Hanukkah And Christmas: Does Proximity Make for Affinity?

I came across the following passage last week that I felt was worth sharing. It comes from Unlocking the Torah Text by Shmuel Goldin, a book on the weekly Torah portions from Bereshit [Genesis], and it was a concluding comment on the story of Jacob wresting with the angel:

Hanukkah, the holiday that most clearly celebrates the Jewish nation’s ongoing historical victory against the forces of assimilation, has become, in our day, the most assimilated Jewish festival.

Hanukkah-Christmas clubs, seasonal parties, public religious displays and more all conspire to create, in the minds of many, an equality between two vastly different religious events. In many households, Hanukkah becomes a “Jewish Christmas” as, throughout the community, the spirit of the “Judeo-Christian ethic” fills the air. Theological harmony is assumed where no such harmony exists.

Monumental chasms separate Jewish philosophy from Christian philosophy. We disagree on such basic issues as the concept of sanctity and its relationship to the physical world, the ability of man to interface with God directly, the notion of original sin, and more. If we fail to recognize and be sensitive to these differences, if we fail to teach our children about these differences, then we run the real risk of assimilating, God forbid, into a culture not our own.

The image of our forefather Yaakov [Jacob] struggling through the darkness of night with the “angel of Esav [Esau]” is presented to us each year at the time of the year when that image is most necessary. If we are to survive as a people, we cannot allow artificial harmony to blind us. We must certainly strive for respectful, harmonious coexistence and cooperation with our non-Jewish neighbors, we should certainly acknowledge and appreciate the specific values and goals that we share, but not at the expense of losing our uniqueness.

How do you react to this passage? Has Hanukkah lost its distinct meaning due to its proximity to Christmas? Have we allowed our desire for harmony to go too far? Do we make too much of Hanukkah as a result? What should we do, as a community, and as individuals?

Your comments are welcome.

Divine espousal - וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי

On any given morning, as one wraps the straps of the tefillin around one’s fingers, the following verses, drawn from the second chapter of Hosea, are recited:

וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי לְעוֹלָם

וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי בְּצֶדֶק וּבְמִשְׁפָּט וּבְחֶסֶד וּבְרַחֲמִים

וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי בֶּאֱמוּנָה וְיָדַעַתְּ אֶת־ה

I will espouse you forever;

I will espouse you with righteousness and justice, kindness and mercy;
I will espouse you with faithfulness,
and you will know God. (vv. 21-22)

If the point of the prophet is that God will reconcile with Israel and espouse her once again after her faithlessness, what is the function of all these nouns?

I have said these words daily for years, and I have thought about them time and again, both in the context of my practice and in study. What I have discovered over time is that these verses are tightly constructed to provide the necessary elements for developing an intimate relationship, not only between a Jew and God, but also between loving partners.

The first element is time. A relationship does not come with an expiration date; it does not spoil like milk in a bottle, and it does not need to be renewed like a driver’s license. A relationship is eternal and continual; it takes time to develop and requires commitment and work, and it builds upon experience, some good, but also some which is not good. The commitment of eternity demands that we not just look at the good, but that we work through that which is not - I don’t use the term “bad” here because with the right care and nurturing, even the bad can be turned into a positive, growing experience.

Next comes two couplets: צדק - righteousness and משפט - justice, חסד - kindness and רחמים - mercy. (The Hebrew words for each are not as easy to convey in English, and thus the translations are approximate.) On a cursory level, the members of each couplet seem redundant. Taken as a pair, צדק and משפט speak to the need for fairness, limits, and rules, but there is a difference. צדק is concerned with maintaining a fair balance and rectifying wrongs. משפט focuses on the actual rules with which the partners in a relationship must abide. צדק is the abstract, a mindset that enables the concrete משפט to function.

As for the second couplet חסד and רחמים are concerned with caring and emotional well being. חסד generally speaks to concrete acts of kindness, the embodiment of רחמים that is the abstract force for care and concern, its emotional underpinnings. As a pair, חסד and רחמים are both needed in a relationship. It isn’t just the acts of kindness or just the caring that matter, but the emotion and love that accompany those acts as they work in concert.

If we look at the way these couplets are laid out, we find the order is reversed: 

צדק
- fairness -abstract משפט - rules -
concrete

X
חסד
- actions - concrete רחמים - caring -
abstract

It appears that there is no prioritization here; all elements are needed in a healthy, growing relationship.

With time, right action and proper nurturing, confidence grows and אמונה, faith in each other becomes more deeply rooted. As we enter into a relationship, we do so with blind faith in the other. But just as a pot needs to simmer for the ingredients to meld into a soup, the same is true in a marriage.

The final element is דעת, generally translated as knowing, but better conveyed as intimate knowledge. My understanding of Genesis 4:1- וְהָאָדָם יָדַע אֶת־חַוָּה אִשְׁתּוֹ, “Adam knew Eve his wife,” is not simply a reference to sexual intimacy, but also emotional intimacy. They had experienced each other in their mastery over the garden, their failure, their duplicity, their shame and their pain. Emotional intimacy is achieved when partners are able to bare themselves and to see the other in their emotional nakedness, their ability to accept each other and themselves in each others’ presence, warts and all, and to find comfort and renewal in that presence.

Hosea begins with the story of the prophet’s marriage to Gomer. Despite her serial infidelity, Hosea loved Gomer. It was in the context of this tumultuous relationship that he prophesied about the reification of the relationship between husband and wife: 

וְהָיָה בַיּוֹם־הַהוּא נְאֻם־ה’ תִּקְרְאִי אִישִׁי וְלֹא־תִקְרְאִי־לִי עוֹד בַּעְלִי

And on that day, declares God, you will call me ishi (my husband=my man) and no longer will you call me ba’ali (my husband=my master). (v.18)
Hosea redefines the marital relationship, not based on economics, status, or subordination, but instead as a mutual covenant; equals, as partners in a loving relationship. Just as a man would refer to his wife as ishti, so a woman would refer to her husband as ishi, and no longer as ba’ali.

It is not happenstance that this chapter is recited shortly before we celebrate Shavu’ot, the festival that celebrates the revelation at Sinai. The marriage metaphor is often used in relation to Shavu’ot and the Sinai encounter; some synagogues place a chuppah on the bima, and some Sephardim have the custom of reading a ketubah before the Torah is read. Shavu’ot celebrates that initial encounter between God and Israel, joining each other lovingly and eternally.

Likewise, this passage makes for a suitable introduction to the book of Bamidbar. The nascent relationship between God and Israel is tested time and again throughout this book. Just as Gomer did to Hosea, Israel tested God through numerous rebellions and infidelities, and yet, God’s love of Israel never failed.

And every morning, we reaffirm that ongoing love between God and Israel as we wrap the straps of tefillin around our fingers like a wedding band, binding us eternally in a loving relationship between us and God.

Perhaps a similar ritual is called for in this day and age, where marriage has become so fragile, to reaffirm the love and commitment needed between spouses.

A Refuge From Technology

Stand still in a shopping mall for a few minutes and observe the passers by. What you are likely to see are people somehow tethered to the invisible: people talking on cellphones, texting, thumbing BlackBerrys, tapping iPhones, or listening to iPods. They are oblivious to their environment and the people around them. They have found the perfect excuse to do as they were taught as children, to avoid strangers.

But it isn’t just strangers that they avoid. You can find small groups of people where each one is talking or texting someone else who isn’t present. If evolution could speed up, humans might soon appear with a short third arm with the sole purpose of supporting an electronic device close to their heads.

I am not a luddite. I am supportive of the development of new technologies and I am engaged in their distribution. I am an avid user of the internet and much of what the consumer digital world has to offer.

But there is a limit.

In recent weeks I have seen articles that bring to mind some real concerns about the abuse of such wonderful devices that were hardly known little more than a decade ago. One article bemoaned the loss of boredom, which is an important element in spurring creativity. With ubiquitous sources for occupation and entertainment, who needs to be creative? Another article addressed the communication gap developing between parents and children over text messaging. Families now have to contend with texting at the table during family meals. Some communities are attempting to declare weekly moratoriums on digital communications to encourage people to interact face to face, to enable families to share time together without intrusion.

The simple truth is that we have become a generation of techno-junkies. We have taken these very valuable tools and made them into a source for obsession and addiction. In the process we have made it seem that those who can be remotely accessed are more important to us than those who are in our presence. Tele-communication has become the preferred form of communication over face to face interaction, displacing family and community, and we have become enslaved to devices that we can fit in our pockets, to the point where we treat those we physically encounter with rudeness and total disregard.

The idea of a moratorium brought to mind the ideal of Shabbat. Abraham Joshua Heschel, the 20th century Jewish philosopher and activist, described Shabbat as “a palace in time,” one day out of seven when we can elevate ourselves and our environment by sanctifying that most uncontrollable element in our lives, the passage of time. It struck me, in thinking about how these technologies have taken such a dynamic role in our lives, that we have even less control over our lives now than we did ten years ago. We are never out of reach, and work can follow us when we are on vacation and even when we go into the bathroom.

Heschel’s metaphor may be in need of an upgrade.

I would remind owners of iPods that rechargeable batteries are not immortal. There are things that we can do to prolong the life of a battery, like allowing the battery to drain completely before recharging it at least once monthly. Constant recharging diminishes its capacity over time; allowing it to drain enables the battery to function better and longer. The same is true for a human being. As we allow technology to take over our lives, our senses become increasingly dulled to the world immediately around us, to those who are present in our lives, to our families, our neighbors, and our communities. We need a moment when we can recover from the ravages of time and technology, when we can recapture the essence of being human.

To upgrade Heschel’s metaphor would rob it of its poetic beauty. But just as a palace might be protected by fortifications, time, as well, seems in dire need of buttressing against those elements that continually rob us of it. We need Shabbat now as a fortification in time, as a refuge from the increasingly hurried pace of our lives, for without that refuge, we may never gain sight of a palace.

“But is it really bad for the Jews?” - The return of the Latin Mass for Good Friday

When looking inside the cover page of many Hebrew texts published in Europe over the last several centuries, one can find the imprimatur of a censor, often an apostate Jew, who made certain that nothing contained therein was offensive to the Church. Some editions of the Talmud had passages about Jesus and the Apostles removed. While some of these passages are problematic to contemporary sensitivities, they are part of our history, and these passages have found their way back into editions of the Talmud published today. We no longer have to contend with the censorship of the Catholic Church.

In this post-Holocaust era, a form of détente has developed between Jews and the Catholic Church. In the early 1960s, under the pontificates of John XXIII and Paul VI, the Vatican enacted sweeping reforms, among them the repudiation of its own anti-Semitic successionist theology and ushering in a period of dialogue that continues to this day. This is no small matter, as the Vatican has influence over millions of adherents around the globe.

Today, Jews are looking askance at recent promulgations of Pope Benedict XVI permitting parishes to return to the Latin Mass. At the heart of the conflict are passages in the Good Friday liturgy regarding the Jews. Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus, and under Christian domination Jews often suffered from public humiliation and pogroms particularly on Good Friday and Easter for their historical role in his death and for our continued rejection of the christ. Prior to 1955, the mass included the following passage:

Let us pray also for the perfidious Jews: that Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen. [Italics mine.]

Over the years, the passage underwent several minor changes, until 1970, when the liturgy was edited in accord with the reforms of Vatican II:

Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant. Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your Church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of redemption. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The differences are striking. Since 1970, Catholics under the dominion of the Vatican accepted the covenant between God and Israel, and they prayed for Jews to grow within that covenant. If anything was left open to question, it was the vague yet subtly stated hope that Jews “may arrive at the fullness of redemption.” The language of this version of the mass remains in effect for the vast majority of Catholics who enjoy the recitation of the liturgy in their own languages, also in accordance with Vatican II.

Not all Catholics took to the liturgical changes of Vatican II. For many, the loss of the Latin mass meant a break in an aesthetically meaningful tradition, while some felt that numerous changes left the church in a state of liturgical anarchy. Some within the church violated its canons and became separated from its umbrella. Under John Paul II and now under Benedict XVI, efforts have been underway to heal the rift. In recent months, the pope issued a letter that expanded on permissions granted by John Paul II, allowing for the recitation of the Latin Mass under some conditions. The liturgy had to follow the Latin version edited in 1962, but earlier this month, the Vatican released a change in the prayer for the Jews:

Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men. Almighty and eternal God, who want that all men be saved and come to the recognition of the truth, propitiously grant that even as the fulness of the peoples enters Thy Church, all Israel be saved. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

The proposed change attempts to strike a middle ground, intended to mollify theological conservatives while removing some of the earlier egregious language against the Jews. For Jews, however, as well as for some Catholics, this amounts to a turning back of the clock, a regression from building of bridges between the Catholic Church and the Jewish community. “This is a drastic retreat from the most important theological development of the modern era,” wrote James Carroll, a Catholic, in a Globe Op-Ed.

How are we to look at this development?

On the one hand, it takes considerable hubris for any one faith to make liturgical demands on another. Part of interfaith dialogue is the acceptance of differences between faiths and learning how to deal with those differences in a dignified manner. Some Catholics argue that there are Jewish prayers that they find objectionable, but they raise no alarms. This may be true, but nowhere in Jewish liturgy will you find a singling out of any faith, and most peoples mentioned ceased to exist long before Jewish liturgies crystalized. Jewish liturgy may call for the universal recognition of God, but that is the same God that Christians and Moslems share with Jews, and our faith and tradition withholds salvation from no one because they are not Jewish.

For Jews, Christian theologies and liturgies like this one can strike a raw nerve. It is hard to ignore two millenia of anti-Semitism that was nurtured by such prayers, and it is impossible to forget that in the past century six million Jews were reduced to ashes in the wake of a theology of hate, not to mention the countless others that perished in the Crusades, the Inquisition, and pogroms. Given the theological reforms of Vatican II, we might have expected a little more sensitivity.

In the end, if the Vatican will not otherwise demur from the past forty-two years of theological teachings on Jews and Judaism, how many churchgoers will understand and be adversely influenced when their priest intones:

Oremus et pro Iudaeis: Ut Deus et Dominus noster illuminet corda eorum, ut agnoscant Iesum Christum salvatorem omnium hominum. Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui vis ut omnes homines salvi fiant et ad agnitionem veritatis veniant, concede propitius, ut plenitudine gentium in Ecclesiam Tuam intrante omnis Israel salvus fiat. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Not many, I suspect.

The Sukkah: The Shack as a Symbol of Strength

I was fortunate to spend a year of college in Israel, studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I have many wonderful recollections of that year, but there is one that always comes back to me during this season.

It was 1981, months before the final Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. When the university offered tours of the Sinai for visiting students, commencing the day after Simchat Torah, I knew that this was an opportunity that I could not let pass. I developed a great appreciation for the barren beauty of deserts that year and during subsequent trips to Israel, always enjoying the trips down the Arava Road to Eilat, or wandering in the Negev, around Be’er Sheva, Sde Boker, Arad, Avdat, and Mitzpe Ramon.

My trip along the eastern tier of the Sinai (what then remained under Israeli administration) introduced me to places that were mentioned in the Bible, like Hatzerot and Di-Zahab. There was so much to see and do in this desolate wasteland, but one memory remains vivid. It was during a visit to a Bedouin encampment in Hatzerot. There we were led into a structure for guests. I looked up and took note of the roof, offering more shade than sunlight but with the blue sky visible. As I had just celebrated Sukkot in Jerusalem the week before, I knew that I was now sitting in a sukkah just like those that our ancestors lived in as they made their 40-year trek from the slavery of Egypt to their promised homeland of Eretz Yisrael. I felt great excitement sitting in this sukkah in a place where our forebears had made similar sukkot over three thousand years earlier. Indeed, the sukkah is a durable symbol that reaches back to our earliest years as a people.

Rabbinic law goes into detail concerning the construction of the Sukkah, which may seem strange for a temporary structure intended to last only a week. But these laws are intended to guarantee one thing: that a kosher Sukkah is one that may be sturdy enough to withstand routine elements, but not solid as to be invulnerable to excessive conditions.

It may seem stranger to consider the use of the Sukkah as a metaphor. We find in our tradition a recurring reference to sukkat shalom, a shelter of peace. If the Sukkah is, at best, a temporary structure with a porous roof, should we not hope to find the shelter of peace described as a permanent structure, perhaps a binyan shalom?

Peace, by its very nature, is a fragile structure. It is always susceptible to collapse from strong winds, but it needs to be strong enough to withstand the day to day pressures that could bring down a weaker structure. Peace does not exist in fortresses where people live in isolation from others; nor does it flourish in closed quarters that allow no light to permeate its inner parts.

This metaphor has a place in the celebration of Sukkot. The Torah speaks of seventy sacrifices offered during the seven days of Sukkot; rabbinic tradition has it that each of those offerings corresponds to one of the seventy nations believed to exist in biblical times. These offerings were brought for the welfare of these peoples, even though their religions and cultures were anathema to the ways of the Jewish people. And still, each of these peoples, as part of the family of humankind, were peopled by those likewise created in the image of God, and still worthy of ritual offerings on their behalf.

Fragility is a theme of this holiday. It comes at the time when the cold winds start to blow, when in Eretz Yisrael the rains just start to come. It is a time of material uncertainty, a time when our future sustenance comes to question. Only days after standing in judgment for our lives before God, we stand again, now with palm, myrtle, willow, and etrog, pleading hosha’na! Save us! Give us, we pray, a year of sustenance. For those of us who live in urban society, we may fail to grasp the importance of this moment, but this holiday was fraught with meaning in agrarian Israel.

But as serious as this holiday is, it is celebrated with the greatest of joy. It is ironically known as z’man simchateinu, the time of our rejoicing. This sobriquet for the holiday is derived from Lev. 23:40: “you shall take [the four species] and rejoice before the Lord, your God, for seven days.” The Mishna speaks of the water drawing festival during Sukkot as a celebration unparalleled. “Whoever had not seen the water drawing celebration never witnessed a joyous celebration in his days,” says the Mishna (Sukkah 5:1.) If the focus of the holiday is the fragility and unpredictability of nature and human sustenance, doesn’t it seem ironic, even audacious, for such celebration?

Such juxtapositions are not uncommon in Judaism. Yom Kippur, with its themes of repentance and judgment, is not a morose day, but a day of joy, a celebration of both our capacity to seek forgiveness and to mend our ways, as well as a faith in a loving and forgiving God. Sukkot, with its overriding concern for continued sustenance, is celebrated with a joy that comes from a confidence of faith in God as provider. Prayer from a position of confidence, even at a moment of grave concern, is stronger than petition from despair and anguish, when one is most in need. But even more important is the rejoicing that is part of the obligation connected with the observance of the holiday, as if to say that we should not become overwhelmed by our concern over what the future might bring.

For now, we should sit back and enjoy our meals in the sukkah, with the hope that we will be strong enough to withstand the occasional winds that affect our lives.

Teshuvah, Tefillah, and Tzedakah: Alleviating the severity of the decree

The Supreme Court of the Universe has come to order. Its Sole Judge has taken His seat at the bench as court officers and officials flit about performing their tasks. There is much dread and anxiety as the shofar sounds to call everyone to silence, and the only voice that is heard is the still, small voice that obscures its tremendous power. The Judge sits and take account of all beings and all deeds, and sentence is passed on each and every defendant: who shall live, who shall die. Who shall prosper, and who shall suffer impoverishment. Who will be empowered, and who will suffer humiliation.

This is the scene described in Unetaneh Tokef, a highlight of the High Holiday liturgy traditionally recited before the Kedushah of Musaf. We may be familiar with the story that ascribes its authorship to a rabbi in Germany who suffered martyrdom about one thousand years ago and composed these words with his dying breaths on Rosh Hashannah. That story, however, may be a later attribution for a composition that may, in fact, be among the oldest of prayers in the Machzor.

The scene is one of fear and dread, leaving all silent and helpless before the Almighty Judge. But one line shatters this image, telling us that all is not lost. As guilty as we are, we are told that we have recourse; “Teshuvah, (repentance,) Tefillah, (prayer,) and Tzedakah, (acts of righteousness,) diminish the severity of the decree.” Of all things, why do these three acts matter? And how do we know that they make a difference?

A midrashic text may offer us an answer. Midrash is more than stories and parables; it attempts teach us any meaningful lesson that we can derive from Biblical texts, our holiest writings. The rabbis of the Midrash, often the same rabbis who are cited throughout the Talmud, need to justify their teachings through offering Biblical proof texts, verses that verify the validity of their interpretation. We are told that the proof text for this central assertion of Unetaneh Tokef comes from a verse in 2 Chronicles 7:14:

R. Yudan [said] in the name of R. Leazar:

Three things discharge the decree, and they are:

Tefillah, Tzedakah, and Teshuvah,

And these three are found together in a single verse:

“when My people… pray,” – this is tefillah

“seek My face,” – this refers to tzedakah, as it says:

“and I, with righteousness (tzedek) will grasp Your face,” (Ps 17:15)

“and turn from their evil ways,” – this is teshuvah-

then, “…I will forgive their sins…” (Midrash Bereshit Rabba 44.)

Careful readers of Unetaneh Tokef will likely stop and scratch their heads when they read this passage, because despite their similarities there are also some differences between them. And if we look for other versions of this midrash elsewhere in rabbinic literature, we will come up with a consistent conclusion, that Unetaneh Tokef departs from the midrash upon which it is most likely based. Is Unetaneh Tokef out to teach us something new and different?

The first thing we note is that there is a variation in the order of elements. The prooftext and the rabbinic texts place tefillah first, tzedakah second, and teshuvah third, while the author of Unetaneh Tokef places teshuvah before the other two. What can we make of this? Perhaps it makes sense to put teshuvah first because this is a poem intended for Rosh Hashannah, and repentance is foremost on one’s mind. But this variation in order teaches an important lesson as well. We find a progression that is significant, both to the time, and to the necessary ingredients for improving the personal encounter with the Divine. Teshuvah requires introspection, recognizing the imperfection of the self, the frailty of the human condition, and the admission of our faults before the Almighty. Next, tefillah opens up the lines of communication between the Jew and the Almighty that allows for the presence of God to be manifest to the individual and that allows the individual to become ever more present before God. Last, tzedakah advances the human – Divine encounter beyond the individual by making the human an agent of Godliness on earth and among His creations. By tzedakah we mean not just the simple act of dropping coins in a pushke or writing a check – these may be important aspects of tzedakah, but what is more important is how we act to bring about balance and harmony within creation. What we do to enable the hungry to eat, the homeless to live in safety and security, the jobless to stand on their own two feet, the captive to find freedom, the lost soul to find community, for us to share as custodians of creation by helping to heal its wounds and mend its rifts – this is tzedakah in its full sense. As we perform this role, we become almost indispensable to God and for His creation.

Thus, the verse can be understood as follows: God says, when His people engage in prayer, practice the ways of His presence (through tzedakah,) and turn away from wrongdoing (through teshuvah,) God will forgive. So we go from mending our own standing before God through teshuvah, to establishing a relationship with God through tefillah, and finally, to acting as an agent of God through tzedakah.

Unetaneh Tokef takes another subtle twist from the rabbinic sources cited earlier. Those texts speak of tefillah, tzedakah, and teshuvah as means for cancelling the decree. Unetaneh Tokef, however, states that teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah diminish the severity of the decree. Unetaneh Tokef grapples with the presence of evil and the challenge of how one perceives it. How can one understand divine forgiveness in light of the misfortune or suffering of a person who lives a blameless or righteous life? This question has plagued many a theologian from time immemorial, and we are not likely to answer it anytime soon. What we do know is that the perceptions of misfortune and suffering can make a difference in the way we act and react to its challenge. One who sanctifies the encounter with God through repentance, prayer, and righteousness likely responds to adversity with equanimity; while one who suffers and lives discordantly with misfortune may cause disquietude and wrongdoing as a result. Our perceptions of evil are sometimes the very causes of, or excuses for, evil; through teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah, we can mitigate the evil that comes into the world by rising above pain, misfortune, and misery.

In truth, we may be miniscule in the awesome picture we find in Unetaneh Tokef, but our acts and our attitudes can enable us to play a part in it as well.

What Makes Shavu'ot Unique

Shavu’ot is an unusual holiday when we compare it with the others on our calendar. Every other holiday has its own gimmick: Rosh Hashannah has the shofar, Yom Kippur, fasting. Sukkot has the sukkah and the four species. Pesach has the seder, matzah, and the havoc played with our digestive tracts. But what about Shavu’ot? It is the shortest of all holidays - one day in Israel, two in the Diaspora - so it is over before we know it, and more often than not, totally overlooked.

What makes Shavu’ot unique is its lack of anything that we might think of as unique. It seems like the most vanilla of all holidays; though if one is into vanilla ice cream it isn’t so bad, given the custom of eating dairy on this holiday. Cheesecake, blintzes, kugel; it is the easiest of holidays for the desert enthusiast (that’s me - and I make a mean cheesecake!)

Shavu’ot has its own troubled history. Unlike other holidays, there is no discretely stated date for this holiday in the Bible. Its scheduling is a matter for interpretation; read Lv 23:15-16 and you will see two verses that contributed to centuries of sectarian conflict and different calendars that existed in ancient Judaism. Evidence to some of these radically different calendars can be found among some of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in the past 60 years.

The historical motive behind the celebration of Shavu’ot is the revelation at Sinai, the day when all of Israel stood at the foot of Sinai and heard the utterance of the Ten Commandments. Perhaps, then, it is fitting that the celebration of the revelation is unlike any other in our calendar. Our tradition is almost entirely based on interpretation; we are recipients of a code that is all inclusive, that contains everything that we, as Jews, need to know, and it is up to us to figure out how to apply it to every situation. Hence, the Mishnah, known as the “Oral Torah,” the Talmuds, midrashic literature and the codes and responsa of Jewish law contain endless interpretations of how Torah is applied to every possible situation in our lives. We celebrate this great anniversary by understanding that it, too, is dependent on interpretation.

One of the great Shavu'ot traditions that has developed over the centuries is the study of Tiqqun Leyl Shavu’ot. The text of the Tiqqun includes the opening and closing verses of each Torah portion and select other passages, the opening and closing passages of each tractate of the Mishnah, and of other sacred texts. In this way, we are, in effect, receiving all of Torah, written word and oral tradition, once again. While some continue the recitation of the Tiqqun, others will gather on this night to engage in some form of extensive study of Jewish texts.

A midrash tells us that all Jews - all of us - were present at the foot of Sinai, and that we all participated in accepting the covenant between God and the Jewish People, binding ourselves for all time to that contract. It is a moment that is likened to a wedding, the marriage between God and Israel, and some synagogues have a custom of erecting a chuppah on the bimah. Sefaradim have the custom of reading a Ketubah, a marriage contract, between God, the groom, and His people Israel, the bride.

I recently read a lecture given by Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, on the subject of revelation. In his speech, he mentions that the Hebrew language lacks a word like the English word “obey.” The closest analogue would be the Hebrew word shema, to hear, listen; Sacks notes that older English translations of the Torah tried to capture a more emphatic understanding of the word by using the archaism “to hearken.” If Sacks is correct, then our understanding of a covenantal relationship between us and God takes on a unique and powerful dimension. True, we have commandments, but our sense of “obedience” is vested in an act of communication. We see God coming to us in that most fundamentally human manner. God gives us words, God’s words, and God expects us to hear and respond. Our actions should lead us to dialogue, to hearing and understanding on a deeper level.

As Israel stood at the foot of Sinai, they accepted the covenant (or, according to that midrash, we accepted the covenant) by saying na’aseh v’nishma, we will act, and we will hear. Hearing on a deeper level, on an intimate level, depends on something more than just words, but on interaction that goes beyond words and expresses itself in action and deed.

Shavu’ot demands something from us that surpasses the ritual demands, or the gimmicks, of other holidays. Ritual has a place in our lives, but rituals can become rote. Our tradition is aware of the apparent conflict between keva, fixed rituals, and those acts based on kavannah, intention or internal motivation. Without the specific demands of a ritual, Shavu’ot asks that we recommit ourselves to receiving revelation, that we do so both intellectually and emotionally, that we engage in the ongoing conversation between us and God, and between ourselves and our tradition. We do that by engaging in the words with which God communicates with us, and by examining the ways others like ourselves engaged in that conversation over the centuries.

Leaving Mitzrayim... Again

בְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת עַצְמוֹ כְּאִלּוּ הוּא יָצָא מִמִּצְרַיִם.

In every generation, one is obligated to see himself as if he came out from Egypt. (Haggaddah/m. Pesahim 10:5)

It would seem a tall order, to visualize oneself having participated in the Exodus. Yet, this statement takes a central place in our observance of the Seder of Pesach and its obligatory recounting.

Slavery did not end with the exodus. It revisits us repeatedly and in different ways. A Holocaust survivor may be able to come closest to the likely intent of this dictum, seeing himself as part of a surviving remnant of the larger Jewish people from the horrors of mass slavery and annihilation.

Tradition, however, suggests that we can read this in a way that can touch us all.

Hebrew is a consonantal language; the symbols employed in vocalization are a medieval invention. Just like the text in a Torah scroll, most classical Hebrew texts are published without vowels. The sages who interpreted the Tanakh often used this to their homiletical advantage. A popular example of this appears in many Siddurim:

אָמַר רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר אָמַר רַבִּי חֲנִינָא: תַּלְמִידֵי חֲכָמִים מַרְבִּים שָׁלוֹם בָּעוֹלָם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וְכָל בָּנַיִךְ לִמּוּדֵי יְיָ, וְרַב שְׁלוֹם בָּנָיִךְ, אַל תִּקְרֵי בָּנָיִךְ אֶלָּא בּוֹנָיִךְ.

Rabbi Elazar cited Rabbi Hanina: Scholars increase peace in the world, as it says: “All your children shall learn of God, and your children shall have abundant peace.” Do not read (al tiqrei) banayich (your sons,) read instead bonayich (those who understand you.) (B. Berakhot 64a)

Likewise, there are many examples of “al tiqrei” homographs in rabbinic literature, where substitute readings are offered not for the purpose of textual emendation but for homiletic elaboration.

Returning to our passage, a late example of “al tiqrei” is offered suggesting that whenever we read mitzrayim (Egypt) we can instead read m’tzorim – under siege, or m’tzarim – under distress. Likewise, we can read the word Pharaoh as pera’oh, a cause of troubles. Indeed, there are many situations where people find themselves under siege, or in distress - if not physical, then psychological and spiritual - to circumstances that we may encounter. The Haggaddah refers to some of these circumstances, albeit in a limited way.

We begin the Seder by opening our doors and declaring: “all who are hungry should come in and eat, all in need should enter and participate in the Pesach.”

Poverty is not necessarily a permanent state, and it certainly need not be. Studies say that most Americans will endure poverty at some point in their lives. And those in that period of misfortune are most likely to encounter something akin to slavery, while trying to make ends meet by working under unfair, demeaning, and sometimes even illegal circumstances, without health benefits or security. Over the last decade, the US Department of Agriculture has studied trends in food security, the ability of a household to provide for the nutritional needs of family members. It is estimated that in 2004 nearly 12% of all American households, 38.2 million people, were “food insecure,” and that trend has been on an upswing since 1999. In that year, nearly 4% of all American households, approximately 11 million people, experienced hunger, in the world’s wealthiest country. Poverty and hunger are forms of social and economic enslavement, as are unemployment, underemployment, lack of access to health care, and homelessness, conditions driving one deeper into the m’tzarim.

Today’s economy demands a higher education in order in order to compete for jobs and to find some measure of financial security. Yet, access to university becomes increasingly challenging as costs climb annually. State colleges and universities are often under funded, making it even more difficult for people of limited means to attain an undergraduate degree.

There is also the Fourth Child, the one with cognitive difficulties “who knows not how to ask,” who in elementary and secondary education is often overlooked, not given access to professionals who can coach her and help her function in society. Many such children in this country grow into adults who are relegated to a life in the shadows and dependent on diminishing supports for people who cannot fend for themselves. All these find themselves in m’tzarim.

No one depends on miracles to wrest them from these forms of modern day bondage. Even in Mitzrayim, God’s miracles were accompanied by the human agency of Moshe to stand before Pharaoh and demand the liberation of his people. In America today, there are millions of people living in distress and too few Moshes to stand up for them. In Darfur, millions live under daily threat to their lives, and there are too few Moshes to stand for them.

As Jews, the Torah reminds us repeatedly that we were slaves in Mitzrayim and that we should comport ourselves accordingly. If we cannot relate to the slavery of ancient Mitzrayim, then we should try to relate to the m’tzarim of our day. The call may be more subtle and lack the drama of a burning bush, but the call is there. We cannot all be a Moshe, but we are not exempt from doing the best that we can be. Passover serves as a reminder that there is a call, and like Moshe, we should stand ready to respond, “Hineni – here I am.”

Religious Answers to Katrina's Questions

In the days since the Gulf Coast was stricken by Hurricane Katrina, many rushed to ask the question, "Where was God in this disaster?" Indeed, the same question was asked only a few months ago after a tsunami struck much of southeastern Asia, bringing a sudden wave of destruction to lands bordering on the Indian Ocean. As such cataclysms occur, we are left with many whys - why so much destruction, so much death, especially of so many innocents, in this case the poorest of the poor in this country, one of the richest countries on earth.

Where was God?

Ultimately, any attempt to answer this question will lead to futility. Any answer is bound to raise new questions, each leaving more confusion in its wake. The most challenging questions in the theological realm focus on the existence of evil in this world. Isaiah speaks of it almost matter-of-factly when he says: "I form light and create darkness, I make Shalom and create evil - I, God, do all these things." (45:7) But this verse seems so harsh that when the sages coined the first of the morning blessings preceding the Shema using the same verse, they made one change: Praised be You... who forms light and creates darkness, makes Shalom and creates everything. Everything - to include suffering, catastrophe, evil. It is part of the order of the universe; we may question why, but the answers are beyond our comprehension, because we cannot peer into the mind of God any more than we can through our interpretation of the words of Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, the expression of the Divine Will. We are told that there are "70 facets to Torah," that the same verse may yield diverse and disparate interpretations, and when it comes to our understanding of God, it is no less the case.

In the days following the tsunami, I turned to the many articles by religious leaders that were posted on the Internet. One interesting explanation came from Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain. Rabbi Sacks turned to Maimonides to explain that

Natural disasters... have no explanation other than that God, by placing us in a physical world, set life within the parameters of the physical. Planets are formed, tectonic plates shift, earthquakes occur, and sometimes innocent people die. To wish it were otherwise is in essence to wish that we were not physical beings at all. Then we would not know pleasure, desire, achievement, freedom, virtue, creativity, vulnerability and love. We would be angels - God's computers, programmed to sing His praise.

God may set the dynamics of nature in motion, but from there it would seem to function on its own, much like the watch once it leaves the hands of the watchmaker.

Rabbi Sacks, in his attempt to come to grips with the tsunami, says that our response to such disasters is not to seek understanding, but to attempt to become a partner in creation by bringing "comfort to the bereaved, [to] send healing to the injured and aid to those who have lost their livelihoods and homes."

But Maimonides also rejects the idea that natural calamity is meaningless and without reason. We cannot blame God for the way in which nature takes its toll on innocent victims, but we are also forced to understand what problems underlie the catastrophe.

Indeed, Rabbi Sacks' solution, to partner with God in the works of recovery is something that we have become good at doing. We all join in opening our pockets and lending a hand, in feeling a sense of solidarity with those who have suffered from disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

But what happens between the disasters? For millions of people, the levees that shield them from despair are very weak. Every day leads to new breaches that leave individuals and families foundering in the deluge, some who drown in the torrents with no one there to offer a lifeline. We overlook those disasters on a daily basis; we are only led to outrage when cataclysm strikes en masse. While Boston prepared to take in Katrina's refugees, it led an assault on its' homeless, taking what few belongings that they had to make their homes under overpasses. While Massachusetts worked to welcome those who lost everything to nature's fury, it forgot its own residents who lack access to health care and basic necessities of life.

Between the disasters, do we think about how our actions can further the damage done by these acts of nature? We may not be able to prevent natural disasters of this magnitude, but we can mitigate their impact by not developing wetlands; we may be able to minimize the number of losses by making it possible for people with lesser means to have the wherewithal to escape nature's wrath when it comes their way. We can prevent greater damage to life and property by making sure that needed resources are not misappropriated, by making sure that the funds needed to shore up the levies are not cut and that the personnel for emergency management and public safety are appropriate and available.

Disasters happen; they are a part of nature that God created. We cannot prevent these disasters from occurring. But we do play a part as custodians of that creation, and we sometimes have the power to mitigate the impact of these powerful events. Before we ask, "Where was God?" perhaps the appropriate question to be asked is "Where were we?"

Understanding Tish'ah B'Av Today

Note: A previous version of this article was published in 2003, but it is now expanded to reflect current realities. As I was completing my edits, I came across the following news brief:

Feast or fast?

A religious Israeli notable stirred outrage by saying that he will hold a feast on Tisha B’Av.

Avraham Burg, a former Labor Party lawmaker and Jewish Agency for Israel head whose father founded Israel’s National Religious Party, said in a radio interview that rather than abstain from food or drink on Tisha B’Av, the day that marks the destruction of the First and Second Temples, he and his family plan to hold a festive meal in celebration of Jerusalem’s reunification in the modern State of Israel.

The skullcap-wearing Burg’s defiance of Orthodox ritual drew quick censure from Israeli religious figures. “The existence of a State of Israel and the rebuilding of Jerusalem are still no replacement for our lost Temple,” NRP leader Zevulun Orlev said. (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 11 August 2005)

This year, Tish'ah B'Av falls on Sunday, 14 August.

* * *

In August 1981, when I was beginning my year of studies at Hebrew University, I had my first meeting with my advisor, himself a Modern Orthodox oleh from the Boston area. Somehow, our conversation turned to the observance of Tish’ah B’Av (which had occurred some weeks earlier.) To my surprise, my advisor thought that Tish’ah B’Av was no longer relevant at a time when the Jewish people were returning to their homeland and had established a new state and were reestablishing religious and social institutions there.

My argument then was probably little different than it is today. I am not impressed by claims that Tish’ah B’Av is no longer relevant to us as we now celebrate 57 years of Jewish statehood. In fact, perhaps the existence of the state gives us all the more reason to be aware of that day’s importance.

Make no mistake about this: I am a blue and white dyed in the wool Zionist. I am not one of the Neturei Karta, those ultra Orthodox Jews who believe that, according to Jewish law, the establishment of a Jewish state before the coming of the messiah is illegitimate.

But I am afraid that Tish’ah B’Av is misunderstood.

Tish’ah B’Av is one of only two 25-hour fasts on the Jewish calendar. It commemorates a series of cataclysms in Jewish history that occurred on or around that date in different years. Both the first (in 586 BCE) and second (in 70 CE) Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed on Tish’ah B’Av. Commentators on the Torah claim that the report of the spies, which led to the grumbling of the Israelites and the 40 years of desert wandering, was given on that day. The expulsions from England in 1290, France in 1306, and Spain in 1492 (the same day that Columbus set sail) also took place on Tish’ah B’Av. World War I (which led to World War II and the Holocaust) began on the same date on the Hebrew calendar.

Yet Tish’ah B’Av is less about disasters that befell our people than about what precipitates disaster.

In focusing on the origins of this fast day, the Talmud offers an explanation why the Temples were destroyed. It tells us that the first temple was destroyed because of idolatry, adultery, and wanton bloodshed; the second because of the wanton hatred (sin’at hinnam) that was rampant among the Jewish people at that time.

The history of the Second Temple period is replete with accounts of the fratricidal politics of the Hasmonean dynasty and the House of Herod, and the divisions among the numerous sects of the day, including the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, Sicarii, and others. These were days when Jews thought little of taking the blood of their brethren for political gain, and where political and religious sniping were commonplace. Divisions lasted into the very siege of Jerusalem, when different groups vied for power in a hopeless situation that was further exacerbated by domestic divisiveness.

The Talmudic story of Qamtza and Bar Qamtza, presented as the (metaphorical?) cause of Jerusalem’s downfall in 70 CE, speaks to the destructive power of frail and inflexible egos, demonstrating how one tragic mistake can lead to disaster. Someone hosting a banquet sent a messenger to invite a man named Qamtza to his party, but the messenger delivered the invitation to his rival, Bar Qamtza, instead. When Bar Qamtza appeared at the event, the host moved to have his rival evicted. Seeking to avoid public humiliation, Bar Qamtza offered to pay the costs of the party if the host would allow him to remain. But the host, in the presence of the leaders of the community, stood his ground. Insulted, Bar Qamtza plotted against the leaders of Jerusalem and manufactured evidence against them, informing the Roman rulers that they were engaged in planning an insurrection. The story continues with further details of poor judgment and perilous errors that led to the destruction of the city.

The point of these stories, apocryphal as they might be, is not to present historical facts of events that occurred, but to teach about the conceptual backdrop to these historical events. As much as we can blame Rome for the destruction of the Second Temple, we can look inward to what allowed for that defeat to take place.

The question for today is this: Is the internal Jewish condition any better today than it was in 70 CE? Whether we look at Israel or at our situation in the Diaspora, the answer is: “probably not.” We may be above the cloak and dagger operations of the ancient Sicarii, though we have come perilously close to bloodshed from time to time. In the religious sphere, no camp is willing to surrender its claim to the truth, and all are guilty of verbal or political acts against others in the service of God.

In Israel, we have seen the assassination of one prime minister on the accusation of treason by a religious zealot, and the vituperation of the accusations hurled from one camp against the other continues the spirit that led to that murder. We are blessed with prosperity, opportunity, and freedom in the Diaspora, and in Israel we are blessed with political independence in our ancestral homeland. But our behavior often shows how little we have learned from the rabbis who sought to teach us some important lessons in the Talmudic account mentioned earlier, and others like it, about the infighting that has sapped our strength as a people during critical junctures of our history.

This year, Tish’ah B’Av marks another painful moment in our history. As of midnight immediately following Tish’ah B’Av, it is no longer lawful for Jews to remain in the Gaza Strip, by order of the Government of the State of Israel. It doesn’t matter what position one takes on Israeli politics and policy, whether one is dove or hawk, right wing or left, secular or religious, the expulsion of Jews by Jews is painful to accept. The disruption of lives built over decades in communities deserves sympathy. And the emotional pain that will be experienced by those given the task of carrying out the orders of expulsion in the days following Tish’ah B’Av deserves our consideration as well.

But there is a difference. Israel lives today under the rule of law in a democratic state. Its policies, like them or not, are promulgated out by those elected by the people and charged with making the decisions that affect their daily lives. A democratic society must be open to disagreement and debate, but in the end, dina d’malchuta dina, “the law of the state is the law.” The efforts of some, especially of rabbis and religious individuals, to take exception to that dictum and to encourage violations of the law, to persuade soldiers to refuse orders or desert, is reprehensible.

As we mark Tish’ah B’Av, we should dwell less on the destruction brought upon us by outsiders but on the destructiveness of our divisiveness, and our apparent inability to find unity within our diversity. Until such a time when the Jewish people can dwell peacefully together, we should continue to fast on Tish’ah B’Av, in the hope that the hunger that we feel on that day will make us think of how we might suffer more if we, as a people, cannot learn to live as one.

Pope John Paul II: Not just historic, but heroic

Pope John Paul II @ Kotel, originally uploaded by markinma.

For a Jew, the institution of the papacy is a foreign concept. So one is tempted to ask: Why should the death of a pope be significant to us? Despite the lack of an institutional bond with the papacy, many of us still feel a sense of loss for John Paul II. We had disagreements with the man, to be sure, but we need to look at the bigger picture, and in this case, that picture was of a man who could teach lessons to all of humanity, regardless of creed.

Karol Wojtyla was a product of his times in the best possible sense. Born in southern Poland, he grew up in an environment where Jews and Catholics intermingled and interacted in each other’s lives. As a child, he had many Jewish friends. Earlier this week, an Israeli daily published a letter written by a Jewish childhood friend of the young Karol testifying not only to the closeness between the future pope and the Jews of his community, but also to the reunion of these old friends when John Paul made his pilgrimage to Israel in 2000. They maintained a personal correspondence ever since.

As a young man, he was profoundly influenced by the destruction of the Jews of Poland and Europe. A more cynical witness might have ascribed the decimation of European Jewry to historical errors of the Jews and found theological rationale for it. But throughout his life he preferred in this regard to drive theology towards building bridges and mending the ways of the past that led to such wholesale destruction. A Polish professor from Krakow’s ancient Jagiellonian University told me nearly 20 years ago of his personal experience as a seminary student of Wojtyla’s, about the future pope’s real love for Jews, his respect for Judaism, and his pain over the Shoah.

John Paul II may not have been a trailblazer when it came to building relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Jews. That honor must rest with John XXIII, who in the early 1960s convened the Second Vatican Council that promulgated numerous reforms, among them Nostra Aetate, a document that removed the basis for anti-Semitism from the theology and teachings of the Church. But if not a trailblazer, John Paul II was the enforcer in ways that few could imagine. He not only talked about relations with Jews, he set personal examples.

In 1986, he visited Rome’s major synagogue and embraced its rabbi. In his travels, he sought out leaders of Jewish communities. He established diplomatic ties with the State of Israel, an act that in fact defied the old theology of supercessionism, which believed that the Jews were exiled from their homeland for rejecting Jesus. And in a poignant moment, a humble pope stood alone, dwarfed by the stones of the Kotel, and prayed for forgiveness, and in keeping with the Jewish tradition, stuck a note between its cracks.

Several papal pronouncements declared anti-Semitism “a sin against God and man” and raised questions about the practice of proselytizing. And in our own greater Boston community, let us not forget how he honored Leonard Zakim, himself a builder of bridges, shortly before Zakim’s untimely death. To recount the ways in which he made efforts to heal the scars left by two millennia of hatred and bloodletting was not just historic, it was heroic. That heroism was already evident as a young priest who returned a Jewish child in the foster care of Christians during the Shoah to his Jewish family.

The pontificate of John Paul II did not stop at the work towards reconciliation between Catholics and Jews. This pope possessed a deep love for humanity and a profound drive towards social justice. It was not above this man, cloaked in the regalia of his high office, to sit in prayer with prisoners or to reach out to the downtrodden in society. He used his office to speak out against repressive regimes in ways that few religious leaders have done.

Certainly, there were moments of conflict between this pope and the Jewish community. But no one could ever accuse him of anti-Semitic animus. The following comment, made before a Jewish group, perhaps captures the spirit of his reign and his work towards reconciliation: “I am convinced, and I am happy to state it on this occasion, that the relationships between Jews and Christians have radically improved in these years. Where there was ignorance and therefore prejudice and stereotypes, there is now growing mutual knowledge, appreciation and respect. There is above all, love between us; that kind of love, I mean, which is for both of us a fundamental injunction of our religious traditions… Love involves understanding. It also involves frankness and the freedom to disagree in a brotherly way where there are reasons for it.”

There is a tension in some traditional religious communities, Jews among them, to isolate the community from “outsiders” to protect it from influences of the outside world. There is also a fundamental flaw in such a mindset. While one always runs a risk through exposure to outside ideas, perhaps one runs a greater risk by fostering ignorance, which fosters hatred, which fosters bloodshed. From the openness of Karol Wojtyla and the Jews of his native Wadowice, the world would learn lessons of hope for humanity, the dignity of difference and the respect for that which was created in the Divine image. May his successors to the throne of St. Peter have the strength and courage to carry on in that spirit.

Yehi zichro baruch. May his memory be a blessing.

Chanukah, from a broader perspective

Of the holidays that appear on the Jewish calendar, Chanukah is the most recent, one of the most widely celebrated, and probably the least understood. It is most recent in that it commemorates events that occurred after the Biblical period which ended with the construction of the Second Temple. It is so widely celebrated because of its proximity with the darkest days of the year, a season celebrated by nearly all peoples from time immemorial, and for us in the Christian-dominated world, given its proximity to Christmas. But what is Chanukah all about?

Most people will be able to answer that Chanukah celebrates the victory of the Maccabees over the Greeks who had imposed their cult and culture over Judea during the second century BCE. Judah Maccabee, son of Mattathias the priest, led a guerrilla army in battles against the vastly greater Syrian Greek forces, ultimately liberating the Temple that the Hellenists profaned and reinstating the service there. Then there is the story of the miracle of the oil that lasted eight days. We are all familiar with those stories.

But while Chanukah celebrates a victory, it does not celebrate the end of the war. The campaign continued for more than two years, ending in the spring of 161 BCE with the defeat of Nicanor. If we look at historical sources such as the books of the Maccabees, we will find reference to a one-day holiday celebrating that final victory. What ever happened to that celebration of the war's conclusion?

We are never given a discreet response to that question. But we have sufficient evidence to suggest several explanations.

The end of the war unleashed a bitter period in Jewish self-rule, one that was, in part, responsible for the Roman conquest of Jerusalem in 63 BCE and the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. The Hasmonean dynasty became known for its ruthlessness. It was corrupted by wealth and power, knowing no bounds when seeking to advance their interests. Historical sources are replete with accounts of bloodshed, even fratricide, among its principals. Eventually, this divisive and destructive behavior held the door open for Rome when it entered the fray and took control of Judea in 63 BCE.

The ultimate arbiters of the holiday, what would or would not be celebrated and how, were the rabbis of the Talmud. Their texts give Chanukah short shrift. Little is mentioned of the observance of Chanukah in the Talmud. And the celebration of Nicanor Day, the day that celebrates the final Hasmonean victory, is nowhere to be found in rabbinic sources.

This absence may be intentional. The rabbis may have been ambivalent about Chanukah, the militarism surrounding it, and the ultimate rise of the dynasty that lacked the sense of mission and the heroism of its forebears. Violence may be acceptable only to meet limited objectives, for the defense of the people and their ability to live as Jews. The historical sources indicate that those objectives were met at the point when the Maccabees secured the Temple, and the reversal of the edicts that robbed the Jews of their religious freedom. But beyond that, their battles were for political reasons; even during the remainder of the revolt, some who had fought alongside the Maccabees broke away from them at this point, seeking negotiated diplomatic solutions to meet their goals.

The selection of Zechariah 2:14 – 4:7 for the haftarah on the Shabbat of Chanukah offers some interesting insights. This haftarah presents two visions, the first of the high priest appearing in filthy garments. He changed into priestly garb, and then told that “if you walk in My paths and keep My charge, you in turn will rule My House and guard My courts.” (3:7) The second vision is that of the menorah fed oil directly from olive trees standing on either side of the menorah, untouched by human hands. The significance of the vision is then explained to the prophet: “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit–said the LORD of hosts.” (4:6) The message here is twofold: The later Hasmonean priest/kings did not lead by following in God’s path, but were corrupted by their appetite for power. While the use of military force was appropriate up to a point, the abuse of that power was seen in contradistinction to God’s spirit as a force for protection and sustenance.

The rabbis were less interested in the use of force to meet political ends, and at times show a preference towards compromise and negotiation. The most famous example is the story of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, who arranged to have himself smuggled out of Jerusalem in a coffin during the Roman siege leading up to the destruction of the Second Temple, to negotiate with the general (and soon to be emperor) Vespasian. The Talmudic accounts of the events leading up to the destruction of the Temple do not speak well of those who sought to prevent any settlement, those who chose the all-or-nothing approach that ultimately led to catastrophe.

Nicanor Day, the day that once celebrated the final victory of the Maccabees, was not entirely lost in Jewish tradition. In an ironic twist, Nicanor Day, which was celebrated on the 13th of Adar, is now the date of the Ta’anit Esther, the fast of Esther.

The subtleties of the holiday exist to teach an important lesson: that power and force have their uses, but they must also be checked. Without a clearly defined sense of purpose, without goals that are above reproach, and without a willingness to seek alternative means to address further concerns, a well-deserved victory may ultimately become the source of ignominious defeat.

The War Prayer

I first came across Mark Twain's The War Prayer while browsing in Border's in Downtown Boston a few months after 9/11. The people at HarperCollins made the wise decision to reprint an edition that was published in 1968, one that was illustrated with drawings by John Groth, an artist and war correspondent. It was one of those books that, upon picking it up, I could not leave the store without.

The story behind this story is an interesting one. Twain wrote it in 1904/1905, during the Philippine-American War, and it was rejected for publication in Harper's Magazine. When he later read it to family members and close friends, it was suggested that if he were to publish it, it would be regarded as a sacrilege. Albert Bigelow Paine, Twain's biographer, recounts that he was asked if he would still publish it. "'No,' he said, 'I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead.'" Twain died in 1910, and Paine's biography was published in 1912, but The War Prayer remained unpublished until 1923.

The War Prayer is a very powerful statement, a reminder that we need to be careful of what we pray for especially in a time of war. Few of us have witnessed the reality of war's desolation, even in this day of mass media. Our government has very thoughtfully shielded us from the pictures that I grew up with during the Vietnam war, pictures of flag draped coffins being offloaded at Dover AFB, or worse, the pictures of our escapades in Iraq found in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Twain's words paint the awful picture for us with his words, and the printed edition with Groth's drawings is all the more devestating for the reader.

I include it here because I believe it is an important read.

You can find the text of The War Prayer on any number of websites; the text is in the public domain. This text copied from:
http://www.spinelessbooks.com/warprayer/

The War Prayer
Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came—next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams—visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!

Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory —

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside—which the startled minister did—and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

I come from the Throne—bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import—that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of—except he pause and think.

“God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two—one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this—keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

“You have heard your servant's prayer—the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it—that part which the pastor—and also you in your hearts—fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory—must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle—be Thou near them! With them—in spirit—we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it—for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. AMEN.

After a pause:

“Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!”

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

They call this "morals?"

One of the most contentious elections in US history is now behind us, but the ramifications of it are likely to live on for the remainder of what I hope will be a long lifetime to come. I say this not only because we have seen a ballooning deficit created out of a surplus during the first act of Bush 43, a deficit that my children will be saddled with during their adult lives, but because the next four years are likely to bring several resignations from the Supreme Court. A president with the illusion of a "mandate," and a Senate more conservative in numbers, are likely to nominate and approve justices who will turn the clock back on advances in civil rights and social justice that we have witnessed during the latter half of the 20th Century.

Finally, George W. Bush is elected President by the people, four years after his election by the Supreme Court. After a long and arduous campaign against Senator John F. Kerry, a campaign where he was bested by his opponent's superior command of policy, where he saw consistent defeat in debates, at a time when the failure of his policies at home and abroad were made abundantly manifest, he won.

As one British tabloid asked on its front page, "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?"

One answer we are given from some exit polls has to do with morals. People thought George W. Bush was more moral than John Kerry. Seriously. Several exit polls showed consistent results: of a number of issues including Iraq, terrorism, the economy, and taxes, the largest single group of respondents (between 20 - 22%) said that the most impoprtant issue that determined how they voted had to do with the moral stance of the candidate, and 80% of those respondents voted for the president.

We need to give this proposition serious consideration on several levels. One has to do with the changing nature of political discourse in America. We are supposedly one of the most religious countries on earth. Religious values play a major part in the lives of Americans, and this is something that Republicans have learned to manipulate very well since Reagan was president.

But as a religious person myself, I have to question this talk of religion and morals. What is it about these religious morals that drove 20 % of American voters to the polls for President Bush? What his campaign had to offer these people is two thirds of the unspoken "G-string" mantra of Guns, God, and Gays. Leaving guns aside for the purpose of this discussion, Bush 43 offered an enhanced role for religion in public life through the promotion of his "faith based initiative." No doubt, religious institutions play an important role in the welfare of society. Some, supported by a particular faith group and inspired by a sense of religious mission, operate in a non-sectarian manner, employing people and serving people of all faiths without the overtones of creed or confession, and these organizations and agencies have been the beneficiaries of of state and federal support for some time now (I serve on the board of one such organization.) That is different from an agency or program that uses religious adherence, ideals or dogmas as a selective process for employment or as part of their service delivery - something which our federal tax dollars should not support in violation of the First Amendment. But this is something that our government does now, and it scores points with many who chose not to separate their lives in faith from their lives in a society with others who do not share their faith. Likewise, the administration's support for school vouchers will allow more children to attend religious private schools at the expense of the taxpayer and at a cost to public education.

What concerns me more than these infractions of our civil code is the type of selectivity that the religious right and the administration seems so focused upon, while leaving other sacred values shared by the religious communities represented in the US today ignored. Think about the issues of greatest concern to the religious right today and what do you come up with? They are, ostensibly, issues related to sexuality and reproduction. Abortion, sex/abstinence education, restrictions on AIDS prevention programs, same sex marriage, embryonic stem cell research - all items revolving around very primal issues. To the non-initiated, it would seem that this is the major thrust of American religion.

But there is another side to this moral divide, the part that, sadly, we hear little about within the religious and moral values rubric of politics today. Have we forgotten that social imperatives such as feeding the poor, caring for the orphan and the widow, have their roots in the Bible? What about fair employment practices? What about proper custodianship over the environment; does that not find its roots in the Bible? The sanctity of life and preservation of health? The education of children and the respect for our elders? All of these are not liberal values, they stem from the bedrock of the faiths to which the majority of Americans adhere. And these values were scarcely heard during the first term of Bush 43, and they were rarely expressed during his (re)election campaign.

While the Democratic Party supports these values, it tends to express them outside the rubric of religion and morals. These are social objectives met by strategic policy. And while keeping to the sterile language of policy debate, perhaps the Democratic Party does itself and the country a disservice. This was not the case during the fight for civil rights and racial equality, where the the major advocates wore clerical titles like Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, just to name a few, who spoke out with "moral grandeur and spiritual audacity" against the injustices of American society. Their rhetoric, like the rhetoric used today by the GOP, was peppered with biblical references and spiritual meaning, yet approached in an inclusive manner that could engage Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, in a sacred cause.

As Democrats, we stand for sacred values, values enshrined in faith and scripture. Read, if you will, Isaiah 58, the prophetic reading for the morning of Yom Kippur that places the ritual of fasting in perspective: "This is the fast that I desire: to unlock the fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of wickedness to let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke. It is to share your bread with the hungry, and to take the wretched poor into your home; when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to ignore your own kin." Is this the spirit in which the Republicans and their religious cohorts have ruled these past four years? We needn't think long and hard for an answer. This is not the rhetoric we hear from the religious voices in politics today, but perhaps that is a void that needs to be filled.

Instead, we get the Republican proposal that we build a "culture of life" in America. But just how hypocritical can they become when this "culture of life" does not extend to life beyond the uterus? How futile is it when it cares only for the fetus? We have a party that advocates capital punishment and a president who has put more convicts to death than the most successful serial killers. We have a president and a Congress that has sent over a thousand troops and an unknown number of civilians to their deaths in an illegitimate war of dubious value - and let us not forget the tens of thousands of the wounded. We have Americans without health insurance and unable to afford needed medications. We have families struggling to survive, to make ends meet, sometimes unraveling at the seams under the stress of life in America today. If we are to have a real culture of life, we need to take care of the living before the unwanted unborn who will only come into a world that will cast them aside and care nothing for them later.

Religious fervor can be a great thing. It can be a balm to cure an ailing society. But in the wrong hands, it can be a bomb that will rend it asunder, with a force that will alienate people from a just and loving Creator. A diverse and democratic society cannot survive if any one faith claims a monopoly on truth and imposes that one truth on its citizens; if so it becomes a society that loses its democratic character and imposes its will upon those of us who don't share that point of view, and we revert from being "citizens" to "subjects." Part of the social contract in contemporary democracies is that we seek out the common denominators, but we recognize and respect the diversity that our religious faiths and legal traditions bring to a greater society; we learn from them, but at times we set them aside for the greater good. We fear not the wrath of a vengeful God; we seek the care of a merciful and compassionate God who will bless our efforts to build a society that will care for the entirety of the Divine creation and will seek to glorify God, each one in accordance with the dictates of his or her creed and conscience.

For us, now, as Democrats, we need to seek out people of faith who will forcefully and passionately preach the gospel of tolerance, diversity, dignity, and respect as a moral imperative. We must learn to clothe our goals in garments of righteousness, to speak the language of sanctity in a greater society. Short of that, we will lose to those who preach their narrowness within the context of a hollow holiness, and the great evolving experiment of American democracy will suffer the fate of so many nations that have fallen under the weight of their faith built upon hubris.