Virginia Art Festival Refuses To Allow Hanukkah Lighting Because It's Not Art

The New York Post reports that members of the United Jewish Community of the Virginia Peninsula (UJC) are upset because "LoveLight Placemaking, a nonprofit which hosts the 2nd Sundays Art and Music Festival in Williamsburg, declined a proposal by a community rabbi to hold the lighting ceremony at its upcoming Dec. 10 event." LoveLight says that it has never allowed a religious program during its 14 years of holding the art festival, and noted that the UJC also wanted to include "a firetruck geld drop, where chocolate coins are dropped from a height, in an area of the festival that 'has to be kept open at all times for entering & exiting traffic.'" The UJC, on the other hand, "accused LoveLight of 'not want[ing] to appear to choose sides in the Israel-Hamas conflict,'" and called them anti-Semites.