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Chaverim y'karim - dear friends,
Jews & Christmas
Hanukkah is here tonight! You will find a host of resources below (including a Spotify playlist). Given today being Christmas as well, I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed two podcasts on the story of Jews and Christmas music: "Why Jews wrote your favorite Christmas Songs. While an often-told tale and one that has great significance, in this Honestly episode Eli Lake of The Free Press does a fabulous job framing the meaning, context, and depth of what it means that Jews essentially wrote the American Christmas tunes. Yehuda Kurtzer from the Shalom Hartman Institute covers the same topic with music expert, Rob Kapilow, for his show Identity Crisis in this week's episode, "Christmastime for the Jews." And lest you think there is not an accompanying article ... you might enjoy David Mikics' similarly-themed writing in Tablet Magazine, "Christmas: The Greatest American Jewish Holiday." You might also appreciate Bari Weiss' Conversation on Honestly with Tom Holland on "How Christianity Remade the World."
It's Hanukkah tonight!!
Given tonight's arrival of Hanukkah in the closing hours of Christianity's holiday to celebrate its birth-story or at least the birth-story of its central savior, who certainly would have celebrated Hanukkah (albeit without dreidls and latkes since those are Ashkenazi and post-Jesus), we have to be very careful of the false title that Hanukkah is the “Jewish Christmas.”
For your listening pleasure on Hanukkah, check out Yehuda Kurtzer, from last year, on Identity Crisis with "Unpacking the Meaning of Hanukkah."
For so many reasons, Hanukkah and Christmas are nothing alike and to try and compare the two does a disservice to both.
By way of quick review: Hanukkah celebrates the triumph of religious freedom and fundamentalism over external totalitarianism and assimilation. The holiday emphasizes God's performing miracles and the strength of character exhibited by those who stand up to defend the Jewish people. This holiday reflects the historic Jewish insistence on not assimilating into the culture around us. Recall that the Jews of Judea & Samaria (commonly known today as the West Bank) and elsewhere in the land of Israel were divided between Hellenized Jews (assimilationists) and Hasmoneans (Jews who were strict adherents to Jewish ritual and observance).
Hanukkah commemorates the undeniable strength of will held by our ancestors who fought to sustain, preserve, and practice our religious rites despite a dominant, Hellenized society where a new king - Antiochus Epiphanes - sought to impose Greek culture and prohibit the Judaean culture and Jewish religious expression. These “freedom fighters” recognized the limits of passivity and the danger of assimilating. Although a battle of 2200 years ago - there are similar wars waging today within the Jewish world and externally against enemies who seek the downfall of the Modern State. I realize that there is nothing pleasant about a civil war and the fighting of Jews on Jews is among the worst of what we can experience. That being said, while Hanukkah tells a story about Jews, it symbolizes a universal value of freedom from oppression — religious oppression in particular — for all people.
Hanukkah in America
Hanukkah has become a visible and significant part of the American landscape. It even brought inspiration into among parts of African-American communities through the candelabra of Kwanzaa. Whether it is the Hanukkah-themed clothes, or the decorations for your home, or a Hallmark movie about Hanukkah — Hanukkah stands as a very public-facing marker in the Jewish year as it brings attention to the Jewish story. Historically and liturgically, this holiday is "minor" - but in post-WW2 America, it becomes far more "major." How much has changed from the dangers for Jews in the "old world" when Christian neighbors would terrorize Jews as they celebrated their savior's birth. America proved to be so remarkable because we could live openly - let alone even play a role in universalizing the very holiday that had once been a time to hide indoors (see above).
That Flame Within
Lastly, I want to share with you one of my favorite teachings about Hanukkah written by the late Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson. The Rebbe spent his childhood in pogrom-ridden czarist Russia. In the 1930s, he studied secular and religious topics in Berlin and Paris. In 1941, he escaped the Nazi-occupied Europe and settled in New York, where for the next half-century he developed a worldwide movement of outreach to Jewish communities. In this teaching, Schneersohn uses light as a metaphor for the human soul. He suggests that Hanukkah captures a hidden meaning for our purpose on earth, inspiring and increasing light in the world through mitzvot and menschlikheit.
The Hanukkah candles are lit for eight days. This does not mean that the same mitzvah is repeated eight times in succession. Just as in a physical sense new candles are lit each night, so it is in a spiritual sense, every night a new mitzvah is fulfilled with new fire. Also, each night we add another candle, indicating how we must constantly increase our efforts to spread light. The Hanukkah lights reflect the fire within the Jewish soul, as it is written, “The lamp of God is the soul of man" (Prov. 20:27). Each person possesses this light within his body. Hanukkah teaches how this light must be ignited and shine forth and how it must be renewed and increased each day.
The kindling of each person’s individual menorah, the fire of his or her soul, leads also to the kindling of the the Jewish people’s collective menorah. The light we each produce is not self-contained but rather shines "outside" and illuminates the world at large, spreading light in the totality of the darkness of exile.
Projecting light to the world at large is the underlying intent of all the mitzvot, as it is written, "A mitzvah is a lamp and the Torah is light" (Prov. 6:23). However, to a greater degree than in other mitzvot, this intent is reflected in the Hanukkah candles, for they produce visible light and they spread that light throughout their surroundings.
May these days that are short of external light find you inspired by the increase of light we bring with our hanukkiyot and with the deeds of our hearts, hands, and souls. May there be music to fill your homes, recollection of the heroism of our people throughout the generations - including our own as Israel fights an existential battle, and opportunities to bring about blessing through acts of tzedakah!
L'shalom,
Rabbi Mark Cohn
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HANUKKAH
Resources for Home
Blessings & Songs - A Guide for Temple Sholom
Hanukkah Spotify Playlist
(Rabbi Mark Cohn)
A Beautiful Hanukkah song - Tih'yeh Or - Be a Light
(Rabbi Neal Katz)
Hanukkah at Home
(My Jewish Learning)
Hanukkah, Hellenization, and Hasmoneans
(Unpacked for Educators)
Six 13 - A Wicked Hanukkah
(Six13)
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