When I was young, my brother and I used to fight over Hanukkah gelt. This was complicated because the pieces were different sizes, so even if the number of pieces were the same, it still didn’t always seem fair.
As an adult, it always felt embarrassing to walk through a store and see the tiny Hanukkah section stocked with candles, cards, and piles of chocolate gelt. Why did Hanukkah candy have to look like coins? Wasn’t it enough that people connected Jews with money as an antisemitic trope? Why did coins have to be the first thing they saw when they looked at a Hanukkah display?
Now I love Hanukkah gelt—and not because it tastes any better (sorry gelt-makers!). First, we have their history. Some believe that the idea of coins imprinted with a 7-branched menorah (not a 9-branched hanukkiyah) dates back to the Hasmoneans. After they miraculously beat the Syrian Greeks and rededicated the Temple in 164 BCE, one of the first things they did was mint their own national coins. The last Hasmonean King minted his final coin in 37 BCE with symbols from the Temple in Jerusalem on it, including the 7-branched menorah. In 1958, in a beautiful act of symmetry, the State of Israel minted its first Hanukkah coin and used the same menorah image that had been used almost 2,000 years earlier. Hanukkah gelt, then, reminds us of the power of independence and self-determination, and those tiny, embossed menorahs are a symbol of our people’s freedom.
Others say that Hanukkah gelt comes from a 17th-century Polish Jewish tradition. Parents used to give money to their children so they could give gifts to their teachers, and eventually, children asked to keep some of the money for themselves. In the 18th century, as well, poor yeshiva students would visit the homes of wealthy neighbors and ask for Hanukkah money (Orach Chaim 670). According to this history lesson, gelt teaches us the values of respect for our teachers and Tzedakah.
My favorite teaching about gelt, however, comes from a text that has nothing to do with Hanukkah. In Sanhedrin 37a we read (with adapted language): “Therefore Adam the first person was created alone, to teach you that if any person has caused a single life to perish from Israel, they are deemed by Scripture as if they had caused a whole world to perish; and anyone who saves a single soul from Israel, they are deemed by Scripture as if they had saved a whole world. [Another reason Adam was created alone was] for the sake of peace among humankind, that one should not say to another, ‘My parent was greater than your parent.’”
All humans, in essence the whole world, descend from the very first human. This is why each human life is so precious: it’s as if we each contain an entire world. Not only that, but since we all have the same one ancestor, none of us can claim our ancestors were better than any others.
Then the text continues with yet another lesson about our being created from one single human being: “humans stamp many coins with one seal and they are all like one another; but the Eternal Ruler, the Holy Blessed One, has stamped every human with the seal of the first person, yet not one of them are like another.”
When people make coins, we make a mold and every coin comes out exactly the same. To contrast, when God makes people, the mold is that of the original human being, yet God intentionally makes every single person unique. We do not look alike or eat the same foods or hold the same views or speak the same languages, yet we are all family. Hanukkah gelt, then, inspires us to honor our individuality and our diversity. What a perfect lesson during Hanukkah, which recalls the Maccabees’ fight to preserve Judaism in the midst of Greek culture. The Maccabees were, after all, fighting for the right to be different.
This brings us to the present.* I no longer feel uncomfortable when I see bags of gelt on display. Instead, I get an intense feeling of pride. They are powerful symbols of independence, respect, Tzedakah, and the beauty of humanity’s diversity.
So join me this year. Buy yourself a little mesh bag of Hanukkah gelt. Peel off the foil embossed with the 7-branched menorah, put that waxy piece of chocolate on your tongue, close your eyes, and remember the lessons of this holiday of Hanukkah. Delicious! Happy Hanukkah!
*I should note that chocolate entered the picture in the 20th century. Loft’s, an American candy company, made the first chocolate Hanukkah gift coins in the 1920s, wrapping them in gold and silver foil and putting them in mesh bags so they looked like money bags. The rest, as they say, is history.
