Plan a Compassionate Hanukkah with These Animal-Friendly Tips

Posted by Calvin on December 17, 2024

The start of Hanukkah—aka “The Festival of Lights”— is right around the corner, and we’re here to help make it a compassionate celebration.

Jewish tradition emphasizes treating animals with kindness. The Jewish concept of tza’ar ba’alei chayim even explains that humans should never cause other animals pain, as all animals have the capacity to love and suffer and have families and friends of their own.

So, wanna make your Hanukkah meaningful and animal-friendly? Check out these three super-easy tips:

1. Practice Menorah Safety 🕎

When lighting the candles, be sure the menorah is in a secure place away from young children and animals. You don’t want a companion animal to get burned, right? Having an animal emergency would totally ruin the festive vibes.

Keeping the menorah safe and out of reach is one of many steps to make your home safer for companion animals during the holidays. Follow these best practices if you live in a home celebrating the season with plants, lights, or ornaments. Pro tip: Get beeswax-free candles—a simple swap that can save countless bees from having their limbs ripped off while humans steal their honeycombs and melt them to make wax.

2. Eat Compassionate Hanukkah Food

You never have to compromise your beliefs to enjoy eating over the holidays because you can celebrate Hanukkah with delish vegan food. 😋 Eating vegan helps save animals from being kept in extreme confinement, sexually assaulted, and violently slaughtered for their milk, eggs, or flesh. The abuse animals suffer on farms today is so severe that it violates Jewish teachings.

Here’s the good news: You can easily make traditional Jewish food like jelly donuts, potato pancakes, and filets without harming cows, chickens, pigs, fish, or other animals. Swap out meat and dairy for vegan meat and nondairy milk, and visit the Center For Jewish Food Ethics for more in-depth info on aligning your food choices with Jewish values.

3. Give Animal-Friendly Gifts

Gift-giving is a relatively new Hanukkah tradition, but if you give gifts to loved ones, make sure they’re animal-friendly. Any products you buy should be cruelty-free, and any food should be vegan—you can even get vegan gelt. 😍

Plus, whether you’re looking for gifts to give to a friend or put on your wish list, you can add items that make advocating for animals easier. Our blog has everything a student activist would want for the holidays, like animal rights books to read, cold weather gear to keep warm during demonstrations, and vegan snacks to fuel energetic protests (or games of dreidel).

Shalom aleichem! 😊

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Hanukkah should be about spending time with those you love, but what do you do when your loved ones eat animals who once had feelings and relationships of their own? Staff at peta2 are here for you—get our help planning the vegan holiday meal of your dreams.