From the Rabbi

Dear All,

It’s our season of conundrums, isn’t it? Christmas’ glittery lights and the classical, pop, and rock music associated with the season (and yes, the sweet story of the birth of innocence) surround us. Some of us are navigating ways to acknowledge and respect the traditions of our non-Jewish family members; others are trying to find ways to make Hanukkah so special that our children won’t feel like they are celebrating an also-ran holiday.

Jews have responded by elevating Hanukkah to one of our most important family holidays, one that can boast its own glittery lights and music written for just the occasion. We’ve even added in a tradition of gift-giving (sometimes for eight nights!). We show we are different and celebrate a different holiday from the majority around us, in some ways, by doing things very much like the majority.

One good way to teach our children about their heritage is to delve with them more deeply into the stories around Hanukkah. There are two essential themes running through the holiday.

Political strength and military courage. Jews were being pressured to give up critical aspects of their identity and their religious observance in the second century BCE. Some Jews decided to adopt the ways of the Greeks, while others resisted. So many questions can be asked about this dilemma.

• What do we want to hold on to in order to make sure we retain our traditions, our identity, the things that define us as Jews?
• What are those things? Why are they important?
• When do you decide to take up arms to fight against the pressure to give up your cultural and religious identity?

These are questions we face, of course, on a different level today, but many peoples around the world are dealing with similar issues in situations that are closer to the ones we faced thousands of years ago when the Maccabees fought King Antiochus. Native Americans are one obvious example, but there are many, many more. There’s a social message for us and our children about minorities living in difficult circumstances.

Light in the darkness: What happened to the story of political rebellion? After the havoc wrought by the Judeo-Roman War (66-70 CE) resulted in the razing of Jerusalem and the Temple and in the dispersal and enslavement of Jews (a population of 4 million Jews fell to about 1.5 million), our rabbis made an important decision. They saw, just decades after this war, how Bar Kochba’s revolt against Rome failed. They knew that Jews would not be able to fight back and survive as a people in Imperial Rome. The result? They deemphasized our story of military courage. For the next 1800 years, until the rise of Zionism, Jews were encouraged to focus on the story of the miracle of one day’s oil lasting for eight days.

Hanukkah is celebrated at the darkest time of the year where the solar cycle is concerned. We celebrate Hanukkah late in the month of Kislev when the moon is on the wane.

God’s eternal light is the light by which we define hope, our future, and even our own Jewishness, and this is another part of the story, and worth discussing with our children and our family. In a way, we rededicate our Temple by lighting the menorah. But the sanctuary we are evoking is now one that transcends time or space. Our Temple is really what we ourselves make of Judaism – how we enter into our Jewish observance with dedication (and rededication) each year, renewing tradition, ritual, and hope.

Imagine sitting before your chanukiah as the candles burn. During those 30 minutes, you can meditate, pray, reflect on our long history. Share the stories of Hanukah with each other; explore them anew. The conversations you have with your children will help them see that Hanukkah is an opportunity for them, for us, and for our non-Jewish family members to ask what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be oppressed or in trouble, what it means to wonder what makes you who you are, what it means to create Jewish community regardless of time or geography — what it means to note the fragility of light and, thus, all existence.

Chag sameach to everyone,

Reb Barbara

Please bring your teshuva journals with you to Yom Kippur services on Monday morning. Also, Reb Barbara would be glad to get more rewrites of the Ki Anu Amecha prayer sent to rabbi@or-olam.org.

This section in particular:

We are arrogant, but You are merciful.
We are obstinate, but You are patient.
We are laden with sin, but you abound in compassion.
We are as a passing shadow, but You are eternal.

If you need more information about what Reb Barbara is looking for as far as a rewrite, please read this:

We remember who we are.

We will go through the next ten days thinking about those blotchy spots on our souls. We care – we care a great deal – about polishing off the shmutz, about finding the forgiveness we need to help our soul shine and sparkle again, as fresh and innocent as it was the day it was created.

The hardest forgiveness to ask for, it turns out, is the forgiveness we must grant ourselves. The hardest judgments we make are made when we judge ourselves.

Before you are your teshuva journals. Begin the very Jewish process of self-reflection with your village in mind. Imagine, please, that you are in the circle. You have done something you know to have been wrong, and your community gathers around you – not to tell you how much you have hurt them, but how much you mean to them. Write to yourself as if you were a member of that community.

What are your best and most wonderful qualities? Who are you, really? Be specific and detailed and go on at great length. Then, ask yourself: What prevents you from being more of who you really are? What can you do to be more of who you are?

Then, during these days of atonement and self-reflection, the time before Yom Kippur as we need to experience it, ask this question and write about it, at the length it requires:

Knowing how easily you could forgive others, can you forgive yourself?

Finally, please help our community with a creative Jewish act. We know it is our work, in every generation, to look at our traditions anew. Enclosed is the text of our Kin Anu Amecha, which precedes our communal confessional prayer, Ashamnu. Kin Anu Amecha first describes our relationship to God in many different ways. It ends with four sentences that I would like to ask you to rewrite in your own terms (and you can do that with the first part of the prayer, too!). I give an example of such rewrites below. Please send your versions to rabbi@or_olam.org before next Shabbat; we will read some of them anonymously at Yom Kippur.

We try so very hard and, thankfully, You know.
We do everything we can to nourish our community, and You notice!
We are burdened by our mistakes, but You remind us that we can forgive ourselves, and grow.
We delight in our loved ones, and You love us for it.