Identity, Religion

Chappaqua Residents Irked By Seemingly-Jewish Holiday Flags

Continuing on the theme of interreligious tensions and bouts of intolerance this holiday season, CBS reports:

The flags read “welcome.” But not everyone shares that sentiment about the flags, now hanging in the hamlet of Chappaqua.
“I most certainly was warned I’d receive backlash,” said business owner Tara Caverzasi. “I did not believe it. I was a little naïve.”
Caverzasi said she was just trying to spread a little seasonal cheer, and draw shoppers to Chappaqua businesses, including her jewelry store, Desires by Mikolay.
So she spent $3,000 of her own money to buy about 50 flags from an online vendor. Each features a blue background with white snowflakes and the word “welcome” running vertically down one side.
[…] But where she sees neutrality, others see favoritism towards the Jewish faith.
Officials at the New Castle Town Hall have received about 20 phone calls and e-mail messages from residents who don’t like the flags.
They’re unhappy with the blue and white color scheme, which is commonly associated with Hanukkah and also appears on the flag of Israel. Two of the snowflakes are six-pointed Stars of David, and the flags are tapered at the bottom, making them resemble a symbol of Hanukkah, the dreidel.

Full story, with video.

20 thoughts on “Chappaqua Residents Irked By Seemingly-Jewish Holiday Flags

  1. The world has gone mad … If anything I see a War on Chanukah, if the flag had xmas trees on it and was red and green then no one would complain. trees and red bows and santas can be displayed everyehwere, but G-d forbid we put up a menorah too, g-d forbid a flag even LOOKS like it POSSIBLY be Chanukah related and the town goes insane.
    It seems to me that Christmas is safe, it’s the War on Chanukah that is worrying me.

  2. And to think that Chappaqua pretends to be an area of learning and cultural understanding. My guess would be that 10 or so of those 20 are Jews not wanting to bring attention to the fact they have entered the safe house of the WASP.
    For get it all. Christmas should be about what the Warriors to Save Christmas say: Consumerism and Public Displays of Wasted Energy. Jesus would have wanted it that way.
    Please! If anyone is really shocked then you have not been paying any attention.

  3. somebody was looking at this thing way too hard. It too me a good amount of time before i even noticed the stars were six pointed. and as far as the tapering resembling a dreidel…im sorry, you’re out of your mind.

  4. snowflakes always have six points! i’m from california and even i know that!
    this is quite ridiculous, but 20 phone calls really isn’t that much – it sounds to me like one crazy group of friends rather than much of an outcry.

  5. When I read the headline, my immediate thought was that ‘they’re’ going after Kennedy, again, bringing up CHAPPAQUIDICK.
    LOL.

  6. Up next: Christmas trees are just really big upside-down dreidels.
    And, that isn’t a shamash. The menorah’s giving Jesus the finger.

  7. I live in New Castle, and, jeez, will this area ever stop being absurd? Where I go to school, not in Westchester, the city has put up Christmas-y flags, and like Chaim said, if anyone complained about those everyone would have their knickers in a bunch.

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