I know the topic of this thread is not clear but I will try to explain what I am thinking.
Every year I have noticed that the mainstream media does everything in its power to bury any stories about Jewish celebration. This year I looked in the San Jose paper for any Chanukah stories and only found one... What was this story abou? Was it about the meaning of Chanukah or what it means to be Jewish in America today? No the story in the paper I read today was written by a non-Jew whose claim to fame was growing up in Brooklyn and she knew how to eat Latkes, or Jewish Potato Pancakes... She didn't know how to make them, she knew how to eat them.... This constituted a story about Chanukah for this paper....
Now I often use google news and I notice that it is useless for finding stories which are important. Usually the stories on google news are so far to the left it makes me vomit. But here is their 'obligitory' Chanukah story, and guess what!?! It is about Jewish Potato Pancakes!!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/dining/09hanu.htmlGROWING up in Fredericksburg, Va., Todd Gray said, he could count all his town’s Jewish residents on one hand.
So when Mr. Gray, the chef and owner of Equinox Restaurant in Washington, down the street from the White House, became engaged to Ellen Kassoff in 1994, her father decided to acquaint him with Jewish culture in a way they could both relate to — through food.
They traveled from Washington to New York, where they ate pastrami, corned beef, gefilte fish and herring at Katz’s, the Second Avenue Deli and the Carnegie Deli.
This is all they can talk about for Chanukah? What food we eat!? Granted Latkes are delicious and Jews are well known for their Gastronomic service to Hashem, but come on! It mimicks the coverage I saw last year for Rosh Hashana in the San Jose paper, all about bees and honey, because we dip apples in honey on Rosh Hashanah... So a story about bees and honey really covers the meaning of the important day of Rosh Hashana... The non-Jew must think that all we do is eat on our holidays. And all of these articles are written by non-Jews...
Chanukah is a holiday which recalls the proud Jewish warrior who rose to defeat the mighty Greek army. The few defeating the many, the weak defeating the mighty... It is this story which the Jewish people need to cling to. One Chanukah several years ago at my liberal-progressive Synagogue {which I no longer associate with} a local newspaper reporter showed up and interviewed a bunch of us... I spoke with the interviewer and was asked what Channukah meant to me... i said just this, that the Jews rose up against the Hellenist and Greek forces and Hashem provided a miracle that they could prevail against the mighty Greek army.... Of all the people they talked to there, the only interview which didn't make it into the article was my discussion of the true meaning of Channukah, of course all the stories about latkes recipes made it into that article...