Should Rabbis Talk About Israel?

This morning when I checked Twitter I found an old picture of me and some colleagues making the rounds. It was from a few weeks before ordination, May of 2003. In it are myself, Michael Shulman, Dalia Marx, Debra Kassoff and Jon Linder. It was taken for a Cincinnati Enquirer photographer for an article about ordination. Boy, do we look good! And I'm happy to say that each of my colleagues have gone on to do meaningful work.

So I was surprised to find this picture attached to a blog post by Ben Greenberg, responding to Rebecca Sirbu's post. (the picture has since been taken down, but I include the Enquirer photo above. Nice looking crew, no?) The post, entitled "Why Rabbis Should Not Talk About Israel", suggests that to do so is self-defeating and not what our congregants are looking for:

The members of our community who come to synagogue at all do so either only once a week or perhaps just a few times a year during high liturgical moments like Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. These are people who for the most part live an existence that is dominated by discussions of current events, domestic and international politics. Many of them attend Federation or AIPAC luncheons, where the topic of conversation is almost always on Israel, more than they attend a Shabbat lunch.

Torah is the heart of the Jewish people. When I use the word “Torah” I mean the age-old wrestling with our tradition, striving for a connection to the Divine and the encounter with holiness. We, as rabbis, have a limited time with our community. We have the opportunity to engage many of them for a few hours a week and the great majority only a few times a year. As we grapple with the limited time we have to impact our community, one needs to truly determine what is the best use of that time. I have come to understand that for my rabbinate talking about Israel, that is to say talking about the political realities of Israel, as important as that is, is not the most productive use of my time with my congregation in the context of synagogue.

I sympathize with Greenberg. There are lots of times when my congregants clamor for me to preach about Israel, not from a position of values, but geopolitics. My first Lunch & Learn at my current congregation, I spoke for a half-hour on Judaism and Ecology (the advertised topic), leading the group through texts, until I was interrupted by an older woman who said, "excuse me rabbi, while this is all very good, what's going on with Israel and Gaza?"

For a generation, rabbis were often the way Jews got their information about Israel: through congregational trips, sermons, discussions on Middle-east politics, Appeals for Israel Bonds and UJA, etc. Rabbis were expected to be knowledgeable about the subject. As rabbis increasingly gave voice to concerns about human rights, the peace process, the role of the Orthodox in dictating Jewish and personal life in Israel, etc., members affiliated with certain organizations asked rabbis to speak only about 'kosher' topics. This was true at last year's AIPAC conference, where our rabbinic affinity lunch was all about how Israel was surely going to bomb Iran and how we would discuss the subject with our congregants. Ze-hu. 

So, for many rabbis, speaking about Israel has become (as one prominent New York rabbi said at a Rabbis for Human Rights-North America conference years ago) a 'third rail', touched at our peril. So why bother speaking about it? We're not experts on foreign or military policy; often our congregants want us to take positions we're not comfortable with, and when we do take those positions, we're criticized for talking 'politics' (as if taking a hard-line right-wing position was no less politics than a left-wing one).

And, as we all know, rabbis getting into hot water is a topic as old as the institution itself. We all know the stories of David Einhorn being run out of Baltimore for being an abolitionist or Isaac Meyer Wise getting into a fistfight with his Temple president over kashrut. The Israel 'thing' is only the latest in a long debate about whether rabbis have the freedom of the pulpit; that is, to preach freely.

You know what? Rabbis talk Israel. Rabbis talk 'politics' (at least, what people call politics--I call it human and civil rights). Rabbis talk about what is meaningful for them. THROUGH the lens of Torah, to be sure. I look at my ordination certificate and read the words yoreh yoreh yadin yadin v'yehi adonai elohav imo: "whatever he teaches, he teaches, whatever he decides he decides, and may Adonai be with him" (hey, it's my certificate, it says 'him').

To be sure we teach Torah, but we also get to decide how we teach Torah and about what, including how we feel and what we see about Israel. We get to walk people through our own internal process, to show nuance, to advocate for Israel, share our love of Israel, and also our concerns and loving rebukes about Israel. And our words, b'ezrat haShem, God willing, come out of a place that is authentic and true. This is no less true when I speak about homelessness, or the death penalty, or gun control, or economic policy, or caring for our elderly, or any other topic that gets to the core of what it means to be Jewish.

Yes, that means I will say things that will challenge--and sometimes offend--people. Good. Rabbis are supposed to challenge their communities. Not out of anger, or self-righteousness, but love. Love of Torah, love of Israel, and love of God. We have an obligation not only to our congregations but the Tradition itself, and that means bringing people, as Sirbu says, into the conversation. To simply turn a blind eye to part of it, regardless of Movement, is to surrender.

And to those who say that it threatens their job or their congregation's membership, I disagree. I have seen congregations over the last ten years offer free memberships, refuse to take positions on complicated issues, offer a whole variety of services and programs designed to market the congregation effectively. What works in the end, the congregations I have seen succeed, are the ones who have spoken to their core mission and vision and said, "these are the values we uphold. This is who we are. This is what we're about", often taking very strong "political" positions. Likewise, the rabbis I see succeed are the ones who cultivate the relationships to be sure, but also speak their mind freely and invite others to participate in the long conversation we call Judaism. People want to associate themselves with integrity, period. 

I had a conversation with some non-Jewish colleagues the other day, and we were discussing how whenever a professional class arises, a lay class appears as well, and the professional class too often infantalizes the laypeople. This cuts both ways; we as rabbis often infantalize our congregants, acting as if they're not sophisticated enough to handle a complex issue (i.e. let's just give them fun 'outreach' programs) and laypeople infantalize us back, telling us that we SHOULDN'T challenge them. I don't know how Michael, Jon, Dalia, or Debra (my friends in that picture) feel about this issue, but I'd like to think that all of us have worked hard to empower the members of our communities, to challenge them in healthy ways, to let them in on the process, to trust them. To say, "don't talk about Israel" is an act of mistrust, and I intend to trust my community. 

With that in mind, I've had my say--what do you think?

A little less rejoicing this Adar: The passing of David Hartman z'l and WoW

Today was Rosh Hodesh Adar, usually a time of frivolity and rejoicing. Adar is, of course, the month that hosts the holiday of Purim, with it's ribald humor, drinking, dressing up, gender-bending, and other insanity. But this Adar doesn't quite feel right to me. Some of it is because I'm the only one left standing (so far) who doesn't have the flu in my house (sadly, the vaccine-resistant kind). But much of it is because of two events in the land of Israel.

Rosh Hodesh--the New Moon--has long been associated with women (for obvious metaphorical reasons) and Women of the Wall use it as an opportunity to come together at the Kotel, usually resulting in some number (at the very least, founder Rabbi Anat Hoffman) getting arrested. Today, despite 300 men and women coming together including nearly a minyan of the 1967 Six-Day War Liberators of the Kotel, 10 women were arrested, including two American rabbis (one of whom happens to be Sarah Silverman's sister. Yes, that Sarah Silverman).

Ironically, today also saw the funeral of Rabbi David Hartman, founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute. An Orthodox rabbi, he became one of the great progressive voices in Halakha, writing several books, promoting a progressive valuing of women within Halakha, and bringing rabbis of all stripes together annually for intensive and transformative study. That might not sound like much, but remember, a rabbi is first and foremost a student and teacher of Torah. To come together with a diverse group of colleagues who, under other circumstances, might NEVER associate with one another, and study a page of Talmud together over weeks at a time in Jerusalem, was to create understanding that might not happen any other way.

I never studied with Rabbi Hartman; with his son Donniel, on one occasion. But I read his books, and looked forward to a time (perhaps a sabbatical) when I could bring my family to Jerusalem and take the time to study deeply with people different than me, be challenged by those people, and come back to my congregation renewed. Frankly, reading his works renewed in me the sense that we as Progressive Jews have as much claim to the Halakha--to the Torah itself--that others would want us to deny. While certainly there are times when rejecting Torah can be justified (or at least feel satisfying), Hartman was one of those who taught me that it is that much more powerful to root progressive values in text authentically that is no less radical than the rejection thereof, and in fact may be even more radical.

So to have Hartman laid to rest the same day when women are arrested for wearing a tallit at the Western Wall because the garment is STILL associated with men, to me, marks a great sadness.

Shmuley Boteach, in an op-ed for the Jerusalem Post, lamented the lack of a "Jewish Billy Graham" or "Jewish Martin Luther King":

But one searches in vain for the Jewish Billy Graham or the Jewish Martin Luther King. Where are the great spokesmen of our people to teach the world of Jewish charity, Jewish education and Jewish values? Why are we not training a generation of media and press ambassadors to expose and reverse the fraudulent accusations against Israel that are daily occurrences at the UN, the BBC and the Arab press? A few years ago I was to meet the Jewish head of a national television network. The producer who had arranged the meeting with a view toward the executive buying into my idea for a TV show said to me, “The man you are meeting is very influential and very secular. He’s going to be wary of you as a rabbi so whatever you do, don’t mention anything religious.”

I understand that idea; just the other day I was speaking to my dad of how once there was a generation of rabbis (Roland Gittlesohn, Ferdinand Isserman, Joseph Soloveitchik, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Levy Olan, Abba Hillel Silver, etc.) who commanded a national presence in a way that few do today. Some of that is our more fragmented world; as Lena Dunham quipped in an interview : there is no such thing as a 'voice of a generation' today. And while Graham and King commanded a national spotlight, neither were perfectly loved throughout their ministries. I feel as if we have lost such an individual; that Hartman was a kind of Jewish Graham, if not a Jewish King. In The God Who Hates Lies, Hartman writes:

I developed a theology, based on the concept of covenant, that understands the relationship between God and the Jewish people as one of intimacy and partnership. This covenantal model—in which God not only tolerates but demands and delights in Jews’ taking of responsibility for ever-increasing dimensions of our individual and collective lives, infusing every element of human endeavor and experience with religious meaning and purpose—describes a religious anthropology characterized not by slavishness and a howling sense of inadequacy in the face of an infinite commanding God. Instead it resurrects the vital and precocious religious spirit of the Talmudic Rabbis, who understood that the implementation of God’s will amid the complex considerations of human society and psyche requires, at times, the full and fearless assertion of our intellectual independence. The covenant struck between God and the Jewish people was not exclusively a call to unconditional obedience; it was equally a call to empowerment and an affirmation of human adequacy.

That theology could--should--influence us today. We should see ourselves as partners, not called to obedience, but empowered, affirmed, to see halakha not as boundaries but as a jumping-off point, an educational model, a way to struggle with the moral and ethical challenges of our day, which are legion. If only more people would have listened to Hartman. Then we might all see that the idea of arresting a woman for wearing a prayer shawl and giving thanks to God would be preposterous, and Rosh Hodesh Adar would be a time to rejoice indeed.

. 

Whither The Bar Mitzvah, Part II

Today was one of those days that reminded me of why I love my job. There were many reasons, including a great meeting with a wedding couple, a terrific t'fillah with the religious school kids and a truly excellent Bar Mitzvah parents' meeting, but what really made it was my session with the Eighth Grade.

I get into the Eighth Grade program about once a month. In the process of trying to make it part of our general preconfirmation/confirmation program, we've made it a weekly experience, and while I'm not teaching it as frequently as I do ninth and 10th grade, it's a chance for me to build on the relationships I formed in the bar mitzvah experience.

So after blogging about Patrick Aleph's post on Kveller that we should completely reinvent the bar mitzvah, I thought, who better to think about this and respond than kids who just went through the experience, as recently as a few months ago? They're the experts on whether it resonated or not.

So after taking some time answering their questions about other stuff (I try to start my sessions with what they want) and talking Israeli politics and the lack of a Federal Death Star program, I shared the article (full disclosure, I didn't share my response or anyone else's response). We read it together and discussed it. While many of the kids didn't buy into his overall thesis (One kid's response was 'what a joke'), many aspects of his argument, especially with respects to family education, did resonate.

So I broke them into four groups of four and asked them to respond to four questions in redefining the Bar Mitzvah experience:
1. What about the bar mitzvah experience would they keep?
2. What would they change?
3. What is the purpose of the Bar mitzvah?
4. Who is it for? Who should it be for?

I got fantastic responses! Really thoughtful and engaging ideas on what makes the experience 'work'. So below you'll find their answers. And believe me, I'll be thinking about this:

Answers to Question 1:
-Learning Process and Education, the preparation
-Keep the service the same
-Kids lead the whole service (interestingly kids felt this way even when they didn't lead the whole thing)
-Party (lots of votes on that!)

Answers to Question 2:
-Have the Family come up and talk about family traditions having to do with Judaism/what it means to become a bar/bat mitzvah
-Nothing except remove the obligation that they say they will continue their Jewish education [note that isn't a universal thing; however, having learned this from Rabbi Elliot Strom, I do make my kids promise to continue their Jewish education in some way]
-Condense the service
-the teaching of Torah Portions

Answers to Question 3:
-[To give the kids] a sense of independence
-Show that you're maturing
-Make children feel more involved. Mature, Pride, Education.
-Kids are proud of their religion.

Answer to Question 4:
Everyone agreed it should be for the student
Who is it for? Parents, children, the synagogue, Egos

You can see it's quite a list, and there's a lot here that we as Jewish parents and educators should be proud of. These kids want to learn their tradition, want their Torah to be real, and what their parents involved. Their parents (on the whole) want to learn more and be a part of the process. They see how it works, and how it doesn't work (though I'm not sure I can make my 1 1/2 hour service any shorter!). And as much as they want to learn, they want to do it on their terms, and not be told by a parent (or a rabbi) that they have to do it through confirmation or the like.

Is this the basis for an educational system? I don't know, but it's feedback I take seriously. More than that, I love that these kids took the question seriously, took the process seriously, and that their experience did a lot more to strengthen their connection with their Judaism than we might otherwise think.

So, ask yourself those four questions: how do you answer them? Would love to hear your responses!

Whither the Bar Mitzvah?

There's been a ruckus about this piece on Kveller, written by rabbinical student Patrick Aleph (as assume a pseudonym) suggesting that the b'nai mitzvah experience is broken and in need of radical reimagining. He's not the only one, the Reform Movement has been reexamining the b'nai mitzvah experience in the form of their B'nai Mitzvah Revolution, part of their Campaign for Youth Engagement.

Let me be clear that I don't agree with the answers provided; I think this is a particularly large metro-area/coastal look at a life cycle experience that has frequently been derided in popular media (think of the films "Keeping Up With the Steins", "A Serious Man", where the bar mitzvah kid reads Torah stoned, and "Deconstructing Harry", which features a Star Wars themed Bar Mitzvah) as well as a great deal of community and rabbinic angst: books like Putting God on the Guest List , programs like mitzvah projects (and in the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet Refusnik "twinning") were written as a real response to a real issue; a sense that the bar mitzvah, with it's black tie affairs, va-va-voom cocktail dresses, and almost single-minded focus on the part of parents, had lost it's meaning. And, as Aleph points out, the reform movement did ban b'nai mitzvah (or rather, reimagine it in the form of the confirmation ceremony).

But in many communities, this simply isn't true. In smaller communities, like my dad's former congregation in Shreveport LA, where 8 b'nai mitzvah made it a good year, these were congregational celebrations of continuity and an opportunity for a young family to be embraced by the community. Rarely do I see b'nai mitzvah in my congregation be of the stereotype described above, though it can be a tad all-consuming education-wise, which is a shame. I have seen my share of kids who really 'get it' and use the bar or bat mitzvah as an opportunity to truly explore their heritage or connect with an aspect of their religiosity that, as a young child, they weren't prepared to explore. And, as my former senior rabbi once said to me, if you get rid of the bar mitzvah, then you might as well get rid of synagogues.

 However, as my teacher David Aaron reminded us on many occasions, sometimes you look past the answers and look carefully at the questions. This article raises important questions about Jewish education, the purpose of the bar/bat mitzvah experience (as well as the synagogue enterprise itself). And these questions have to be asked. B'nai mitzvah are not 'broken', certainly not in every congregation, but they need a spark, need reimagining for today's Jews. The idea of reading from the Torah and leading a service can be incredibly powerful, and the mitzvah project can create the seeds for independence and also help the growing adolescent form his or her sense of their place in the world. So, why aren't we leveraging those positives more? Simply, because we're meeting expectations. The kid knows how to 'read' Torah and the service is scheduled far enough in advance to arrange for the affair--what else do you need? We need to start realigning needs and wants, to shift the culture toward new paradigms when appropriate (again, remembering that plenty of congregations already have a healthy culture surrounding this life cycle event).

I have some questions and comments of my own viz. the re-imagining of the b'nai mitzvah:

1. Who's going to pay for it? I've seen a lot of stuff mostly come out of large congregations in large metro areas, who have the time, resources, and staff (and a diverse enough constituency) to a) experiment with the experience and radically rethink the process, at least for a cohort of the willing b) look for funding, either external or internal, and c) devote the kind of energy (that is, staff) to such a realignment. In smaller and medium-sized congregations, where there isn't that kind of opportunity, you're simply not going to see this kind of 'beta testing' unless the rabbi and lay leadership have a particular vision and are willing to put money where their mouth is.

2. One size does not fit all. Again, there are plenty of places where bar and bat mitzvah are meaningful experiences of engagement for the individual, the family and the congregation as a whole. Certainly there's much to be learned from those places. Likewise, we benefit from the experimentation with b'nai mitzvah that have been taking place for years (including camp and outdoor experiences, social justice experiences, etc.). But let's not fool ourselves to thinking that what works in Boston will sell in Buffalo (or Philadelphia and Wilmington, for that matter).

3. How can what exists be leveraged? What if your congregation already has good stuff? Should it be chucked out, the proverbial baby with the bathwater? Of course not. Perhaps your congregation has great pre-bar mitzvah family education, but doesn't have enough post-experience (e.g. Moving Tradition's Journey to Jewish Manhood). Perhaps the Hebrew program is truly excellent, but the student doesn't have enough opportunities to individualize the experience, or connect with clergy. This doesn't mean we merely patch the experience--there should still be a comprehensive look at b'nai mitzvah--but let's lift up strengths as much as we realistically confront challenges.

4. Balance between congregational needs and individual needs: so often families are focused on their children and what they want or need. And too often congregations 'standardize' the experience in order to better allocate resources. But there needs to be balanced. I've served in congregations where the kids all do the same thing--whether educationally or developmentally they can handle it or not. Wouldn't it be better to have some space to approach the child's needs appropriately? Likewise, it's not unusual for families to ask for one more honor, to want to modify this or that about the service, and rabbis find themselves in a bind, arguing that it's a 'congregational' service, but frequently (at least in Reform settings) unattended by actual members of the congregation, who either don't come to a service led by an adolescent, or who have an alternative minyan somewhere else in the building. How do we strike that balance between the congregation's liturgical needs and the family's personal needs? And how do we teach the family that, while the experience is about their child, it is about their child IN CONTEXT of community life. We talk about kids becoming part of the congregation/the minyan 'as full adults' and being 'leaders of the community'--what would happen if we meant it, and expected our b'nai mitzvah to continue not merely as passive consumers of Jewish experiences but active creators of meaning (as appropriate for the age, development, etc.)?

I don't know what the answers are: I'd like to think any rabbis/cantors worth their salt thinks about these issues in some way, shape or form when they think about their vision for their congregations, and hopefully Aleph's articles is raising some questions for laypeople and allowing leadership to challenge some tropes and assumptions about this life cycle event. Asking questions is important, it is exploring the answers where all this becomes tricky. Let's do so l'sheim shamayim, for the sake of heaven, and not just because we've seen one too many movies.

The End of the World (and Year) as we know it (and I feel fine)...

Folks have been asking for my most recent sermon dealing with the so-called Mayan apocalypse. I had been sending them to be put up on the Beth Emeth website, but seeing as how we're in the midst of a migration, I'm going to start updating here as well. You'll find this sermon below.

Before I post it, with only a few hours left in 2013, here's hoping for a sweet (secular) New Year filled with wonder, hope, the promise of new beginnings, blessings, health and joy. Or, to quote Counting Crows, maybe this year will be better than the last.

So I’m glad to see that we all made it through the end of the world. That Mayan calendar, grist for so many apocalyptic and humorous mills, has turned out to be, in fact, nothing to worry about. We’re still here, the aliens didn’t show up, and I still have to pay off my college loans. I wish I could say it was all one big joke, but between survivalists in Russia going bonkers, a school district in Michigan closing, and both NASA and NOAA having to post online guides about how the world was not, in fact, going to be hit by a rogue planet or asteroid, self-destruct, be swallowed by the sun, or slip off its axis, and at least one online dating company using it as fodder for an ad seemingly to encourage their users to have one last meaningless hook-up, well, it seems like quite a few people went a little nuts. 

This is not, of course, the first time we’ve seen such apocalyptic nuttiness. We survived Y2K, the Heaven’s Gate cult committing suicide to ride the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997,  various fundamentalists’ predictions of self-destruction, and more than a few Christian ‘scholars’ talking about the book of Revelations or some other silliness on the History Channel. 

Where does all this come from? Some of it is the anxiety of our age: much like Godzilla gave voice to the fear of an Atomic War in the 1950s and zombie movies reflected in the ecological and political crises of the 1970s, these brushes with Eschatology—the collapse of civilization—all reflect the angst of the moment. Books like The Road by Cormac McCarthy, or many of the current slate of television shows, or the films Melancholia and  2012, imagine a world  self-immolating, and that speaks as much about our fears of real environmental and societal upheaval as a real belief that some big rock that looks like an Oreo may predict our doom. 

But some of it is also a very non-Jewish notion of how we experience the world. We heard it in the words President Obama used at the memorial service in Newtown CT: God has called his children home . For so many religious people—this world is a place of pain to be schlepped through, then escaped. The goal is to leave this world and achieve the peace and happiness that only comes to us when we shuffle off our mortal coil. If we achieve anything in this world or do anything just or kind, it is in the hopes of earning eternal reward of some variety. Judaism is unique among all the religions in that our goal is not the world to come. Or rather, it’s not our priority. Our priority is this world. Any given day may be our last day on this world; nevertheless we are obligated to live each life responsive to our sacred obligations and to those created in the divine image. Or, to paraphrase Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, we are not trying to escape this world to reach God, we’re trying to bring God to our world, to infuse our world with holiness. This idea is best summed up by the words of Yochanan Ben Zakkai, Hillel’s student: “If you are planting a tree and you hear that the Messiah has come, finish planting the tree, then go and inquire.” 

I can’t think of two more radically different ways of seeing the world. One as a place filled with pain and those barely capable of doing the right thing without the prospect of eternal reward or punishment over the horizon. The other a place described by God as “tov”, good, and filled with those who might be partners in creation and revelation, if we would just heed God’s voice. 

This week in the parasha, Jacob, having come at last to Egypt to see his lost son Joseph, is introduced by his son to Pharaoh. It is a strange scene: Pharaoh asks “How many are the days of the years of your life?” Samson Raphael Hirsch writes, “It is only with a few select people that each day is full of importance and is considered by them as having a special meaning. A really true human being does not live years, but days…. Thus Pharaoh, too, says here: "How many are the days of the years of your life?" And in putting the question "How old are you?" in these words, he reveals the deep impression the dignified behavior of Jacob has made on him.” There is no doubt that our world is troubled, but if we saw each day as full of importance and meaning, if we planted more trees, and spent our time accordingly, l’taken olam b’malchut shaddai, repairing the world for God’s sovereignty, perhaps we’d be less worried about zombies, or monsters, or aliens or asteroids or calendars that look like cookies. Kein Yehi Ratzon, may this be God’s will. 

Newtown CT

An hour ago, my son, who's in kindergarten, got off the bus as he always does. He greeted me with his typical salutation--making his fingers into a gun and going 'pew pew'. On our way back to the house he told me about his day and what he learned. We shared a snack, went over the things in his folder and the lunch menu for next week, and now he's watching a cartoon while he waits for us to light Chanukah and Shabbat candles.

All totally mundane activities, no different than any other. Except for the events of today at the Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut. Others have shared words of wisdom: of prayer, of parenthood,  on politics and gun control. As they say, all are the words of the Living God. I cannot match their words. But I am mindful of this week's portion. As Israel debates sending Benjamin to Egypt (with Simeon already in captivity and Joseph supposedly dead), Judah says, "Send the boy in my care, and let us be on our way that we may live and not die--you and we and our children. I myself will be surety for him; you may hold me responsible: if I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, I shall stand guilty before you forever." (Gen. 43:8-9)

Judah, himself having experienced the pain of losing two of his children, understands Jacob's anxiety of losing another son. So when he says "I shall stand guilty before you forever", his words are sincere, and not rash; he knows what is at stake, what kind of pain and loss and terror is experienced.

Friends, we are Judah: we are responsible, the guilt of this, the pain, the responsibility is upon all of us. An accounting is required of all of us. And we must begin to understand that our responsibility ends not at our doorstep, or with our own family, or our own choices, but with the choices of others as well.

Jacob is ready to be bereaved: having lost Joseph, he expects to lose Benjamin. Judah is responsible but hopeful; he knows that survival requires real efforts and real care, an accounting who's reward or punishment is eternal. We must be Judah, for the alternative is too painful for us to bear.

The Rabbi Speaks: Chanukah

Here's the script from last week's "The Rabbi Speaks" on Chanukah.

Last week, while on my regular stop into the Comic Book Shop on Marsh Rd., I found myself looking at the kids’ racks. Elishai, my son, who’s in kindergarten, has been on a big kick practicing his reading, and loving comics and superheroes, was hoping I’d bring him home something. So along with my usual pulls, I grabbed a Green Lantern book to share with my kid. 

Later that night, after dinner and homework, we settled into reading his new comic, and we discovered that it was in fact, a Chanukah book. Here was Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern, helping aliens named Mattathias, Judah and Maccabee of the Hammer tribe defeat other aliens of some distant planet, all while the Green Power Ring holds out for eight days with only a single day’s charge. Latkes are consumed, lights are lit, and the universe is saved. 

 My son, obviously, loved it. Here was a Chanukah-specific holiday comic book where the festival of lights appeared not as an effort in tokenism in an otherwise Christmas-themed story, nor merely as a paean to diversity to satisfy some focus group, but with its own integrity. And the fact that this was being sold in a comics shop, rather than some cheap freebie created for distribution in a Jewish school or synagogue or JCC, made it all the more amazing to me. Of course, Jewish themes have appeared in comics for decades—anyone who’s taken my class at the JCC or read Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay knows that Jewish writers and artists essentially began the medium. But rarely were those themes so overt, the exception being ‘serious’ graphic novels like Maus and ‘A Contract With God’. Yet here was kid’s comic, a ‘normal’ comic with a proudly Jewish theme, well written and well-drawn, meant for a popular audience. 

I’m old enough to remember when Chanukah first started appearing in the public sphere, and it was usually cringeworthy. In the school ‘winter concert’—and I remember when they were Christmas concerts—the band would throw in ‘Rock of Ages’ or “I Have a Little Dreidle” or if we were really lucky, ‘Ocho Candelikas’ around ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ and ‘Good King Wenceslas’. If there was a special Christmas episode of a TV show, the one designated Jewish character would get a throwaway line about Chanukah. Slowly, though, you started seeing Menorahs in McDonald’s commercials and in places of business and government, Chanukah candles for sale at Target, and the like. Adam Sandler’s Chanukah song might be nearly 15 years old and pretty trivial, but it set off a rash of popular musicians writing Chanukah songs.  Sometimes this made for strange combinations; at some point someone has sent you the picture of Hams on display at Walmart advertised as “delicious for Chanukah”. This year one Tablet writer wrote about seeing an explicitly Jewish Star of David Christmas tree topper advertised “for interfaith families” in the Skymall Catalogue.
All this fills me with wonder, but also gives me pause. It is amazing to me that my son now grows up in a world where, yes, he is aware that he’s in the minority, but the idea of a Jewish comic book is normal for him. More to the point, for most of his classmates, Judaism is rarely as strange or exotic as it was for my non-Jewish friends when I was a child. But especially at the holiday season, when perhaps we as Jews are even more aware of our minority status, the idea that Chanukah is becoming increasingly homogenized, worries me. 

Chanukah as we experience it now is a sweet little holiday: we eat some fried stuff, light some lights, exchange some gifts and call it a day, but has gone through tremendous upheaval. To use Arthur Waskow’s language, The Book of Maccabees makes it clear that, in addition to being a rededication of the Temple, it was originally a ‘rerun’ of Sukkot for the Maccabean rebels who, in their war with the Assyrian Greeks were unable to celebrate the festival. Since that first Chanukah it has evolved at various stages to be a celebration of Jewish imperial might and Jewish independence, a story of martyrdom and eternal reward for those who maintained faith unto death, a commemoration of God’s power and how one can maintain faith and light even in times of darkness and hiding, a political statement for early Zionists longing for Jewish sovereignty, and now a Winter Solstice holiday celebrated along Christianity’s great holiday. Until recently, it never held the power in Judaism of, say, a Rosh Hashanah or a Passover, nor was it ever meant to.  A post-biblical commemoration filled with small presents and games and fried food, it has achieved much greater standing than ever.
And for many Jews and non-Jews alike, this is problematic, or even, dare I say it, a ‘shande’. For conservatives who see a ‘war on Christmas’, and even liberals like Garrison Keillor of A Prarie Home Companion, Chanukah has become a target, a way to vent their spleen over the loss of religiosity surrounding Christmas. After all, it’s not just Jews going to the movies and out for Chinese these days. And for Jews, there is the fear that these two very different holidays—Christmas and Chanukah— will minimize our differences in ways that make meaningful interfaith dialogue even more difficult, as non-Jews get confused over the meaning of Chanukah and more Jewish-star tree toppers and Chanukah bushes confound a landscape.  Who hasn’t been asked whether Chanukah is the Jewish Christmas and had to use every facial muscle to prevent the eyeroll of doom? 

It’s clear, however, that there’s no turning back. We’re long passed the point of tokenism or euphemism, of occasional characters or a Festivus for the Rest of us. We are beyond the age of giant menorahs in Times Square and White House Chanukah parties and Peter Yarrow songs, and Blues Clues Chanukah Books and the occasional page 18 article showing a Jewish family playing Dreidle. There are Pandora and Spotify Chanukah channels, sexy Chanukah songs (seriously, Michele Citron, look it up), latke recipes in every cooking magazine, and every imaginable appearance in popular culture, to say nothing of the fact that you can buy a chanukiah—a really nice one—at most department stores, even in Delaware. Chanukah is clearly here to stay, not just as a Jewish holiday but as an American experience. 

So how do we make it meaningful? By remembering that, if Chanukah is to avoid being a Christmas-equivalent, we still give the holiday its due. Let Chanukah have integrity all its own, emphasizing the values as distinct from the values of other holidays at this time of year. The word Chanukah means dedication; we call this holiday ‘Chanukah’ because we remember the Maccabees rededicating the ancient temple, defiled by those bent on assimilation at all costs. Remembering this, we can rededicate ourselves to our highest values; to allow the light of the holiday and its hopefulness to banish the darkness of cynicism. 

The Green Lantern has an oath. The one we’re familiar with goes In brightest day, in blackest night, No evil shall escape my sight Let those who worship evil's might, Beware my power, Green Lantern's light. But the original read  ..and I shall shed my light over dark evil. For the dark things cannot stand the light, Just as Green Lantern’s oath declares that light shall banish the darkness of evil, may we come to see Chanukah in a new light, not as a “Jewish Christmas”, but as a truly American holiday.