Omaha, NE – The snowman down the block is inflated, the pumpkins across the street are intact and the Christmas lights next door are unharmed.
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
But someone smashed the three lighted dreidels that Joshua and Cynthia Follick erected in their front yard to celebrate Hanukkah this year.
The Follicks are Orthodox Jews who have lived in their home near 120th and Pacific Streets for nearly four years. Joshua works as a truck driver. They attend Beth Israel Synagogue, about a mile from their home.
They’re a family who committed to Omaha because of its simple charms and lifestyle, Joshua said. Their neighborhood always seemed to be a tolerant one. The Follicks were close friends with a Muslim family who lived nearby, until they moved away. Joshua says he’d walk to Sabbath services in traditional Jewish attire without any issues.
This year, Joshua said the couple wanted to erect their own holiday display “and say, ‘Hey, we’re part of the neighborhood and we want to celebrate with everybody else.’”
They spent several hundred dollars to build a custom set of lighted dreidels — the four-sided tops traditionally associated with Hanukkah festivities — and set them in their front yard near the sidewalk.
“And then you kind of get kicked in the teeth like this,” Joshua said.
Cynthia discovered the vandalism, when she noticed the dreidels were unlit. Vandals tore the lights from the metal frames and smashed the structures, possibly damaging them beyond repair. The display was only up for about a week.
“We have a bunch of bent poles,” Cynthia said. “That’s what we got — and broken-up lights.”
This summer, arsonists destroyed a $10,000 playground set at the nearby synagogue. At the time, police said they found no evidence the attack was a hate crime.
Joshua is unsure whether there’s a link between that incident and his holiday decorations, but he’s convinced the couple was singled out.
“Based on the way it is so absolutely laser-focused on a Jewish symbol, I gotta say this isn’t just a random case of kids behaving badly,” Joshua said. “This had to be something that was really specifically targeted against Jews.”
Hanukkah this year will begin at sunset on Dec. 11 and last until sunset on Dec. 19.
The Follicks hope to rebuild the holiday display by then. Cynthia, for one, does not want to give the impression that the family is intimidated by the vandalism.
“I’m going to say, ‘I’m sorry, but I have a right to freedom of speech,’” Cynthia said.
Just when I thought that only the secular Jews are busy with displaying their holiday…
Welcome to America, Medina shel Chesed, which was built on slavery and racism for 120 years.
chabads menorahs are mamash chukas hagoy
A Menorah has to be lit in public as the halacha is, but a draidel not. Don’t show off and you don’t have to be EVEN with the goyem
The defacing the menorah is called GOLUS even though we think we live in america some of us quite comfortably,unfortainitly this will happen until the days of the moshiach ,which we to hope to be sooner than later!
You’re all missing the point. Whether we should or shouldn’t put up holiday displays is not the issue. The issue is “What would these goons do if chas vasholam Kristalnacht were in 2009 on American soil? Scary.
We definitely shouldn’t be blaming the victim, our enemies obviously want us to disappear from the face of the earth. If you think I’m overstating it, what did they have against an innocent kids’ playground?
Hey numebr 2, this medina of slavery and racism is so bad to the Jews? So that’s why we started our own little America-funded shtetl of occupation and racism in the middle east, to get out of the anti-semitic boondocks here in America. Right?
Dreidels on your fron lawn three weeks before chanukah have nothing to do with pirsum hanais. It is just keeping up with the Clauses and cheapens the meaning of chanukah. That is why the gedolai yisroel never endorsed all the huge menoros and putting one up next to every frosty and rudolf.
I don’t know enough religiously speaking to say whether the lit dreidels are “wrong,” but I know as a citizen, I feel that the vandalism is unacceptable. If the dreidels help the Follicks to feel a stronger connection with their community, how bad can they be?
I moved to Omaha to help run a website I co-own, Omaha.net. We brainstormed ways to publicize Christmas events for the website because it’s so pervasive culturally, but we hardly mentioned Hanukkah. Am I missing a larger Jewish population in Omaha, or is it really as small and atypical as it feels?
I hope you don’t think I’m asking from a business perspective. Growing up in the NY/NJ region, Jewish culture was a part of my life. Perhaps here it will not be, and that’s a shame. Maybe the dreidels are an attempt to “keep up” with the consumerism of Christmas, but at least they diversify our city and remind people that there are all types out there. I for one appreciate that.
Happy holidays to all.
First, when anyone is valdalized, it is horrible, however we MUST stop calling EVERYTHING that happens to us ani-semetic, maybe it was by one or two perverse individulas, and I do not disagree there are some ignorant people who are ant-semetic, however to continue blaming and pointing a finger at America is wrong, we as Jews enjoy a freedom here we would be hard pressed to experience somewhere else. I for one am tired of hearing these scandalous remarks that can in deed turn opinions about us negative.
And to #15 Yes there are Jews in Omaha 6000-7000, not even comparable to N.Y/N.J, and most even those that claim Orthodoxy are at best preety assimilated as you can gather from the above article, decorating with displays, decorating weeks before the holiday, ect,,,,,