Hanukkah in Egypt

Standing on the parted shores of history

we still believe…

that wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt

that there is a better place, a promised land;

that the winding way to that promise passes through the wilderness.

That there is no way to get from here to there

except by joining hands, marching

together.

—from Mishkan T’filah: A Reform Siddur

It has been a tough couple of weeks at my house.

First, on November 13th, four days after his eighth birthday, Samuel “Superman Sam” Sommer’s family, and the world, received the devastating news that his leukemia had returned, and that it is incurable. The little boy who inspired our Yom Kippur bone marrow donor drive, son of my friends and colleagues Rabbis Phyllis and Michael Sommer, is dying.

Then, early on November 17th, our cousin’s 20-year-old daughter was killed in a traffic accident. We heard this stunningly bad news on the 18th. As I write this, I am returning with Alec and our girls from Anna’s funeral in Illinois. Our hearts have broken. Just like every minute of every day, somewhere, someone’s hopes are destroyed, someone’s heart is broken.

If I weren’t already committed to an awareness of life’s uncertainty and fragility, and therefore to a life lived in faith, I would be now. The God I believe in neither causes car wrecks nor allows them to happen; my God does not determine who gets cancer and who survives. But I do believe, as a wise layperson once reminded me, that “God provides”; I would only add, “for those who have faith.” Call it God, the universe, or one’s own best judgment: whatever we feel is guiding our steps, we can only trust in it and walk bravely into the future—or risk paralysis by pain, fear, and doubt. Life is fragile, but resilient. It stubbornly persists wherever it can, though separated from death, its own destruction, by nothing more than a hair’s breadth. Somehow, Anna’s sister and her parents will go on. Sammy’s family will go on, and Sammy too, as far as he can. We all will.

With the gathering darkness heading into midwinter, we increase our Hanukkah lights each night. We acknowledge our reality, yet we neither despair nor surrender. We pray for miracles. In nature, light and life will return. It will catch us by surprise, and bless us.

Until then, the only thing any of us can do is to join hands, marching together, trusting that we will somehow get from here to our better place. Though it so often turns out not to be where, or what, we expected.

Thanksgivukkah: What Makes This Night Different From All Other Nights?

 In case you’ve tuned out Facebook, Stephen Colbert, and all the Jewish and mainstream press for the last six months and so hadn’t heard: the first day of Hanukkah falls on Thanksgiving this year. Jewish entrepreneurs are printing t-shirts and crafting turkey shaped Hanukkah menorahs (“Menurkeys”). Bloggers and publicists alike are creating new names for this phenomenon: Thanksgivukkah. Thanukkah. Hanukkagiving. That’s because…

…This is a highly unusual phenomenon. Depending on who you ask and how carefully you read, Thanksgiving coinciding with the first day of Hanukkah is a once-in-eternity occurrence; or it will happen again, but not for over 70,000years; or it hasn’t happened for about 125 years and won’t happen again foranother 150 years.

By the way, if you’re thinking, “Wait! The first day of Hanukkah on Thanksgiving means we’ll light the first candle the night before Thanksgiving,” you’re right. According to Jewish practice, days begin at sunset, so we’ll light the first candle Wednesday evening as we begin prepping all the make-ahead parts of the Thanksgivukkah feast, or shlepping to our out-of-state destinations, and the second candle on Thursday night, over the ravaged remains of the fried turkey—or tofurkey, or turkey latkes, or whatever.

And that’s before we expand the calendrical search to years when the first night of Hanukkah falls on Thanksgiving (placing the first day of Hanukkah on the Friday after Thanksgiving, a somewhat more frequent occurrence).  In any case, it’s still a highly unusual phenomenon, and kind of cool.

What’s most interesting to me, though, is the way in which this overlap is highlighting some common themes that run through the two holidays—and always have (always since the invention of Thanksgiving, anyway)—whether or not they overlap.

Hanukkah is a holiday that celebrates survival, and religious freedom. Say what we will about the Puritan Pilgrims and their behavior toward the Native Americans, we cannot deny that they sought and found religious freedom in the New World, nor that, notwithstanding a few setbacks along the way, the nation their descendants, and others, later founded has been a place of unparalleled religious freedoms for Jews.

And then there’s this business of giving: giving thanks, giving gifts.  Thanukkah, Hanukkah: we don’t need our festival to coincide with Thanksgiving to make these connections.

“Hanukkah,” after all, is the Hebrew word for “dedication,” as in the re-dedication of the Temple after its desecration by the Syrian-Greeks in the 2nd century B.C.E., and that re-dedication, after years of punishing occupation and war, would have required the mustering of every gift at the Jewish people’s disposal. How thankful do we imagine our ancient ancestors felt on this occasion?

The giving of Hanukkah gelt, a Yiddish term for “coins” or “money,” especially to children, is a tradition whose origins are lost to history. Some say it’s related to the Hasmoneans’ newly won right to strike their own national coins following their victory. Others trace it back to the Talmudic dictum that every Jewish household must light Hanukkah candles all eight nights, even if they must take up a collection in order to do so. And so on. Today we enjoy foil-wrapped chocolate “gelt” on Hanukkah, and many families have made it a Hanukkah custom to give tzedakah, sometimes to a different recipient for each of the eight nights.

On Hanukkah, we give thanks for our survival (so far!) as a people and a tradition in the face of repeated attempts to destroy us and our faith. We give thanks for the prosperity and freedom we enjoy today. We give, as much as we can, to those less fortunate than ourselves. Not just this year, when Hanukkah falls on Thanksgiving, but every year.

Happy Hanukkah. And pass the cranberry chutney. (Try it on the latkes. Trust me.)