Hanukkah reception/ Biden condoms growing antisemitism

RELIGIONS NEWS AGENCY (REDNA) – Hanukkah is going to be celebrated in the White house and the US president Joe Biden in remarks for a Hanukkah reception is condemning the growing antisemitism.

According to “AP” the reception will include a menorah lighting and blessing.

The Democratic president will tell guests at the Monday night event that silence is complicity, and will add that it’s imperative that hate, violence and antisemitism are condemned.

The holiday celebration comes during a spate of antisemitic episodes.

The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group, tracked 2,717 antisemitic instances of assault, harassment and vandalism last year, a 34% increase over the previous year and the highest number since the New York City-based group began tracking them in 1979.

Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, also recently hosted a White House discussion on antisemitism and combating hate with Jewish leaders representing the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox denominations of the faith.

At the event, Emhoff, who is Jewish, said he was “in pain right now” over rising antisemitism.

Among those invited to Monday’s White House event are a Holocaust survivor and retired public school teacher, a rabbi at Temple Emanuel in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Michele Taylor, who is U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council and the daughter of Holocaust survivors.

This is to say Jewish mark Hanukkah every year. Jewish during this eight-day festival commemorate the recovery of Jerusalem and subsequent rededication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BCE.