|
Hanukkah
A Sermon Given
by Rev. Roger Fritts
on December 1, 2002
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
I envy the Jewish sense of humor.
A young man’s mother once gave him two sweaters for Hanukkah. The
next time he visited, he made sure to wear one. As we entered her home,
instead of the expected smile, his mother said, "What’s the matter? You
didn’t, like the other one?"
Many North American Jews, struggle with the December Dilemma: How can
they remain true to their Jewish faith during the Christmas season? As a
result, humor about Hanukkah is often mixed with humor about Christmas.
It was Hanukkah and in a tiny village the people were making latkes,
frying a grated mixture of potatoes, onions, eggs, and flour, but they
ran out of flour.
They called upon Rudi, the Rabbi, to help solve the problem. He said,
"Don’t worry, you can substitute matzo meal for the flour and the latkes
will be just as delicious!"
Sheila looks to her husband and says, "Mortey . . . you think it’ll
work?"
Mortey says to his wife, "Of course it will work!
Rudolph, the Rab, knows grain dear!"
Another Jewish wit has turned a Christmas Carol into a Hanukkah song:
On the first night of Hanukkah my true love gave to me
Lox, bagels and some cream cheese
On the second night of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
2 Kosher pickles and
Lox, bagels and some cream cheese
The song goes on building to the seventh and eighth nights:
On the seventh night of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me—
7 noodle kugels
6 pickled herrings
5 bowls of chicken soup
4 potato latkes
3 pounds of corned beef
2 Kosher pickles and
Lox, bagels and some cream cheese
On the eighth night of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
8 Alka-Seltzer
Comic actor Adam Sandler has a song that starts:
Put on your yalmulka, here comes Hanukkah
It’s so much fun-akkah to celebrate Hanukkah.
This week Sandler has a new movie out about Hanukkah called "Eight
Crazy Nights." I have not seen the movie, but according to the Post
it is about a bitter Jewish man who rediscovers the spirit of Hanukkah.
Sandler’s humor is often angry, but it is a very dangerous world for
Jews. Jewish humor has endured for some thirty-five centuries as a
mechanism of survival in a threatening world.
Hanukkah was, until recently, a minor holiday in the Jewish calendar
about as important as a time to spend money on a celebration as Columbus
Day.
Indeed, I recall walking with a Jewish friend passed a Hanukkah
display at the Student Union of Arizona State University thirty years
ago. I was thinking to myself that it was good that the Student Union
was including Hanukkah when my friend said, "I hate the way Christians
try to make Jews feel good by including a token Hanukkah display next to
their giant Christmas display. It shows their ignorance of Judaism. [I
was now glad I had not said anything.] Hanukkah is not an important
Jewish Holiday! It is not the Jewish equal of Christmas! If they were
serious about respecting and honoring the Jewish religion, they would
know that the important Jewish Holy days are Passover, Rosh Hashana, and
Yom Kippur! The Student Union never has a display about these holidays!"
Sixteen years later I was living in Illinois and I had a similar
conversation with a Rabbi. It was 1988. The Supreme Court had just ruled
that the Christmas tree and the Hanukkah menorah were not religious
symbols. Therefore, government officials could display them on public
land. As a result, the city of Chicago at taxpayer expense, had placed a
giant Christmas Tree and a giant menorah on Daly Plaza. My Rabbi friend
told me that after spending years trying to get references to Christ and
Jesus out of the December activities of the public school, the Jews who
wanted the Giant Menorah next to the Christmas Tree were undercutting
his arguments for separation of church and state. "We have rules about
this," the Rabbi explained to me. "We should display a Menorah at the
entrance to the home or at a window in the house, so that passers by can
see that this is a Jewish home. Rabbis did not intend Jews to display
the Menorah in a public place such as a city square. The Jews and
Christians who do this show their ignorance of our religion."
As a result, I have mixed feelings each year in December when we put
up a Menorah here or in the Chapel. One reason we put the Menorah up is
because about fifty families in our congregation are in interfaith
marriages. Counting adults and children that comes to more than one
hundred and fifty people. We want them to feel welcome here. Remembering
the conversation I had thirty years ago, I do try also to recognize the
important Jewish Holidays of Passover, Rosh Hashana, and Yom Kippur.
However, at least one Jewish scholar, Dr. Ron Wolfson, argues in a
book on Hanukkah first published in 1996, that in North America at
least, Jews have transformed Hanukkah from a minor holiday to a major
celebration. He writes, "Hanukkah in North America has become, and will
continue to be, one of the most popular Jewish holidays, if not the most
popular, even though it is considered a minor holiday in the hierarchy
of Jewish celebration." In reaction to Christmas and because of the high
number of interfaith marriages in the United States, Hanukkah has
gradually become more important. This afternoon at 4 p.m. you can watch
the lighting of a giant menorah on the Ellipse south of the White House.
The U.S. Army Band, featuring "The Three Cantors," will perform, and the
planners of the event will serve complimentary latkes and doughnuts.
Ironically, Hanukkah celebrates the rescue of Judaism itself from the
clutches of cultural assimilation. Neither the Jewish nor the Protestant
Bibles mention Hanukkah, although the Roman Catholic Bible does include
the Books of Maccabees, which tell the story. Catholic scholars say that
from Maccabees we can learn about Jewish life before the birth of Jesus.
According to Maccabees, Alexander the Great conquered the entire known
world, including the Jewish nation, in the year 336 before the common
era. About one hundred sixty years later some Jews in Jerusalem had
become assimilated into Greek culture. They like Greek theater Greek
athletics, and the Greek library. These Jews were losing their cultural
identity. Other Jews, particularly farmers living in small villages
resisted this cultural assimilation. A civil war broke out between the
Jews who had come to like the Greek culture and those who had resisted
assimilation. The Greek occupiers jumped into the war on the side of the
Jews whom the Greek culture had assimilated. What started as an internal
conflict, a civil war between Jews, rapidly became a rebellion against
the Greek rulers.
Maccabees was the name of the Jewish group that was fighting to
preserve Jewish identity. One legend says that the word Maccabees means
hammer. Like all war it was bloody and terrible. The second book of
Maccabees tells the story of Hannah and her sons who refuse to eat the
meat from a pig. As each son refuses, the Greek soldiers tortured him
and put to death in front of Hannah. Finally, before the soldiers are to
kill the last child, the leader of the Greeks appeals to Hannah. They
ask her to tell the boy to eat the meat of the pig so they will not kill
him. Hannah asks her last son what he wishes to do. The child replies
that he is only sorry that he had to wait so long to show his love of
the Torah. Hannah praises him and the Greeks kill the child. Hannah also
dies. In different versions, the Greek leader kills her, or she throws
herself from the city wall, or she dies of grief.
The Book of Judith, which is also found in the Catholic Bible but not
the Jewish Bible, tells the story of Judith whose town is under siege by
the Greeks. Judith dresses provocatively and prepares a sack containing
food and wine. This beautiful woman walks to the Greek camp. The
soldiers capture her and take her to their General. She assures the
Greek General that he will capture the town and suggests that they go to
his tent to celebrate. In the tent she feeds the general salty cheese.
He becomes thirsty and drinks large quantities of wine until he falls
asleep. Judith takes his sword and cuts off the General’s head. She puts
it in a sack, goes back to her town, and hangs the general’s head on the
outside wall of the city. In fear the soldiers retreat and Judith’s
actions save the town.
It was a bloody war. In the year 168 B.C.E. the Maccabees take
control of Jerusalem and the Temple. They cleaned it out, rebuilt the
altar, and rededicated the Temple. This rededication of the Temple is
what Jews celebrate for eight days. Hanukkah means "dedication" in
Hebrew. The account that we have that is closest to actual events is the
first book of Maccabees. An unknown author wrote it about forty-five
years after the rededication of the temple. It says only that they fixed
the sacred vessels and menorah and does not mention any miracle with
oil. The account in Second Maccabees also does not mention any miracle
with oil. It does say that they celebrated for eight days.
A Jewish document written about three hundred years later, speaks
about Hanukkah. It describes the lighting of eight lights and the saying
of a blessing. However, there is no mention a miracle involving oil. The
first place where the miracle of the oil appears is in the Babylonian
Talmud, a document written by Jewish scholars in Babylon in about
the fifth century. Writing at least seven hundred years after the event,
the author of the Babylonian Talmud said that after the Maccabees
defeated the Greeks, "they searched and found only one jug of oil with
the official seal of the head Kohein, enough to burn for one day.
But a miracle happened and the oil lasted for eight days." So the story
of the miracle of the olive oil is not found in the earliest sources. It
is a legend created by the Rabbis to give religious meaning to a
military event that occurred hundreds of years before.
We light this Menorah in a Unitarian Universalist Church as a way of
understanding and honoring this Jewish tradition. Described in detail in
the Exodus, the menorah was probably a physical representation of the
Tree of Life of the Garden of Eden, with the eight lights as branches.
Today in North America December is a season of tension for many Jews.
Ten percent of born Jews report having Christmas trees in their homes;
twenty-five percent if those who have converted to the Jewish faith have
Christmas trees; and seventy-five percent of interfaith families have a
tree for Christmas. Hanukkah is the celebration of the right not to
assimilate, but in December Christmas is pervasive.
Being a Jew is not easy, even in Montgomery County. A year ago in
Kensington an argument developed over whether citizens could include a
Menorah at the town hall next to the town Christmas tree. At first the
Kensington Town Council said no because they said, a Menorah is
religious and a Christmas tree is not. Someone pointed out that Santa
lit the Christmas Tree and that he is religious, being based on the
Catholic Saint Nicholas, who lived in Turkey in the third century. "If
you are going to have Santa, why can’t you have a Menorah?" asked two
Jewish families who live in Kensington. They had no objection to Santa.
They were just trying to convince the council to include a Menorah. The
Council thought about this and in honor of the heros of September 11
they voted to replace Santa with a police officer, a firefighter and a
soldier, who would throw the switch that would light the tree. Suddenly
a small community’s effort to separate religion from government, became
an international issue as Kensington became known as the town that
banned Santa.
I went to the tree lighting. Normally, about twenty or thirty people
show up for this event, but last year there were a thousand folks. I saw
more Santa then I had every seen in one place before. Bikers arrived in
Santa Suits. But it was not all amusing. A man had a sign that said "IF
THE JEWS CAN BAN SANTA, WHY CAN’T WE BAN JEWS?" Someone grabbed it and
tore it up. The police stepped into break up the fight. For a moment I
had seen the raw power of ethnical hatred. It is not just in the Middle
East. It is here in our community.
Still in thousands of homes this evening, Jews will follow will
follow the Hanukkah ritual. A menorah has places for nine candles. The
ninth candle is the servant candle used to light the others. Each
evening after the sun has set a family member lights the servant candle
and says:
Praised are You, Adonai, our God, Ruler of the universe, who made us
holy through the commandments and commanded us to kindle the Hanukkah
lights. Praised are You, Adonai, our God Ruler of the universe, who
performed wondrous deeds for our ancestors in those ancient days at this
season.
[Roger lights the Menorah candles.]
These lights we kindle to recall the miracles and the wonders and the
deliverance and the victories that our ancestors accomplished in those
days at this season through the hands of Your Holy Priests. And
throughout all eight days of Hanukkah these lights are sanctified, and
we may not use them except to look upon them, in order to thank and
praise Your great name for Your miracles and for Your wonders and for
Your deliverance.
Jewish tradition says that the family should do no work during the
half-hour it takes for the candle of the menorah to burn. The Rabbis
intend this time each evening as an opportunity for quiet rest and
reflection, a moment of meditation and prayer.
It can be a powerful spiritual discipline. Imagine: It is night. The
lights on the Menorah give a soft, yellow glow. There is brightness and
darkness. We can meditate in the silence. No noise . . . no false gaiety
. . . no commercial interruptions . . . no shallow banalities . . . no
alcoholic goodwill . . . no background music . . . no false emotions . .
. only the light and the dark struggling with each other as they do in
our lives. This is Hanukkah.
Office@CedarLane.org
| 
