel with only one Hebrew letter on it; the same letter is repeated on all four sides. When playing the game of dreidel, each of the four letters represents a different rule, and this letter (Shin) happens to be the "losing" letter. Moreover, the menorah it holds has only three branches, instead of the traditional nine (it currently resembles a pitchfork). Other iterations of this product online — from JCPenney and Michaels — have two more branches on their menorah but are still four shy of the proper nine.

It’s certainly a blessing to live in a country where my kids can walk into almost any local store and find a real Hanukkah section. In the ‘90s, when I was growing up, there were Hanukkah oven mitts and mugs and some bland Hanukkah socks. But the selection was very limited. Now, as many more brands embrace Hanukkah, some growing pains seem natural.

That doesn’t totally excuse the Hanukkah gaffes. The holiday celebrates a long-ago miracle — when a small jar of oil in the ancient temple in Jerusalem somehow powered a menorah for eight nights. In the same way, a little bit of research and attention to detail could brighten up the latest Hanukkah merch.

This guest essay reflects the view of Rabbi Yael Buechler, founder of MidrashManicures.com.