Eight Nights of Chanukah Music: Hanukkah Blessings

Let me start this off by saying that I know it would be wrong of me to celebrate a religious holiday that is not mine either by birth, culture, or choice. I also want to say that my impressions of Chanukah are as an outsider looking in and, for this reason, my ideas about it are likely confused. All that being said, I have always felt a sense of affinity for Chanukah, non-Jewish agnostic that I am. Part of this is because my 3-6 teacher was Jewish and she made the stories of her holidays stood out to me, perhaps because they were in such contrast to the Christmas and Easter stories which were all around me. However, I think a bigger reason is that, as a person who has always had questions which often placed her in awkward positions with regards to faith, I feel like Chanukah, a holiday celebrating the triumph over tyranny and the freedom to worship as one chooses, is a religious holiday I can wholeheartedly get behind. Because I may not know what I believe, but I like knowing I can believe what I want to believe even if it runs counter to the belief system espoused by the dominant culture. How could I not want to appropriate holiday celebrating that?