The History of the Ten US Hanukkah stamps

By Jim Winnerman

It is likely you are aware the United States Postal Service periodically issues a commemorative Hanukkah stamp. Perhaps you have noticed them on the envelope of a Hanukkah card you have received or used them on your own cards and letters around the holiday.

The tradition of the United States Postal Service printing a Hanukkah stamp began in 1996. Initially the same design was repeated for many years before a new issue with different artwork was introduced. However, since 2016 a newly designed Hanukkah stamp has been produced every two years.

To date there have been ten different issues celebrating the holiday, each designed by a different artist, most of whom have been Jewish. Behind each stamp there is a creator with a unique story how they were discovered and commissioned, and what they were thinking when they designed “their” stamp. Many issues have been art directed by Ethel Kessler who has been with the Postal Service for many years.

In the words of Ethel and the artists, here are the stories behind each stamp.

1996

In response to a vigorous letter writing campaign, the United States Postal Service issued its first Hanukkah stamp in 1996, 34 years after printing the first Christmas stamp in 1962.

Graphic artist Hannah Smotrich, who was 31-years old at the time, was selected for the honor. Raised with a strong Jewish identity and having worked as a graphic artist in the United States and Jerusalem, she says “At the time I knew the art director at the United States Post Office professionally,” Hannah recalls, “and she just asked if I would design a Hanukkah stamp.”

Hannah submitted two concepts. The first was an ancient oil menorah which took six weeks to compose and photograph.

The second proposal was a spontaneously created collage of a menorah she assembled from colorful scraps of paper she had in her studio. “They chose the collage,” she says, still amused at how much less effort she had put into the second design.

Unbeknownst to her, a decision was made that the design would be used for an identical stamp to be simultaneously issued by Israel, making it the first philatelic collaboration with the United States.

“Designing the first Hanukkah stamp for the United States Postal Service was a thrilling experience and unrivaled honor,” Hannah recalled recently. “I attended the ceremony on the day both stamps debuted at the Israel Embassy in Washington, and it was rewarding to see the pride on the faces of those who attended and had worked so diligently for an American Hanukkah stamp.”

Hannah says her mother visited every post office near her home, and that “there was no postal worker in the area who did not know I was her daughter and had designed the stamp.”

2004

After 8 years of the United States Postal Service reissuing Hannah’s original menorah design consistent with rising postage rates, the next Hanukkah issue debuted in 2004.

Creative typography appears in the background behind a photograph of a wooden dreidel from the collection of Rabbi Lennard and Dr. Linda Thal.

Rabbi Thal recalls Ethel, who was a new art director at the USPS at the time, had been perusing a book titled The Art of Hanukkah when she discovered two pages with images of thirty dreidels from his collection, and she selected the one used on the stamp.

“I purchased that dreidel in Jerusalem for seven dollars,” Rabbi Thal recalled recently. “It was made by a Russian artist in Israel and features colorful, hand painted scenes of Jerusalem.”

2009

For the third stamp design to commemorate Hanukkah, metal sculptor Lisa Regan of Tulsa, Oklahoma was commissioned to create a menorah to be photographed for the stamp.

“I was raised Catholic but had done a lot of philanthropic work for the local Jewish community, including sculpting some menorahs. I had also sold some menorahs to a shop in New York where a photographer with the United States Post Office saw them and called asking if I would make one for a stamp,” she remembers. “I was super excited and honored.”

After the stamp came out, Lisa went into her local post office where she had kept a post office box for years and knew most of the employees. “Somehow the person waiting on me knew I had made the menorah on the current Hanukkah stamp,” she says. “He announced out who I was and what I had designed, and everyone in the post office applauded!”

Lisa’s story does not end there, however. Her mother and father divorced before she was born, and her mother had shared little about her father’s background. Years after the stamp was issued, she investigated her DNA, and discovered she was 49.9 percent Ashkenazi. “That’s my tribe,” she says laughing.

2011

In 2011 Ethel worked with graphic designer Suzanne Kleinwaks of Falls Church, Va., to create the Hanukkah stamp. The eight colorful blocks surrounding the letters symbolize the eight days and nights of Hanukkah, with each block and letter subtly tilted to mimic the movement of the dreidel as it spins and wobbles.

2013

The 2013 stamp art is a creatively cropped photograph of a contemporary forged-iron menorah created by Jewish blacksmith Steven Bronstein of Black Thorne Forge in Marshfield, VT.

Having already decided she would design a new stamp with the photo of an actual menorah, Ethel purchased several in a gift shop and had each photographed to determine which would work best on a stamp.

After selecting Bronstein’s menorah, she called him at his forge. Bronstein thought she was asking if she could use an image of his menorah on a rubber stamp and thought it peculiar.

“When it became clear she was with the USPS and referring to a postage stamp, i was thrilled,” he remembers. “It was great to be recognized for a piece of my Jewish art which I have been making since 1985, but the biggest thrill was being able to call and tell my mother.”

Nine lighted white beeswax candles atop each of the menorah branches, and “Hanukkah” is spelled out across the top of the stamp in yellow letters.

“The Smithsonian purchased the menorah, and the stamp earned me ‘bragging rights and instant credibility,” he says.

2016

Ethel had the idea for this stamp while she was thinking about objects displayed in windows during various holidays. “Christmas trees and menorahs were the first items that came to mind,” she remembers.

She selected artist William Low to design the stamp, and he used a purple background to contrast with the hot candles and the cool snow above a horizontal window frame, implying the menorah is being viewed from the inside of a room.

2018

Israeli American artist Tamar Fishman was selected by Ethel for her paper cutting talent and asked to design a menorah for the 2018 Hanukkah stamp.

“At the time Tamar was 80 years old, and I had seen her art in the Adat Shalom Synagogue I attend in Bethesda, Maryland,” Ethel says. “I asked if she would be interested in a ‘small’ project,’ and when she learned it was a stamp she was thrilled.”

Again, the background purple pattern alludes to the beaker of oil that sustained the eternal light in the Temple for eight days, while the foliage, flowers and fruit are from the pomegranate, a motif that is featured prominently in many Jewish archeological sites. The bottom left and right of the stamp feature small broken oil vessels and dreidels.

“Tamar’s original art for the project was 16x20 inches and cut from one piece of paper. One mistake and it would have had to have been redone,” Ethel recalls. “I worried that it was so large it might not reduce down to stamp size, but with the white paper imposed over a green and purple background we added, it worked out wonderfully,”

The new stamp design was launched in the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. Having been established in 1763, it is the oldest synagogue in the United States, and itself was the subject of a twenty cent U.S. postage stamp issued Aug. 22, 1982.

2020

While perusing a catalog of the work of various United States artists, Ethel came across a painting by artist Jing Jing Tsong depicting the lighting of the menorah on the last night of the holiday as seen through the eyes of children.

“Her style of art as an illustrator of 20 children’s books was very much in evidence,” Ethel remembers, “and it was a creative departure to a more illustrative and figurative approach for a Hanukkah stamp. It had been done as an example of her art, but we adopted it almost untouched.”

2022

“The funny thing about my stamp is that when I started doing exclusively Judaic art 37 years ago, I always dreamed of designing a stamp,” says artist Jeanette Kuvin Oren. “My grandfather collected stamps, and I love the art on stamps. Years ago, I remember sending an unsolicited design for a stamp into the United States Postal Service, but I never heard back.”

“About 2020 I was commissioned by a synagogue in Medford, MA to design ark doors, and the design started with a menorah wall-hanging I made from brightly colored silk that had been on my website for years. Ethel had been visiting Jewish art websites looking for menorah art, and really liked that piece, but it was not suitable for Hanukkah."

“She reached out to me, and I remade it for Hanukkah in the same style,” Jeanette says. “It felt like a real full-circle moment from when I had sent an idea for a stamp to the USPS years ago.”

2024

Antonio Alcala designed the most recent Hanukkah stamp. Like Ethel, Antonio is an art director with the United States Postal Service. He has more than a one hundred stamps to his credit since 2011, but the 2024 Hanukkah stamp was his first with a Jewish theme.

“My mother escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport, and many of her family members also survived, including my grandparents,” Alcalá told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2024.

Antonio put much thought into the design that may not be readily apparent to a casual observer. The flames of the menorah are shown, but the candles themselves are not present. “They are implied. And to me, that sort of alludes to the aspect of faith that is both tied to this and to the larger sort of religious experience,” Antonio explained.

When he started the design in 2022 two years before it was issued, Antonio first created geometric and clean, modernist-looking menorahs on a computer, but he felt they looked too cold and conveyed a lack of humanity.

To create a less sterile image he switched to old-fashioned pen and ink, creating the image by hand on a sheet of blank paper.

""Of course, it is always a little bit nerve-wracking when you are doing something like a Hanukkah stamp because you know that there are a lot of people out there who have a deep emotional tie to the subject matter," Alcalá said. "You want to present it in a way that is going to feel appropriate to them and going to make them want to buy it and put it on their cards."

Antonio says designing a Hanukkah stamp was a “huge thrill and one of those things where you wish some of your relatives were still around to see that day. But my brothers are still around, and they get to see it, and it is a piece of my family history that I got to see distributed across the country."

The 2024 Hanukkah stamp will remain in use through 2025, but it is expected that a newly designed stamp from a different artist with their own unique story as to how they were discovered will be issued in 2026.

To order the current or past issues of any of the ten Hanukkah stamps issued to date, visit the U.S. Postal Service website (store.usps.com/store/stamps), and enter the word “Hanukkah” in the search box.

Ethel Kessler’s cancer stamp

Although you may not have known the name Ethel Kessler before, chances are good you are familiar with her work. After surviving breast cancer, she was selected to be the artist for the breast cancer research stamp issued in 1998, and which is still being sold today at post offices throughout the United States.

Known as a “semi-postal” stamp, it sells for more than the price of a first-class stamp, with the difference going for breast cancer research. To date the issue has raised almost $100 million dollars. More than a billion stamps have been printed, and after 27 years it is the longest any commemorative stamp has been available.

Ethel has been the art director for over five hundred United States commemorative postage stamps, in addition to the seven of the ten Chanukkah stamps issued by the USPS.

Jim Winnerman is a feature travel article journalist. Visit him at https://jimwinnermantravelwriter.weebly.com/. His stories often appear in the St. Louis Jewish Light.

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