On day three of Hanukkah, author and Israel advocate Noa Tishby lit her menorah with actress Mayim Bialik, and even learned a few things about the Festival of Lights. It’s all part of Tishby’s eight day social media campaign to get people around the world to proudly “Bring On The Light” and share the traditions of Hanukkah on social media.
A surprise guest will join Tishby each day. Tishby lit the candles with actress and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow the first day and actress Mila Kunis on the second day.
The video of Tishby and with Paltrow has already been viewed over 2.2 million times on Instagram in just two days. The video with Kunis has already been viewed nearly 1 million times on Instagram in just 24 hours. The #BringOnTheLight series launches across all of Tishby’s social media platforms, with a long-form version premiering each day on her YouTube channel at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time (6:00 p.m. in Israel, an hour after sundown).
The day three video begins with Tishby arriving at Bialik’s home and gifting the former “Jeopardy!” host a blue “ugly Hanukkah sweater” depicting two dreidels and the words “This Is How We Roll.”. Tishby arrived sporting a black sweater reading, “This Is My Hanukkah Shirt.” The two spoke about just how rough the past year has been for Jews around the world, both online and in person.
“This is the year after Oct. 7 … the world is still a very unstable place for the Jewish people, and I think this year we’ve seen more evidence of the need for unity,” Bialik said. “There are so many incredible things about being Jewish, there’s so many joyful things, there’s so many things worth celebrating that are part of our birthright. It’s a sense of belonging, even if you don’t know where you belong.”
Bialik also shared that while growing up as a Jew of Eastern European ancestry, she loved “putting sour cream on everything” and that when she became a mother, she started making sufganiyot — vegan and gluten-free — from scratch.
Tishby blushed as she admitted that even though she was born and raised in Israel and is a mother of a nine-year-old son, she did not know the rules of the game of dreidel. Bialik gladly explained the rules to Tishby and their millions of collective followers.
“The fact that Mayim taught me something new about Hanukkah — the dreidel game — is now a core memory,” Tishby told The Journal. “It’s a reminder that there are a million ways to celebrate Hanukkah, and at least 16 million ways to be Jewish. I can’t wait to play dreidel tonight and let everyone know that Mayim Bialik taught me.”
“It’s a reminder that there are a million ways to celebrate Hanukkah, and at least 16 million ways to be Jewish.” – Noa Tishby
After Bialik lit the night three candles, she offered to sing “Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah” in Yiddish.
Both Tishby and Bialik have stood firmly on the front lines of the social media war being waged against Israel and the Jewish people following the biggest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, on Oct. 7, 2023.
Tishby, an actress and television producer who came to the U.S. from Israel 26 years ago, is a leading voice in disseminating the latest about Israel’s war with Hamas and spreading messages of reassurance to the Jewish people.
In 2021, Tishby published “Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth.” This past spring, she co-authored “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew” with Fox Sports anchor Emmanuel Acho. Both books became New York Times bestsellers. She recently founded Eighteen: An institute to combat antisemitism and inspire Jewish pride.
Bialik, in addition to being an acclaimed actress best known for her roles in “The Big Bang Theory” and “Blossom,” is also a neuroscientist that has been involved in initiatives to promote STEM opportunities for young women, encouraging them to pursue careers in science and technology. This past fall, she was commended as an Ambassador of Peace by Creative Community for Peace.
“A lot of people didn’t and probably still don’t understand the basic definition of Zionism,” Bialik told The Journal. “That it’s a belief in the right of Jewish people to have a state in our historical homeland. It seems like a basic definition that a lot of people don’t understand.”
Tishby ended the night three video with Bialik by encouraging viewers to tune in for her surprise guests on the remaining Hanukkah nights.
In the first video, released on Dec. 25, Paltrow told Tishby, “My mother [actress Blythe Danner] is Christian, my father[director and producer Bruce Paltrow] Jewish — I always felt an incredible pull to my Jewish family. I still do. I came to find out that I’m from 17 generations of rabbis.”
In the second video of the #BringOnTheLight series, Kunis, who grew up Jewish in the Soviet Union (present day Ukraine), said “I always knew I was Jewish, but I was told to never talk about it. I was in a country that didn’t allow for religion. I was raised culturally Jewish. So for me it’s a culture, and as I had kids, my kids very much identify with the religion aspect of it. I’m like, ‘okay, I guess we’ll do Shabbos and we’ll do the candles.’ And there’s so much beautiful tradition in it.”
