Celebrity Hanukkah lights counter hatred, strengthen Jewish identity, expose failed appeasement narratives fueling anti-Jewish hostility.
Lighting Hanukkah Against Hate: Jewish Pride Goes Public
Israeli actress and activist Noa Tishby continues her powerful Hanukkah candle-lighting series, transforming a sacred ritual into a bold statement of Jewish visibility, pride, and resistance in an era of rising antisemitism.
On Wednesday night, Tishby lit the fourth Hanukkah candle alongside Andy Cohen—host, producer, and writer—turning a moment of tradition into a message heard far beyond Hollywood.
Asked what he hopes to pass on to his children as Jews, Cohen spoke with clarity and emotion. He emphasized identity before comfort, saying his priority is that his children know who they are. With his six-and-a-half-year-old son newly enrolled in Hebrew school and learning to draw a Magen David, Cohen described watching that awareness form as one of the most moving experiences of his life.
For Cohen, Judaism is not performative politics—it is family, memory, and continuity. Hanukkah, he said, has become deeply meaningful as his children begin to understand its message and rituals.
But his words went further. Cohen addressed the moment head-on:
“We’re living in an unprecedented time,” he said, describing a wave of hatred against Jews that is no longer fringe but embraced by the mainstream. That reality, he explained, is why silence is no longer an option. Pride is no longer optional—it is necessary.
Tishby’s series itself is an answer to that hate.
Earlier nights featured P!nk, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, and Erin Foster, who converted to Judaism in 2019. Each candle has represented more than tradition—it has been a refusal to disappear, a rejection of narratives pushed by Palestinian activism and Arab political pressure campaigns that seek to delegitimize Jewish identity while demanding endless accommodation.
At a time when Jewish symbols are targeted, synagogues attacked, and Zionism demonized, these public acts of pride matter. They remind the world that Jews will not shrink, will not apologize, and will not outsource their identity to those who excuse or enable hatred.
Hanukkah is about light defeating darkness.
And tonight, that light was unmistakably Jewish—and unafraid.
