2023 Hanukkah Gift Guide
With Hanukkah fast approaching (beginning the evening of December 7, 2023), I wanted to take a slight departure from our normal content, and offer up some ideas for pens and stationery adjacent Hanukkah gifts. In the interest of transparency, I want to lay out two things right off the bat.
The first disclaimer is that the below post contains affiliate links that benefit me if you click them and make purchases through them. Not every link below is an affiliate link, but rather than breaking up the post to keep pointing them out, I wanted to issue a blanket statement at this point. If you have an opposition to affiliate links, you should still feel free to read the below list and then locate these products through other means. And if you are really in to affiliate links and supporting the content creators you like at no additional charge to yourself while doing your holiday shopping, then feel free to check out the “How To Support Us” tab above on our website, where we have multiple affiliate links listed for sites like Endless Pens, Atlas Stationers, and even Amazon.
The second disclaimer is that there are some items below that I have not used personally. Unlike our usual review posts, this is not intended as my personal impressions of using these products, but rather as a list of ideas for gift shopping. I wanted to highlight some Jewish/Hanukkah themed products, even if I don’t have extensive experience with them, and again, I just want to be transparent about that fact.
Now, on with the list:
Kvetch & Kvell Journals (Mens & Womens)
Starting the list off we have mens and womens Kvetch & Kvell Journals, by Adira Yarden These journals are designed to be used for two years (2024 & 2025), and contain useful trackers and prompts for Jewish journaling, especially catered towards Ba’al Teshuvahs, recent converts, and young men and women who have just reached bar or bat mitzvah age, but useful for anyone else as well. There are calendars that include Jewish holidays for the next two years, weekly journaling spaces, and a place for a weekly Shabbat check-in.
If you’re curious why the journals are gendered, it is because in some sects of Judaism certain laws are applied differently to men and to women, and so Adira and her husband (whom she collaborated with on the journals) aimed to gear each journal to be more personal for men and women respectively, with the writing prompts and the artistic choices, and with elements such as a mikvah tracker for women and a tefillin tracker for men.
The journals are print-to-order by Amazon, so the paper may be best suited for ballpoints and pencils. I did reach out to Adira about the paper in use, just to provide as much info as possible, and she provided the following from Amazon: “50-61 pound, 74-90 grams per square meter.”
Gold Herring Jewish Planner 5784
Another piece of Jewish stationery from a small Jewish business is the Gold Herring Jewish Planner. I have one of these personally, and while I’m not great at using it regularly (I’ve never been a consistent planner person) I really enjoy the design, from the prompts to reflect on, to the circular layout for the weeks, to the fact that they denote both the English and Hebrew dates on the weekly layout with a demarcation to show sunset on each day to see where the next Hebrew date begins.
This is another item that may be best used with pencils and ballpoints, although I have also personally tested some finer nib fountain pens without issue in my personal planner. In addition to the physical planner they also sell a digital download, though, so if you really wanted to have it on the best possible paper, you could print it out yourself.
Retro 51 x USPS Hanukkah Forever Tornado (available at Bertram’s Inkwell and elsewhere)
The next item on our list is a Hanukkah pen that really hit the mark when it was released last year. As part of their collaboration with the USPS, Retro 51 released a limited series of 718 Tornado pens based on the Hanukkah forever stamp in 2022. While many retailers are sold out of this limited edition, some, such as one of my local pen stores, Bertram’s Inkwell, still have some in stock. If Bert’s is out by the time you click the link, head to Google, and you may have luck elsewhere.
Delta Dreidel & Sevivon (Yafa product page)
This next Hanukkah pen is what I would suggest if you’re looking to buy a Hanukkah gift for me, personally. It’s also kind of a cheat, because it’s been discontinued for years and not easy to find anywhere, not even on the secondary market. Still, the Delta Dreidel (and the more premium version, the Delta Sevivon) is one of the greatest Hanukkah pen designs of all time, with a secret compartment under its finial that hides a tiny dreidel. You can check out the Yafa product page for more info. Chances are you’re not going to find one of these in time for Hanukkah this year, but if you start looking now maybe you’ll find one in time for next year.
Rounding out our trifecta of Hanukkah pens, I’d be remiss if I didn’t make a mention of the BENU Hanukkah Oil Talisman that I collaborated on this year. The BENU Talisman line is such a great pen, both in terms of use and design, but also in terms of the concept behind the pen. BENU chooses different materials with cultural significance around the world and infuses them into the pens in this series, and then sells them with an insert that tells all about the materials. I thought this would be an awesome platform for an olive oil pen that tells the story of Hanukkah, and thankfully BENU and their US distributor, Luxury Brands, agreed with me. These pens are available from many different retailers around the country, and we are proud to count ourselves among that number.
While it’s not stationery per se, one of my all time favorite Hanukkah related things printed on paper is the bedtime parody book “Good Night Bubbala”. This book parodies the classic “Good Night Moon” with a tale of an entire extended families descending upon a house to celebrate Hanukkah right around bed time. It is funny and adorable and I honestly read it to my kids all year round. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
If you are looking for an inexpensive way to use some pens in a Hanukkah related matter, Mad Libs is an absolute classic. Great for kids learning the different parts of speech, and also for adults who are just looking to have a good time being silly. And don’t feel bad about the highly affordable price tag; you’ve got to stretch this holiday out for eight nights somehow.
This last item on this list isn’t technically Hanukkah related in any way, but I wanted to include a more “experience based'“ stationery gift (what do you get for the person who already buys themselves all the pens and inks and paper that they want?) and it seeemed like the perfect fit. There are a number of creators out there with members only newsletters and other content, but many of them use the Patreon platform, which does not natively allow for subscriptions to be given as gifts. If you’re looking to buy a Patreon subscription for yourself, I could still recommend a number of creators to look at (Gentleman Stationer, Well Appointed Desk, Independence, Figboot), but because Brad Dowdy (the titular Pen Addict) manages his membership newsletter himself through his website and the Memberful platform, it is possible to gift a membership to someone else by reaching out to Brad via email and asking to pay for someone else’s email address to receive the membership.
I have been a Pen Addict Member for five years now, and I have no plans of stopping any time soon. Brad’s weekly Refill newsletter is one of the highlights of my week; I’ve made good use of my discount code to use in the Pen Addict shop; and there have been a number of fun extras along the way, like Brad mailing out random pocket notebooks to members, or interviewing members for a members only podcast, or most recently the introduction of a traveling pen for members to take turns using. As far as “gifting an experience” goes, I can’t imagine a much better value than this one.
