Reclaiming the Public Square with Hanukkah Lights
BY RABBI DAVID JAFFE , 12/14/2017
One Hanukkah, when I was a child, an Israeli relative showed up at our home in the New York City suburbs with a type of menorah we had never seen before. It was a glass rectangular box with candle holders inside. Since we always lit candles inside, around the kitchen table, we all thought, “Why would anyone ever want a menorah like this?!”
Indeed, he was spectacularly unsuccessful in marketing these “Israeli menorahs” to the Jewish community in the tri-state area. It was only many years later, during my first Hanukkah in Jerusalem, where many people light their menorahs outside by the street, that I finally understood the menorah’s design: The glass box protects the fire from blowing out.
Why light in the street?
The Talmud and Rashi explain that we light the Hanukkah candles for “pirsumei nisah” or to “publicize the miracle.” The public aspect of the candles is so important that if no one else sees them, it is as if you haven’t fulfilled the mitzvah. The Talmud explains that the ideal place to light is outside, or in a window facing the street when people are most likely to see it. Only in a time of genuine danger does the Talmud instruct us to light inside, hidden from public view.
What exactly is the miracle we’re publicizing?
It could be the military victory of a small army against the world power, or, as the Talmud prefers, the spiritual miracle of the one flask of pure oil lasting eight days. If we combine the military and spiritual miracles we get something particularly relevant to our era. The miracle was that God gave strength to a small, minority group to maintain its religious and cultural heritage without assimilating into the powerful, dominant culture of the time. According to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Jewish success in maintaining our particular culture throughout the millennia is a witness for all people to the “dignity of difference.” In this era of homogenizing forces of secular globalization, on the one hand, and ethno-nationalism on the other, valuing difference and the ability to live with people from different cultures is more important than ever.
If publicizing this miracle is so important, why did my family always light in the privacy of our kitchen? The answer probably has to do with exemption in the Talmud from publicizing the miracle in times of hostility towards Jews. Our Eastern Europe ancestors were frequent targets of Christian violence, so these vulnerable communities moved the menorah inside. Once inside, they stayed inside. Lighting inside, just for the family, also had symbolic purpose. We now publicized the miracle to ourselves to cultivate the inner strength needed to remain Jewish in a harsh world. This approach worked for a long time, but now we must go back outside. The world needs us outside.
Who gets to be visible in the public square is more important than ever. Aggressive deportations by the federal government intimidate many immigrants from appearing in public. Neo-Nazi rallies in cities across the country intimidate Jews, Blacks, Muslims, and others from showing themselves in public. Hanukkah is the perfect time to assert our presence, the celebration of difference, in the public square. Although Chabad has taken the lead on public displays of Judaism, with 20-foot-high menorah lightings in cities across the country, I am suggesting something different.
What our society needs are public displays of difference in a context of mutual support. We need to accompany each other, across our differences, making the public square safe for all. A powerful example of this took place at Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville, VA, this past Sukkot. Rabbi-Educator Rachel Schmelkin was leading a Sukkot dinner in the courtyard of the synagogue adjacent to the street, when she received a text message notifying her that the neo-Nazis were staging a rally at the park nearby. Within a few minutes she received another message that a group of her Christian clergy allies were coming to stand between the synagogue and the street so she could focus on the holiday. Schmelkin recalls, “I felt such a weight taken off my shoulders when they came to support us. Our clergy group had decided we would all show up for each other and having them stand outside helped us celebrate Sukkot.” This is what being an ally looks like – showing up and making the public square safe for all.
It is time to reclaim the ideal way of celebrating the Hanukkah miracle by bringing our menorahs back out into the streets.But now, let’s do it in alliance with our Muslim, Christian, and immigrant neighbors, each showing up for the other to proclaim our streets are safe for everyone, in all our beautiful diversity. That would truly publicize the miracle.
Rabbi David Jaffe is the author of the award-winner book Changing the World from the Inside Out: A Jewish Approach to Personal and Social Change, winner of the 2016 National Jewish Book Award for Contemporary Jewish Life. He is the founder and principal of Kirva Consulting and teaches Mussar and Jewish spirituality to rabbis, educators, activists, organizational leaders, and spiritual seekers of all backgrounds throughout North America.
Shine a Light: Advancing Progressive Values in Israel This Hanukkah Night 1: The Western Wall
BY CHELSEA FEUCHS , 12/13/2017
The walls surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City are lit up at night, a stunning view for locals and tourists alike. As couples sit on park benches overlooking the scene, some close for warmth and others more distant for modesty’s sake, it is easy to forget the arguments that surround this place. Past the external walls and down some winding streets sits another wall, one far more controversial.
The Western Wall, also called the Kotel, stands as one of the last remaining pieces of The Second Temple, the ancient center of Jewish ritual and communal life. Those stones have seen more history than many can imagine; the rise and fall of empires, the development of new neighborhoods, and some of the bravest soldiers who fought in the Six Day War. Since that time in 1967, Jews have had access to this holy place. In reality, though, only some Jews feel ownership over this important site.
The ultra-Orthodox political establishment exercises exclusive control over the Kotel plaza through the office of the Rabbi of the Western Wall. The holy space abutting the wall was divided into two unequal sections, the larger for men and a far smaller one for women. Women are not allowed to hold bat mitzvah ceremonies, bring in a Torah, or dress in a manner judged immodest by the ultra-Orthodox establishment. These non-egalitarian rules hurt many Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora, who feel forcibly distanced from the holiest site to the Jewish people.
There was a glimmer of hope in January 2016 when the Israeli Cabinet reached an historic agreement to expand and grant legitimacy to a new egalitarian prayer space just south of the existing plaza. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Netanyahu later buckled to political pressure from extreme right-wing Haredi forces to suspend the agreement, dashing the hopes of Reform Jews and our progressive partners.
So, what are we to do now? How does our movement celebrate the Festival of Lights when many things in our world feel dark? How do we reconcile the notion of a Jewish State with a reality that excludes and marginalizes many Jews? We go back to the original meaning of the Western Wall.
When the Temple stood, it served as a meeting place for all Jews – men and women and children made the pilgrimage to celebrate and mourn as a whole community, an inextricably connected kehila (community). Before it became a place of division and derision, the Temple and its walls stood at the center of an entire people. Certainly, this very site has seen far more intense and violent fights, but our goal is to learn from the mistakes of the past rather than to repeat them. We are taught that The Temple’s destruction was due primarily to internal divisions among the Jewish people; let us work toward building and not destruction.
This Hanukkah we will shine a light by continuing to respect Orthodox custom while advocating for recognition of our equally legitimate egalitarian practices. We will learn more about Israel and share our learning with our community. We will connect to Israel with even more passion, insight, and love. From the Western Wall to the deep Negev valleys to the blooming Northern hills, our movement and the values of progressive Judaism will shine.
This Hanukkah, ARZA is working to shine a light on several challenges facing progressive Judaism in Israel. We do so with the intention to generate greater understanding, to increase the investment of Reform Jews in the Jewish State, and to center a connection to Israel in our communities. Each night for eight nights, check in with us to learn more about pressing issues and to advocate for equality, pluralism, and democracy in Israel.
Chelsea Feuchs is the communications and social media associate for ARZA, the Association of Reform Zionists of America. After studying for a year in Israel as a Dorot Fellow, she now works and lives in New York City
Jewish Self-Definition: One Size No Longer Fits All
MIKEITZ, GENESIS 41:1−44:17
D’VAR TORAH BY: RABBI STEPHEN S. PEARCE, PH.D.
Jewish assimilation — the loss of followers through attrition, absorption into other faiths, or the practice of no faith — harkens back to Joseph, the first Israelite to live in a diaspora. In Mikeitz, we read how Joseph adopted Egyptian customs and clothes, took an Egyptian wife, and was given the Egyptian name Zaphenath-paneah (Genesis 41:45), a sign of acceptance into Egyptian society. Joseph gave his firstborn son the name Manasseh, meaning,“God has made me forget all the troubles I endured in my father’s house” (Genesis 41:51), and his second son the name Ephraim, meaning,“God has made me fruitful … ” (Genesis 41:52). Joseph’s children could informally be called “Amnesia” and “Success.” Their identities highlight the struggle of living at the intersection of two cultures — one uniquely Jewish and one that competes for a Jew’s loyalty and allegiance. In the case of Joseph, once established in Egypt, there is no record of any attempt of his to stay in touch with his father and siblings in Canaan. It was only decades later when Joseph’s brothers appeared before a thoroughly Egyptianized Joseph that there was renewed association with his clan that stirred Joseph’s deep connection to his family of origin.
A keen observer of modern Jewish life will find a polarization between Jews who abandon religious and cultural origins, and Jews who remain connected to Jewish communal life, whether or not they are particularly observant. Today’s broad spectrum of Jewish affiliation and practice provides new classifications for post-denominational Jews. A snapshot of such Jewish self-definition is key to understanding the changing modern religious landscape, as follows:
1. Not-very-Jewish Jews are often called “psychological Jews” or “post-religious Jews.” These are Jews with few if any passionate attachments or connections to community; they are marginal and generally keep a safe distance from the organized Jewish community; most often they are defined by pure ignorance of rites, rituals, and history.
2. No-longer-Jewish Jews are converts to other religions and their offspring who toss their Judaism aside. Heinrich Marx is a stinging example of a Jew who became a Lutheran in 1818 in order to avoid disbarment under a Prussian law that forbade Jews to practice law. He also converted all of his children including six-year-old Karl who, although the grandson of two Orthodox rabbis, grew up to become a rabid Jew-hater. These former Jews offer little hope of being drawn back into the fold even though not all “no longer Jewish Jews” are lost to the Jewish future.
3. Suddenly Jewish Jews, likened to a tiny oven pilot light that waits to be fueled into a blazing flame, discover hidden Jewish ancestry that results in a resurgence of Jewish participation. Not infrequently, when such an individual reemerges in the Jewish community, it is to the approbation of other Jews. Stephen Dubner1, author of Turbulent Souls: A Catholic Son’s Return to His Jewish Family, for example, grew up in a devoutly Catholic home where he said the rosary every night. Dubner interviewed distant relatives and rummaged through archives and discovered his Jewish roots that brought him back to Judaism.
4. Very-Jewish Jews are Jews whose lives are infused with Jewish culture and religious practice. They unquestioningly affiliate, support, and often participate in synagogues and other Jewish cultural, educational, and social action programs and institutions, choices frequently dictated by family and childhood experiences. They often want more than synagogues that cater to the “mean” Jewish population. A subset of very-Jewish Jews is the we’ve-always-done-it-that-way Jews — Jews who believe that their ritual practice and worship comprise “tradition” and any deviation from that is met with distain.
5. Half-Jewish Jews, the progeny of Jews married to non-Jews, is the most controversial category, one that the Jewish world is extraordinarily uncomfortable with and generally denigrates or ignores in the hope that they quietly will go away. With approximately half of all Jews marrying non-Jews, the number of children born of such marriages may very well exceed the number of children born of two Jewish parents. The Jewish community often is silent about how to encourage strong faith-based lives in children who parents practice the different religious traditions. This act of blending two halves into a single hybrid, called by one half-Jewish woman “a dazzling act of existential virtuosity,” defines the tension inherent in blending two cultures where a so-called half-Jewish child often becomes the consummate outsider/insider, ashamed of his or her “neitherness.”
6. Broad-spectrum Jews are LGBTQ, reconstituted families, and interracial groupings that come with special needs and the hope that congregations will be open and embracing, even though they may feel shunned by “establishment” congregations.
7. Non-Jewish Jews are individuals who technically are not Jewish but are typically in relationships with Jews where they are supportive and participate in rituals, holidays, and life-cycle events of family members. They may have their own religious affiliation or no religious affiliation or interest in becoming Jewish, and promote Jewish households and children.
8. Spiritual, but not religious, is the mantra for Jews who are almost never found in synagogue, where they feel alienated or at a Passover seder that they find to be painfully insipid. Although many spiritual-but-not-religious Jews avoid faith labels, the vast majority believe in God and more than half report that they pray daily. Instead of “brands” defined by communally organized bureaucratic religious structure, spiritual-but-not-religious Jews are looking for what Swiss psychologist Carl Jung termed synchronicity, “meaningful coincidence, events so timely and moving that they are considered to be beyond mere chance,” or what theologian Rudolph Otto termed numinosity, “the irresistible, undeniable, unforgettable feeling of being in the presence of the Divine.”
9. Unconventional Jews are sometimes referred to as “hipster Jews,” “unorthodox Jews,” or “emergent Jews.” Typically they are young, fiercely independent Jews who think it is “cool” to be Jewish, but distance themselves from organized religious life, shun institutional organizations, and find clergy increasingly irrelevant.
10. Absent-male Jews comprise disengaged and vanished male teenagers and adult worshipers, learners, Torah students, and religious education instructors. Making them feel comfortable in Jewish religious and communal institutions is a significant challenge.
11. Alimony Jews are Jews who support Judaism but are unwilling to live with it. Often this group includes the wealthiest echelons of a congregation or community. They engage in so few Jewish practices at home that synagogues have become, in effect, homeless shelters — homes for Jews without Jewish homes. They expect the synagogue to be a surrogate Jewish parent and a rabbi to be their “Shabbos Jew” — the one who does it all so that they can sit back and do nothing.
12. Excess-baggage/disaffected Jews are Jewish — with reservations. These reservations frequently play themselves out in synagogues in a variety of scenarios as excess-baggage Jews unpack their baggage in board and committee meetings, offices, schools, and sanctuaries, often with a large dose of angst, anger, and at times, self-hatred.
A Pew study2 applied the judgmental terms ”religious promiscuity,” and “religious infidelity” to people who move with ease and without guilt from religious and communal institutions in order to sample religious beliefs and practices other than their own. Such “swingers” and “switchers” (also Pew terminology) are defining new forms of worship and spiritual life.
The variety of Jewish religious expression has grown in scope and complexity, since the days when Joseph and his family made the first recorded move to diaspora living. While not as black and white as in the days of the matriarchs and patriarchs, it is hoped that the opportunities for religious self-definition ultimately result is a deeper connection to Jewish living.
1.Stephen Dubner, Turbulent Souls: A Catholic Son’s Return to His Jewish Family. New York: William Marrow, 1998.
2. Cited in Stephen Prothero, “A Hint of This, a Pinch of That,” The Wall Street Journal, December 11, 2009
(A more expansive form of this d’var Torah may be found in “Shifting Landscapes: The Response of Modernity to Faith, Social Advocacy, and Demographic Change” by Stephen S. Pearce found in the Spring 2011 (Vol LVII, No 2) issue of the CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly.)
Rabbi Stephen S. Pearce, Ph.D. is senior rabbi emeritus of Congregation Emanu-El of San Francisco, and a faculty member of the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco, and the Beyond The Walls: Spiritual Writing Program at Kenyon College. He is the author of Flash of Insight: Metaphor and Narrative in Therapy and other articles, poems, and books.
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Chanukah Hoedown!
Friday, December 15th at 6 pm
Come to the Temple for latkes, hot dogs, and all the fixins’.
Wear your favorite hoedown attire and come prepared for a
great evening!
Live Music!
Bring your Menorah!
RSVP to the Temple office!
Tis a Gift to be Simple
“Tis a gift to be simple: How to Experience the Winter Celebrations in an Eco-Conscious Manner” was presented by Linda Ott of Sustaining Way at our Temple, December 5th.
Linda comes to the SCIPL (South Carolina Interfaith Power & Light) Director role most recently as a graduate of Columbia Theological Seminary with a Masters of Theology in Creation Care. Linda’s vocation life journey included the military, social work, business, and law. Her passion for creation care stems from her time at Drew Theological School, where she completed a Masters of Divinity and discovered her passion for understanding the intersection of faith and the care of creation.
The occasion was one of Interfaith collaboration and good cheer.
Brown Bag Lunch
Wednesday, December 13, 12:00 pm
Come and Enjoy Latkes by the Rabbi plus a Hanukah Lunchtime Celebration
December Board Meeting
The next board meeting is scheduled for Sunday, December 17 at 10:00 am and is for both new and old members.
Please contact Jack Schoer if you cannot attend.
Breakfast Schmooze for December
Join us Wednesday, December 13 any time between 7—9 am at Select for the monthly Breakfast Schmooze.