Rabbi's Corner... December Dilemma I. Do I look like a Chanukah ornament? Or what? This week the Temple office received three phone calls from a persistent customer who wanted to know where she could buy her Chanukah bush and proper Jewish ornaments with which to decorate it. I teased our gift shop chair, who the woman finally reached, and told her to tell the woman to circumcise a Christmas tree and it would work just fine. It used to be that those who felt compelled to keep up with their Christian neighbors by decorating a tree of their own, would not think to ask the synagogue to be complicit in their Christmas envy. We Jews do have our own tree, the tree of life, the Torah. It comes complete with its own decorations: a shield, a crown, and bells on top. Yet, it is hardly the place where we would want to hang ornaments. II. Interesting Chazarai in stores: I get the most interesting gifts this time of year. And, don’t get me wrong, I am appreciative, but nonetheless, it is an unusual collection of chatzkes and whatnot. When I walk into a store and see that little Chanukah section on the end of an aisle or tucked in the corner, my first reaction is to be thrilled. Raleigh has made it on the Jewish map I think to myself. On the one hand, I really want to patronize these stores that go out of the way to stock Chanukah items. I want to buy the Jewish merchandise, to encourage them to continue supporting the Jewish community. And then I take a closer look: Hence my first dilemma: do I buy the Chanukah dreck to support the thoughtfulness of the store which stocked it, or do I resist that urge to turn Chanukah into another consumerholic mecca? Do I rejoice that Judaism has made its way onto the local map? Or do I revolt against the watering down of the Chanukah message of religious freedom and God’s miracles by sending out holiday cards of Rudolph the Red Nosed Chanukah Menorah? Do I wear the glitter dreidel earrings, and the Happy Hanukah sweat shirt, or do I blend to the back of the crowd, with a black pair of pants and a top? I love the Jewish holidays and their rich, family, rituals. I love lighting our family menorahs and watching the candles melt, and taking bets on which candle will burn the longest. I even enjoy exchanging Chanukah gifts, though I know that this is a nod to the secularization of the holiday to make it feel more like what our neighbors are doing. I laugh at Adam Sandler’s tongue in cheek Chanukah song. I was thrilled when The Rug Rats came out with Chanukah and Passover books that I could read to my children. I have told the Chanukah story countless times in my own children’s classes as well as the public and private school classrooms of many of your children. I have appreciated that so many of the school “Winter Holiday” holiday pageants have included songs about Chanukah and Kwanza. And yet I have to question what such pageantry does to the substance of the holidays and the integrity of religion. One December in particular those doubts were confirmed when in my own son’s first grade class the children learned a song called the 9 nights and 8 days of Chanukah. When I discreetly tried to tell the teacher that Chanukah was only 8 days and 8 nights, she insisted on teaching me that the Jewish holiday of Chanukah starts at night and therefore there are 9 nights and 8 days of Chanukah. Though I tried to explain to her the workings of the Jewish calendar, and she knew that I am a rabbi, she triumphantly pulled out a menorah and pointed to the 9 candlesticks as proof of her point. Most Christians and too many Jews grow up thinking that Chanukah is the most important Jewish holiday because that is the holiday that is closest to Christmas, and de facto the one they hear about. Unless the Muslims Ramadan happens to fall near Christmas their holidays aren’t taught at all in the multi-cultural winter wonder-fests. III. Beyond the Bush: Yet, even given all of this, the truth is that I am more pained by the December dilemma for my colleagues who are Christian clergy than I am for us as Jews. One of their most sacred holidays has been secularized to the point of not only overtaking the Christian meaning of the Christmas holiday, but also to hijacking family Thanksgiving celebrations. This year my oldest son said that he believes Americans are abandoning traditional Thanksgiving family rituals, because they just aren’t interested in its message anymore, especially in comparison to their zeal for getting that holiday bargain. Almost every American secular holiday has been turned into an occasion for sales. Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Veterans Day, days set aside to honor our country and its citizens, have all turned into little more than glorified excuses for shopping. And now the whole Fall from Halloween until Christmas, one big shopping bargananza. No matter what we make of Chanukah, it will never hold a candle to that, nor is it a competition that I would want the Jewish community to win. Instead we can look at this season as an opportunity to learn to appreciate the other. In a recent article I read I learned that: “Thus many Jewish educators will advise parents to give their children who want to celebrate Christmas a very important message: Christmas is someone else's party, not ours. Just as we can appreciate someone else's birthday celebration and be happy for them, we can wonder at how beautiful Christmas is; (we can even attend their parties, but ultimately we must accept that it is not our party.)” And then the article goes on: “many parents make a perfectly understandable, but incomplete, leap. "Christmas is for Christians. They have Christmas. We are Jewish. We have Hanukkah." In an attempt to substitute something for Christmas, the parent offers Hanukkah. In fact, Hanukkah is even better than Christmas. "Christmas is only one day. Hanukkah is for eight!" So now, incredible as it seems, the parental anxiety leads to the teaching that our party lasts longer, offers more presents, and is just as beautiful. “Of course, the problem is that it just isn't true. Hanukkah cannot hold a candle to Christmas. As we have learned, it is a minor event in the Jewish holiday cycle and has never, until (the last century), been viewed as a central celebration for the Jewish people. Therefore, the customs and ceremonies surrounding Hanukkah pale by comparison to those of Christmas--which is one of the two major holidays of Christianity.” Let us acknowledge that Chanukah will never reach the hype of Christmas, nor should it. Chanukah doesn’t have the same religious impact as Christmas and it needn’t seek to match the cultural and secular manifestations of Christmas as well. Though many have stripped the religion out of their Christmas celebration, they have held on to its cultural and familial value. Anita Diamant, author of The Red Tent and famous here for giving us her daughter our religious school principal, wrote a short article on “Chanukah and Christmas – A Parenting/Grandparenting Conversation.” She crystallized the issue with great insight. “I think in many cases Jewish partners and families see the Christmas tree as a cross, and it’s simply not that for an awful lot of non-Jews, especially those who grew up in secular homes and only celebrated Christmas. It was about food and family gathering. In other words, (she continues) when you say “Merry Christmas” to me, I might hear “Won’t you accept Jesus as Lord?”, when all you really meant was, “I hope you find a way to add light to your life during this dark time of year.” I think that Diamant makes an important point. Our Christian neighbors are not setting out to offend us, convert us, or even overshadow us when they celebrate their holidays. Those who uphold the cultural aspects of Christmas likewise are not trying to offend serious religious Christians nor non-Christians through extending the generous communal aspects of their celebration. They are sharing something that is dear to them. I love that we can share holidays of light in this season when the days get shorter, and the wind blows harsher. The more people share their culture of joy, their faith message of blessing, and their family harmony, the better off each of us will be, the better off our world will be. So, too, the more we seek to understand one another, the more we acknowledge that there are many lenses through which people celebrate in our world, the more we will knock down barriers of prejudice and misunderstanding. The December dilemma need not be a dilemma at all. It is in our hands: to be offended, or to be educated; to increase understanding, or to be indignant in our differences; to participate in the stampede to get the best bargain, or to accept and reciprocate the generosity of our Christian neighbors. When we put it this way, we can transform the December Dilemma into an opportunity to open our minds to insight, our hearts to understanding, and our souls to the light that we can give and receive when we are open to one another. Amen
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