Someone has to announce the events. There is the candle lighting in the lobby, the latke evening in the social hall, perhaps a Sunday afternoon program for families. Each one needs a notice for the bulletin board, a paragraph in the newsletter, and an email that people will actually open.
A big congregation may have a communications director. A small one has whoever said yes at the last board meeting, usually the two or three people who already write the newsletter and keep the email list. They have the facts but usually not a picture. Clip-art menorahs look the same from one town to the next, and a snapshot from last year's party shows people who never agreed to appear on a flyer.
A committee without an illustrator can start from words instead. ZenCreator, an AI platform for image and video creation, makes a picture out of a few typed words about the scene. "A long table set for the fourth night, a lit window behind it" would be enough to begin. The picture, though, is the smaller part of the job. An invitation that brings people in depends on habits far older than any software, and on knowing who will read it.
A Holiday That Reaches Past the Membership List
Pew Research Center's 2020 survey of Jewish Americans questioned 4,718 Jewish adults. Its chapter on Jewish practices and customs opens bluntly: "Jewish Americans are not a highly religious group, at least by traditional measures of religious observance." Just one in five said they attend religious services at least once or twice a month.
Hanukkah is another matter. "Eight-in-ten U.S. Jews say they own a menorah," the report found. That beat the mezuzah, the prayer book and the Seder plate.
Then there is the kitchen. Cooking or eating traditional Jewish foods, which roughly seven in ten reported doing often or sometimes, was "the most common form of engagement with Jewish life" the survey measured. Six in ten said they at least sometimes share Jewish culture and holidays with non-Jewish friends. Among people who go to services a few times a year or less but say they "express their Jewishness in other ways," that figure was 74%.
None of this measures turnout. People reported on themselves, and a menorah in the cupboard is not a menorah in the window. Still, the numbers change who a Hanukkah notice is for. Many of the readers it most needs are not in the sanctuary on an ordinary Saturday morning. Some will forward it to a coworker or a sister-in-law.
Every Community Has Given the Lamp Its Own Look
The menorah itself has never had a single look. In 2018, the Jewish Museum in New York owned nearly 1,050 Hanukkah lamps, the world's largest collection, according to a National Endowment for the Arts feature from that year. The 81 in that year's exhibition were arranged by material. "There are some [made from] more luxurious materials, and some simpler materials," said senior curator Susan Braunstein.
Studying the lamps, she told the NEA, "gives you more specific information about how Jews were living in a certain time and place." One ornate silver lamp came from Nuremberg, a city where Jews were not allowed to live when it was made and had to pay for a day pass to enter. Braunstein wondered who could have afforded it, perhaps a Jewish business owner or someone who supplied the royal court. At the other end of the collection is "Menorah Memories," which Larry Kagan welded from steel scraps in Troy, New York, in the early 1980s.
A congregation's flyer works the same way, on a smaller scale. Clip art says "Hanukkah." A picture of the community's own evening is narrower and warmer: long tables pushed together, a coat rack with too few hangers, regulars next to newcomers. If a menorah is in the picture, it should be lit and standing where it belongs, not drawn as a cartoon with a face.
One Invitation, From First Draft to Notice Board
To see how this works, take a composite example rather than any real congregation: a volunteer committee of three at a small suburban synagogue. One member, a retired teacher, writes the newsletter, and another keeps the email list. The third is the part-time office administrator, who knows which rooms are free. They are planning a candle lighting followed by a latke supper on the fifth night.
The teacher's first draft fills a page. It opens with the Maccabees and the oil that lasted eight days, lists every event from the first candle to the last, and gives a whole paragraph to the lot that is closed for repaving. She reads it to the other two over the phone and starts cutting before she reaches the end. The Maccabees go to the newsletter. The parking paragraph shrinks to six words: "Park behind the building, side door."
What is left fits on half a page:
● what is happening, in one plain line: candle lighting, then latkes and doughnuts
● the date, the start time and which night of Hanukkah it is
● the place, with the room name and where to park
● who is welcome, said directly
● a person to ask, by name, with a phone number
The headline is just "Fifth Night Candle Lighting and Latke Supper." The start time gets the biggest type, and the administrator's name and number go at the bottom.
The same text then does three jobs. One copy goes on the cork board outside the office, the text runs in the newsletter, and the email goes out a week ahead. A two-line reminder follows on the morning of the supper. Within an hour of it, the first reply arrives: "Is it okay if I bring my neighbors? They're not Jewish."
Saying Plainly That Everyone Is Welcome
The line about who is welcome deserves real care. If six in ten American Jews share their holidays with non-Jewish friends, as Pew's respondents said, then many of those friends will see the notice before they ever see the room. A sentence such as "Friends, family and neighbors of every background are welcome" removes the guesswork.
The administrator writes back yes, with a promise of plenty of latkes. Then the committee adds a sentence so the next guest need not ask: "We light the candles with blessings, sing a couple of songs, and then we eat." Two words get translations in parentheses. Latkes are potato pancakes, and sufganiyot are jelly doughnuts.
Nobody on the committee wants a guest to arrive worried about a service they might get wrong. A crowded table and a lit window say "supper" faster than a paragraph can. Last year's party photo stays in the folder, because the teacher could reach only two of the five people in it to ask.
After the Eighth Night
By the ninth morning the notice is down, with a pushpin hole in each corner. The teacher saves the final text and the picture in a shared folder. She adds a note three lines long. The parking line worked, the neighbors came, and next time the notice should say whether there is a dairy-free option, because three people asked.
Whoever opens that folder next autumn will not start from a blank page. The invitation will change a little, as it should, with a new picture, a different night and a better line for guests. The lamps in that New York collection reflect the places and people that made them. A small community's Hanukkah notice can do the same, one year at a time.