Chanukah: ‘You don’t have to be religious to celebrate miracles’

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Published: 15 December 2020

Last updated: 4 March 2024

ISABELLE ODERBERG: Having married an Aboriginal man, observing his culture, I had grown distant from my own. I missed not having to explain my festivals - and this Chaunkah is so much more than previous years

CHANUKAH CELEBRATES OUR continued survival and the little miracles that light our way. You don’t have to be religious or believe in God to celebrate miracles. I look at my children every day and I believe in miracles.

But despite growing up in an intensely Jewish environment, in the years before I met my husband, I found myself growing distant from Judaism. Raised in an Orthodox Jewish community in Hong Kong, I found myself questioning male-centric structures of the religion into which I’d been born.

And in the same way as so many organised religions, as I learned more about Jewish law and the difference between that and Rabbinic interpretation of the law, I felt the rules were being ever more manipulated to suit the will of man.

FULL STORY Chanukah a time for miracles and reconnection (The Age)

Photo: a child lights the menorah for Chanukah (Age)