Elu V' Elu for December 2007
(Rabbi’s Corner)
Rabbi Gary A. Glickstein
A man driving around the back woods of Tennessee saw a sign “Talking Dog For Sale.” He stopped and saw a house with a Labrador Retriever in front. “You talk?” “Yep,” said the dog. After recovering from the shock, he asked, “So, what is your story? ”The Lab said, “I am an Israeli dog who has spent the last eight years in the service of the Mossad, spying on bad guys all over the world and reporting the information. I tired of the stress so I took an airport security job and was responsible for stopping a number of terrorist attacks. I retired to have a family of pups. They moved out with my misses and now I am just retired. The man rushed to the owner, “How much for the dog?” “10 bucks,” the man replied. “Why so cheap?” “The dog is a compulsive liar. He never did any of those things.”
Some people can’t see the forest for the trees. Some see the forest and forget the trees. Some see neither, looking either at the sky for inspiration or at the ground for loose change. How we tell our stories helps shape the lives of those who listen to us. I recently read a book I enjoyed tremendously, Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir by Shalom Auslander. The book, in a humorous and sometimes painful way, depicts how Judaism can be conveyed in such a dysfunctional way as to drive Jews away from us and our people. Shalom Auslander has been traveling to promote his book. At every stop he receives many who grew up in various religious traditions but who relate to the scars they carry from messages that focused on hate, guilt, vengeance, xenophobia, abuse and threats. He is also stopped by those who chastise him for depicting Judaism in such a negative light.
“What do you say,” asked the interviewer for a national newspaper (to Mr. Auslander), “to those who call you self-hating?” “I tell them I feel like I was driving down the road, told the driver beside me that his tire was flat, and got accused of hating cars.”
Auslander goes on to explain why he wrote a column about his experiences. “I am writing this column despite myself. I would rather be writing fiction, or at least be writing about writing fiction. I would rather ignore it, rather let the god-damn ship sink as the captain on deck reprimands the sailor who reported the leak below. The sick twist in all of this is that I can’t. Maybe there’s a part of me that suspects—or at least wants to believe—that religion is not the organized, millennia-old Stockholm Syndrome it appears to be. Maybe I, as much or more than others, need it to be about kindness and love. And so maybe I would like somebody to standup and say, “Not in our name.”
There are many ways to understand our tradition. Even the Festival of Chanukah is filled with different perspectives and meanings, depending on who is telling the story and when it is being told and to whom. Rabbi Michael Strassfeld writes, Only in the Gemara (the later rabbinic material that together with the Mishnah makes up the Talmud) do we find our long-lost miracle of Chanukah. In the tractate Shabbat 21b,the Gemara asks, “What is Chanukah?” and answers by saying that the Greeks defiled the temple, and when the Hasmonaeans (another name for the Maccabees and their descendants) defeated them, they found only one cruse of oil with its seal unbroken. It contained enough oil for only one day, but a miracle happened and the menorah burned for eight days. It should be pointed out that the Talmud’s account pays scant attention to the military victory of the Maccabees and focuses instead on the miracle of the oil. Scholars speculate that the differences in these texts reflect the history of the festival. At first, Chanukah was celebrated as a reminder of the victory of the Maccabees. It also marked the rededication (Chanukah means dedication) of the temple. Only later did the miracle of the oil come to dominate the military victory. This shift in focus can perhaps be attributed to the subsequent history of the Hasmonaeans. The Hasmonaean dynasty, with the passage of time, became hellenized and, more important, some of them opposed and even persecuted the rabbis. This dark later history superseded the brief bright period of their beginning. This may explain the Mishnah’s silence about Chanukah. Others speculate that in Mishnaic times, the rabbis, living under Roman rule, may have felt obliged to censor a story of a successful revolt by a small number of Jews against a powerful enemy.....Both to appease the Romans and to discourage Jews from being inspired by the Maccabees, the Mishnah may have minimized the military significance of Chanukah. Finally, one can speculate that because the independence of the Hasmonaean State lasted less than a 100 years, the importance of the Maccabees’ victory diminished as time went on, until it seemed like a relatively brief moment in the history of Israel....To ensure Chanukah‘s lasting importance, then, the tradition decided to emphasize its spiritual meaning and its symbol —the menorah. May the light of Chanukah illumine your home and shed light on the darknesses in your life. As you tell the story, may it convey the love in your heart and warmth and beauty of our Jewish traditions to all.
