Post by Rabbi Neil on Dec 8, 2017 19:59:56 GMT
This week Chanukah, because next week Star Wars...!
There are two festivals in our calendar that have become specifically children’s festivals – Chanukah and Purim. It is, in my opinion, a sign of the lack of health of the Jewish community that this is the case, and I say that while of course being the father of two children. Both Chanukah and Purim are totally disturbing stories. Chanukah really has little to do with any miracle of the oil. If you read the two Books of Maccabees, which were not canonized but were instead put in the Apocrypha, the story is totally different. The miracle of oil story appeared in the Talmud, around 600 years after the books of the Maccabees. In those books, the Jews start assimilating and Mattathias decides he’s had enough. When he sees a Jew desecrate an altar, he murders the Jew and the Greek who has led him to that level of assimilation, and then starts a war to remove all foreign influence from the land. We tell kids that Mattahias and his son Judah are heroes and the Greeks are the oppressive villains, but that’s simply not borne out by the stories themselves. The Greeks attempted to Hellenize everyone they came into contact with. Yes, they defiled the Temple, there’s no question, but they obviously didn’t see it as defiling, but as enhancing, by placing their own iconography there. Mattathias’ response was extreme, zealous, one might say. The first person he kills isn’t a Greek, but a Jew. He starts a civil war, of zealots versus assimilationists. And yet we, the assimilated Jews, celebrate his victory.
Purim is a festival that is connected to Chanukah through the Al-HaNissim prayer, which thanks God for the great and marvelous miracles that God performed for us at that time. Where these festivals differ is that the Book of Esther made it into the Bible whereas the Books of Maccabees didn’t. This is all the more remarkable since the Book of Esther doesn’t even mention God’s name – in fact, it is the only book in the Bible that doesn’t. So, we have two stories, one a lengthy historical narrative split into two books that basically reads as a war novel about zealots overpowering assimilationists, and another narrative which is a much shorter that is basically a soap opera of courtly intrigue, sex and death.
So, why do we turn these stories into kids’ stories? Just to be clear, Chanukah is eight days long not because of any miracle of the oil. The Book of Maccabees is very clear as to why it is that long – because the Maccabees realized that they hadn’t celebrated the festival of Succot, so they waved lulav and celebrated it for eight days. They were playing catch-up. No oil, no miracle, just war and religious zealots observing a festival late instead of not at all. So, what’s with the pediatric narrative for both stories? Why say that both festivals are about a victory against oppression, when actually neither are? I think the first reason is because we’re embarrassed by both narratives, possibly rightly so.
The original Chanukah narrative is embarrassing, particularly for Reform Jews, because it’s a celebration of religious zeal, even to the point of killing assimilated Jews. Of course, our tradition sometimes praises religious zealots who try to stop the assimilation of the Jewish people. Pinchas comes to mind as an obvious example. As every year passes that distances us from these events, the idea of a Jew killing another for assimilation becomes ever more repugnant. So I think part of the reason we don’t tell that story is because we don’t want to talk about Jews killing other Jews. We want the story to be black and white. We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys, whoever “they” are, the Greeks in this case. It’s embarrassing if we have to question ourselves. The same applies for the Purim story. Why do I never read the entire Megillah? Because at the end of it, the Jews go on a blood-lust rampage and slaughter thousands of people. It’s embarrassing. Better to talk about wonderful Esther and how she saved the day from wicked Haman.
This simplification of conflict is a human tendency. We see it online all the time, indeed the breakdown of any meaningful political dialogue in this country is certainly evidence of that. People don’t like grey areas, we like our lives to be certain. That’s the second reason for not telling either the Chanukah or the Purim stories as they are. Nuance is lost in summary but nuance is where the text really shines, particularly with Esther.
Perhaps another reason for not telling these stories as they are is due to the luminal experience of the Jewish people. Both narratives remind us of our potential extinction, either through assimilation or through genocide. Dwelling too long on the conflict, or on the means for overcoming that experiencing facing the void, is difficult. So, perhaps a third reason for recasting these festivals as being for children is because we don’t want to face our own potential extinction, by which I mean any possibility of the extinction of the Jewish people.
Although this doesn’t apply to the Purim story, maybe we don’t want to tell the real story of Chanukah because if you can delay a festival and observe it when it’s convenient, that’s going to really mess with attendance at services!
At the end of the day, these aren’t kids’ stories. So, when we turn them into such, we diminish the impact of the narratives themselves. Religion should definitely involve children, of course it should. But it should also be deeply meaningful for adults, too. For kids, everything is certain, the world is very black and white. But for many adults, there’s a lot more grey. I think that these two stories need to be held together because they teach us all an important lesson, which is totally lost when we infantilise the narratives. Mattathias acts with certainly. Zealous, almost crazed certainty. Esther, on the other hand, prevaricates. The threat to Esther is greater than that to Mattathias – he sees the people assimilating but she knows of their literal pending death. Nonetheless, it takes her days to reveal her Jewish identity and to thwart Haman’s plan. That, for me, is where the moral of these stories is this year. Sometimes, we need to act with certainty, sometimes we need to slow down and consider our actions.
There’s too much certainty today. There’s too little compromise or, at the very least, too little trying to understand the Other before acting with certainty. If we hold these two festivals together, as our tradition has done for thousands of years, then maybe we can learn a shared message from them by comparing their protagonists. We can’t do that if we just focus on telling the story to children. We need to also tell it to ourselves and learn from it ourselves.
As Chanukah starts this coming week, then, may we explore the narratives of Chanukah and of Purim as adults alongside children. May we learn profound lessons about the times in our lives when we are zealous and the times when we prevaricate. And may our move away from simplifying the narratives of these festivals inspire our children to a deeper understanding of our heritage. May such be God’s will, and let us say, Amen.
There are two festivals in our calendar that have become specifically children’s festivals – Chanukah and Purim. It is, in my opinion, a sign of the lack of health of the Jewish community that this is the case, and I say that while of course being the father of two children. Both Chanukah and Purim are totally disturbing stories. Chanukah really has little to do with any miracle of the oil. If you read the two Books of Maccabees, which were not canonized but were instead put in the Apocrypha, the story is totally different. The miracle of oil story appeared in the Talmud, around 600 years after the books of the Maccabees. In those books, the Jews start assimilating and Mattathias decides he’s had enough. When he sees a Jew desecrate an altar, he murders the Jew and the Greek who has led him to that level of assimilation, and then starts a war to remove all foreign influence from the land. We tell kids that Mattahias and his son Judah are heroes and the Greeks are the oppressive villains, but that’s simply not borne out by the stories themselves. The Greeks attempted to Hellenize everyone they came into contact with. Yes, they defiled the Temple, there’s no question, but they obviously didn’t see it as defiling, but as enhancing, by placing their own iconography there. Mattathias’ response was extreme, zealous, one might say. The first person he kills isn’t a Greek, but a Jew. He starts a civil war, of zealots versus assimilationists. And yet we, the assimilated Jews, celebrate his victory.
Purim is a festival that is connected to Chanukah through the Al-HaNissim prayer, which thanks God for the great and marvelous miracles that God performed for us at that time. Where these festivals differ is that the Book of Esther made it into the Bible whereas the Books of Maccabees didn’t. This is all the more remarkable since the Book of Esther doesn’t even mention God’s name – in fact, it is the only book in the Bible that doesn’t. So, we have two stories, one a lengthy historical narrative split into two books that basically reads as a war novel about zealots overpowering assimilationists, and another narrative which is a much shorter that is basically a soap opera of courtly intrigue, sex and death.
So, why do we turn these stories into kids’ stories? Just to be clear, Chanukah is eight days long not because of any miracle of the oil. The Book of Maccabees is very clear as to why it is that long – because the Maccabees realized that they hadn’t celebrated the festival of Succot, so they waved lulav and celebrated it for eight days. They were playing catch-up. No oil, no miracle, just war and religious zealots observing a festival late instead of not at all. So, what’s with the pediatric narrative for both stories? Why say that both festivals are about a victory against oppression, when actually neither are? I think the first reason is because we’re embarrassed by both narratives, possibly rightly so.
The original Chanukah narrative is embarrassing, particularly for Reform Jews, because it’s a celebration of religious zeal, even to the point of killing assimilated Jews. Of course, our tradition sometimes praises religious zealots who try to stop the assimilation of the Jewish people. Pinchas comes to mind as an obvious example. As every year passes that distances us from these events, the idea of a Jew killing another for assimilation becomes ever more repugnant. So I think part of the reason we don’t tell that story is because we don’t want to talk about Jews killing other Jews. We want the story to be black and white. We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys, whoever “they” are, the Greeks in this case. It’s embarrassing if we have to question ourselves. The same applies for the Purim story. Why do I never read the entire Megillah? Because at the end of it, the Jews go on a blood-lust rampage and slaughter thousands of people. It’s embarrassing. Better to talk about wonderful Esther and how she saved the day from wicked Haman.
This simplification of conflict is a human tendency. We see it online all the time, indeed the breakdown of any meaningful political dialogue in this country is certainly evidence of that. People don’t like grey areas, we like our lives to be certain. That’s the second reason for not telling either the Chanukah or the Purim stories as they are. Nuance is lost in summary but nuance is where the text really shines, particularly with Esther.
Perhaps another reason for not telling these stories as they are is due to the luminal experience of the Jewish people. Both narratives remind us of our potential extinction, either through assimilation or through genocide. Dwelling too long on the conflict, or on the means for overcoming that experiencing facing the void, is difficult. So, perhaps a third reason for recasting these festivals as being for children is because we don’t want to face our own potential extinction, by which I mean any possibility of the extinction of the Jewish people.
Although this doesn’t apply to the Purim story, maybe we don’t want to tell the real story of Chanukah because if you can delay a festival and observe it when it’s convenient, that’s going to really mess with attendance at services!
At the end of the day, these aren’t kids’ stories. So, when we turn them into such, we diminish the impact of the narratives themselves. Religion should definitely involve children, of course it should. But it should also be deeply meaningful for adults, too. For kids, everything is certain, the world is very black and white. But for many adults, there’s a lot more grey. I think that these two stories need to be held together because they teach us all an important lesson, which is totally lost when we infantilise the narratives. Mattathias acts with certainly. Zealous, almost crazed certainty. Esther, on the other hand, prevaricates. The threat to Esther is greater than that to Mattathias – he sees the people assimilating but she knows of their literal pending death. Nonetheless, it takes her days to reveal her Jewish identity and to thwart Haman’s plan. That, for me, is where the moral of these stories is this year. Sometimes, we need to act with certainty, sometimes we need to slow down and consider our actions.
There’s too much certainty today. There’s too little compromise or, at the very least, too little trying to understand the Other before acting with certainty. If we hold these two festivals together, as our tradition has done for thousands of years, then maybe we can learn a shared message from them by comparing their protagonists. We can’t do that if we just focus on telling the story to children. We need to also tell it to ourselves and learn from it ourselves.
As Chanukah starts this coming week, then, may we explore the narratives of Chanukah and of Purim as adults alongside children. May we learn profound lessons about the times in our lives when we are zealous and the times when we prevaricate. And may our move away from simplifying the narratives of these festivals inspire our children to a deeper understanding of our heritage. May such be God’s will, and let us say, Amen.