The Christmas Menorahs: How a Town Fought Hate by Janice Cohn; illustr. Bill Farnsworth. Le Chambon Press. Ages 7 and up.

In some ways the story of The Christmas Menorahs seems hard to believe in this internet age, when people tend to be choosy about who “deserves” solidarity and who might “deserve” hate. In this book, when a Jewish family’s home is attacked because of visible Jewish holiday symbolism, the people of the town choose to stand with their Jewish neighbors, despite not knowing a whole lot about Judaism. They don’t ask first what the Jewish family’s politics were. They don’t try to parse out whether the family did something to “deserve” the attack. They understand that no one deserves rocks thrown through their window during a holiday celebration.

The Jewish family—particularly the child whose window was smashed—is portrayed convincingly in their fear and ambivalence, and commitment to their Jewish practice. That saves this book from being a feel-good story for Christians about Christians doing good deeds at Christmas, a trope that it skirts at times. But the book shows honestly how important identity is, and how difficult it can be to proudly show who we are when who we are is under attack, even as it also shows how much it helps when we feel solidarity from friends and strangers.

In this book, vast numbers of non-Jewish people in a small town choose to turn their own homes into visibly “Jewish” homes, risking their own safety, and drawing that risk away from their Jewish neighbors. Even though so much of our discourse has become toxic and polarized, these kinds of acts of solidarity between neighbor and neighbor still exist. I know this personally from my own experience as a rabbi in Eugene, Oregon. Hundreds of non-Jews showed up in solidarity at our services—for weeks—after the shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. After the shooting in Poway, California in 2019, members of the local mosque came to one of our services and set up tea, cookies, and kind words. When an antisemitic group was flyering for a “day of hate,” in April 2023, local Lutheran pastors arranged for their congregants to stand vigil with love signs outside the synagogue on that day. And the Jewish community has also shown that solidarity—after the mosque shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019, by holding interfaith vigil at our local mosque. These acts do make a difference, and in times of fear and shock, remind us all—victim and ally—that we are so much stronger than those who try to spread hate.

This expanded 30th anniversary edition of the original The Christmas Menorahs (published in 1995) is a needed reminder that we don’t fight hate by posting on the internet, or by canceling people who disagree with us, or talking about how awful an act of hate is. We fight hate by choosing to take risks that can be uncomfortable, potentially putting the safety of homes and our bodies on the line, to show that we will stand with those who are targeted because of their identity—for whatever reason. And most of all, we fight hate, by responding to each other with curiosity and spreading connection and a vision of love.

—Rabbi Ruhi Sophia Motzkin Rubenstein, Temple Beth Israel—Center for Jewish Life, Eugene, Oregon.