Hi,
So here are some things I’m thinking about this week:
So it turns out that there’s festivals of light
Today is the first night of Hanukkah1, which as we all know is the Jewish holiday celebrating…well, honestly it’s pretty complicated, let’s gloss over the motivations of the folks involved, and instead just say it’s a festival of light, and for many Jewish people also has themes of resistance and independence and liberty against tyranny. Let’s also move quickly past the fact that the heroes of the story would, probably, think almost every Jewish person today was a terrible assimilationist — so much so that, frankly, the default dvar torah (like a sermon, sorta?) about the holiday is about how conflicted we should feel about the protagonists of the story and our relationship with them. Instead, I want to focus on what we can get out of the holiday.
As someone who’s proudly Jewish, this holiday means a lot to me.
While Jews have long seen America as a safer place, a happier place where we could be ourselves, Hanukkah has always sort of had an odd place in our hearts. Frankly, it is a smaller holiday, made bigger by its unintentional juxtaposition to Christmas (a key theme in Padma Lakshmi’s excellent episode of Taste the Nation about Hanukkah), but as a result, always one that had to, well, jostle for room.
So as a child, it was still pretty rare to see Hanukkah placed in the public square — frankly, that’s probably part of why Chabad got so popular with so many Jews in many communities, because they fought to put menorahs up at the town display. Heck, I was born less than a decade after the first year that there was a menorah lighting at Jimmy Carter’s White House in ‘79, hurriedly organized at the last minute by a Chabad rabbi and a sympathetic White House aide, with a last-minute assist from a local shopkeeper, who happened to be Jewish too.
That same slow emergence of being represented was true in other parts of American life, as well. In my childhood, it was rare to see an accurate and thoughtful representation of Hanukkah in media, so much so that I remember when Babylon 5 got it really right, and showrunner J. Michael Straczynski used it as the symbolic capstone of the themes of an entire season of television:
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Suffice it to say, what was once somewhat rare is now everyday. It’s one of those slow-moving changes, the kind that happen so gradually that you don’t notice until it’s all around you.
So now, I live in a society where Jews have, yes, faced tremendous hate and violence over the past five years, with violent white supremacists on the rise. Yet I also live in a society where the Vice President and the Second Gentleman hang a mezuzah on the door of the Naval Observatory2, and where Jews proudly light menorahs as a matter of course at the White House each year.3
Some ancient fanatics might see that public role in a secular society as assimilation, to be rejected at all costs; I see it as proof that my great-grandparents’ belief that this land would be a good home for their children was a true one, regardless of whether they marry a Jewish White House aide, a Christian Vice President, or anyone. A land, in short, where being ourselves is no conflict with being part of a broader society, and being in community with others is a reward, not a risk.
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I don’t know what the next few years bring. I think many of us — myself included — deeply fear the years ahead, and what they might mean for us and our families. Everything from the Omicron COVID variant to fears of resurgent white supremacy in 2024 to the long-term challenges of climate change.
I don’t have an answer for any of those. Frankly, the reason I haven’t written this newsletter in a little bit is that I have been trying, and failing, to wrestle with that, and how to square moments of joy and delight and light with the darkness I think we all fear is waiting to return.
But perhaps that’s the time that we need the commandment to light candles most, when we wouldn’t otherwise. Perhaps we need to be reminded that there can be light even in the darkness, even in the moments where we’re not sure what’s happening next. That there can be miracles, and oil that lasts eight nights instead of one, and echoes that last for two thousand years onwards.
May this be a lovely holiday for you, if you’re celebrating.
(Regular newsletter service will return on Thursday.)
Disclosures:
Views are my own and do not represent those of current or former clients, employers, friends, or my cat.
Or Chanukah, or Hanuka, or Hanikkah, or whatever you want to transliterate it as.
The key point here is that we confuse as many people as possible, like the time Leo McGarry, former Secretary of Labor, told the New York Times that their crossword was wrong in how it spelled Qadaffi, because he had previously recommended that the US military use French Exocet missiles to attack him. (If you got that reference without looking it up, please, stop re-watching your DVD of the West Wing pilot and go volunteer for a campaign or something).
While writing this post, I was stunned to learn that the synagogue they chose to help with the mezuzah mounting, Hebrew Benevolent Congregation (The Temple) of Atlanta not only had deep connections to the civil rights movement — no doubt important to the Second Family — but also was the congregation of Leo Frank, who was infamously and terribly lynched by a white Christian mob in 1915 (you may be familiar with his story from the musical Parade). How much has changed for Jews in American life that we have the right to live our lives so openly and with such pride; how much remains the same, when Jews are still murdered by fanatics.
And while I, to say the least, am deeply conflicted about President Trump himself and the role his election played in stirring up antisemitism in America, it’s also true and worth noting that the previous President’s daughter, son-in-law, and several of his grandchildren were proudly and openly Jewish.