What a perfect story for Christmas Eve... What's wrong with me?

As you may know, I recently heard that the Seattle rabbi who wanted a menorah in Seattle-Tacoma airport had received quite a bit of hate mail. My natural assumption is that it came primarily and only from what I might call "Christian-flavored" people.

But, considering the content of this article over at GetReligion, perhaps I was wrong.

... it does appear that the Seattle Times failed to ask one crucial question in this story. It’s a rather obvious question: Who opposed the erection of the giant Hanukkah menorah in the first place?

That question may have been hard to answer. You see, there is a reason that lawyers are so nervous about giant menorahs — they represent a fault line in the public square between the left and right wings of Judaism. The primary voices protesting the civic menorahs are Jewish. The people cheering are traditional Christians.

Terry Mattingly then cites evidence that the secular-left American Jewish Congress is against menorahs. (See this lawsuit for another example. And an anonymous Wikipedia author notes: "The group advocates removing religious symbols from public life, and thus filed a brief against allowing public displays of the menorah during Hanukkah in County of Allegheny v. ACLU.")

So that's something I never knew. Like Terry, I'd be interested to know more about the source and content of the hate mail.