Asks Public School Chanukah Fetes Where Jews Predominate

A suggestion that Chanukah be celebrated in the public schools of New York City is contained in an editorial in the December issue of the Jewish Forum, monthly Orthodox magazine. The editorial says:

If the authorities who foster the Christmas exercises are sincere about subduing the sectarian character of the celebration and stressing the spirit of ‘good will to mankind,’ let them, at least in those schools where there are Jewish children, not to speak of Jewish populations, celebrate Chanukah and make it the occasion of renewing the spirit of the Maccabees in their fight for idealism and recall the Maccabean efforts made by the fathers of our country in their stand against the greater numbers in the British armies in Revolutionary days,—or, let them not foist a Christmas celebration as part of their educational influences, on the minds of Jewish children.

“Jewish parents of children in a particular school should get together to devise ways and means of enrolling all the other Jewish parents whose selfrespect may dictate a combined protest to the principals of their respective schools against the introduction of strange influences in the development of the religious life of their children, and there is no better time for such organization than before the Christmas celebrations now almost universally observed in the schools.

“We call upon Jews to organize against those who would destroy the Maccabean spirit in our youth. Let us not shame the Maccabean spirit during the period when we should celebrate it.”