American Girl is just about the only company I have discovered to date that acknowledges the existence of holidays other than Christmas. I applaud them for being inclusive when it comes to different ethnicities and beliefs in the creation of their dolls and background stories. Their dolls are widely available and are not charicatures of children of various ethnic backgrounds, they are just children who happen to be different from eachother.
Although most adult fashion doll collectors do not include American Girl dolls in their collections, some of the accessories can be worked in. In my photo of Kaori, two posts back, I used an American Girl menorah and dreidel. This year AG has another menorah available and it's beautiful. It comes in a set called Rebecca's Hanukkah Set, [Item#F9723] and retails for $22.
Here are the photos from their website:
The description: "Rebecca can't wait to light the menorah and celebrate Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights! This set features: A beautiful menorah and nine pretend candles A dreidel Rebecca and her cousins spin to play games Three shiny coins, called gelt."
The price is right and can bring your gals into the multi-cultural world!
American Girl has also provided Rebecca with a Sabbath Set.
This beautiful set comes with:
"A Russian samovar and tray for heating water and serving tea
A tea canister and a ceramic teapot
Two glasses, pretend hallah bread and a scalloped cloth
A pair of [pretend] Sabbath candles that the women in Rebecca's family "light" before sundown
Two blue candlesticks that were a gift to Rebecca from Mr. Rossi"
The Sabbath set is back-ordered until March 2010. The retail price is $68.
Tea? My grandpa drank a shot of schnapps on Shabbos. I guess we can't give little girls bottles of Schnapps and shot glasses, can we?
In addition, hallah is spelled challah and hanukkah is spelled Chanukah. I'm just sayin'
News, reviews and photographs of Modern Fashion Dolls including Kingdom Doll, Fashion Royalty, Sybarite, Tonner Doll, Gene Marshall, Barbie and my own experiences as a doll collector.
According to other sources, Wikipedia etc, it is spelled Hanukkah as well as Chanukah. So either would be correct, would it not? And hallah is an accepted variant of challah. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hallah
ReplyDeleteChristine N
Christine: Thanks for your post. I'm opinionated. LOL Opinionated think that the way they do things is the right way. But seriously, lots of older words become modernized and get "cleaned" up. I like it the old-fashioned way. Do you know how those two words are supposed to be pronounced? If you did you would realize that the ch is a guttural sound which is quite different from a soft h sound.
ReplyDeleteNot everything has to be Americanized and just because Wikipedia says it's correct, doesn't mean it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglicisation
Happy Hanukkah,Terri.... love the POST -- made me MISS lighting the candles each nite.... and of course, getting a present for 8 consecutive nites... hehehehehehe
ReplyDelete@Rudi - Thanks, dear! You are funny. Wish you could be here to celebrate with us one day.
ReplyDeleteHappy Chanukah Terri. I remeber visiting the Jewish Museum in Worms and seeing magnificent miniature dioramas of Jewish people in various important celebrations, Chanukah included. The accessorties were incredible. I have some not-so-good photos of them - check my post here. http://sandman-chronicles.blogspot.com/2008/06/worms-city-of-myths-and-legends-part_21.html
ReplyDelete@Stratos: Thank you for your wishes and the link to Worms. The diorama of the dining room scene was wonderful and I imagine in person it would blow me away. Elsewhere, the doors in the pink stone building were amazing. The figures all looked like supplicants. What type of building was that - a church? I'd love to know the background of those doors.
ReplyDeleteHappy Hanukkah,Terri!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the amazing link, Stratos!
Opinionated? I would never have guessed! LOL
"Binge Drink Me" is hilarious and so wrong.