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With the holidays fast upon us, all Jewish soap fans are celebrating Hanukkah this week. Interestingly, and I am not sure why this is, but there are not many stories around Jewish families in soapdom.

We have the big Horton family Christmas celebration every year on Days of our Lives, and Christmas parties at General Hospital and in the fashion world of The Bold and The Beautiful, not to mention some of the goings on in the Abbott and Chancellor households on The Young and the Restless over the years. But really not too much about the Jewish holidays.

I find this quite interesting, as the mother of the entire soap opera genre, Irna Phillips, was herself of the Jewish faith. Yet, her first major character on the radio show, The Guiding Light, was Reverend Ruthledge! Wonder why she didn't make him Rabbi Rutledge? Guess we will never know.

Happily, however, I am not the only one pondering this notion. Writer colleague, Alina Adams, has written a piece for Entertainment Weekly Community on this very subject, scouring through the history of soap operas to determine eight prominent figures in the industry, both behind the cameras and on screen, who we have come to know and love. Before you read the article, try to come up with eight Jewish folks in soaps on your own. We've already mentioned Irna Philips. Here's another to get you started. One Life to Live's Nora Buchanan.

Happy Hanukkah to all our Jewish readers.

In honor of eight nights of Hanukkah, Alina Adams lists for Entertainment Weekly, the 8 most prominent Jewish characters in soaps, giving thanks, she noted parathentically, that there aren't ten nights, because she would have run out!

 

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