Carve Up the Hanukkah Turkey
By Adam Harmon
Presently, I am wintering in Maine, which is, without doubt, the anti-climate. While enroute to Thanksgiving with relatives, which need be differentiated from family, I met up with Boston gridlock. While crawling mind-warpingly speedless, I picked up my pad and began to write down some thoughts regarding the meaning of Thanksgiving. I was thinking about the word, Thanks-for-all-that-Giving, and wondered to whom that thanks should be offered. I thought of three different groups. The immediate group being those we know and work to love well, the next being the community whose past members have secured the road to freedom, which people today pave in a continuing effort to make the USA one of the most pleasing places to live. Finally, there is all that thanking of higher powers, whether they be pagan spirits or that lovingly stern mono-patriarchical God.
Sitting in the car, realizing that this was my first Thanksgiving in nearly a Decade (since moving back to the States from Israel), I wondered why I hadn't missed it. I guess I just was not being TOLD to be Thankful. It's a shame I need to be reminded. While castigating myself, I guess my guilty conscious dipped about looking for excuses. While it didn't find any, I did stumble upon the thought that Hanukkah and Thanksgiving have much in common. Associations spilled onto my pad while some hungry Honda honked me to inch forward one foot, as if it would get her to Grandma's house any quicker.
So much for Little Red Riding Hood.
I tend to make analogies between non-Jewish celebrations and the Jewish ones. I have more often than not put Hanukkah and Christmas together in the same little box. Maybe because both of them mostly mean neat packages delivered by Federal Express (hint-wink to my sisters). Although I do not pretend to know exactly how Hanukkah is presented these days, it is my recollection that Hanukkah is associated tacitly with Christmas. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, nor do I actually believe that there is a clear cut difference in the United States between the ideas which Thanksgiving and Christmas represent. It is my impression that both holidays focus on the celebration of Family, Community, and God. They both provide a forum wherein people are made to feel freer from the weight of their daily-daily to shower affection on the people they love; to lavish them with attention, whether that be in the form of extra kisses, artful purchases, poetry, or flowers. I am certainly pro-presents.
I know that Jewish families and leaders discuss Judah Maccabee's military success and talk up the miracle of the menorah remaining lit 8 days. It is revealed to children and adults alike that the victory and rededication of the Temple gives evidence to God's manifest will. Both the Christians during Christmas and, I believe, the Jews during Hanukkah award God's hand in our lives a little too much credit. Although that is to be expected, both being religious holidays, I think that the emphasis on the miraculous, God's will, over-shadows the deeper lessons and meaning Hanukkah offers. Hanukkah actually has more in common with the more secular Thanksgiving celebration, which emphasizes the value of individual sacrifice and communal faith.
Thanksgiving is a day of celebration that commemorates the building of a nation. America was to the First Comers a New Jerusalem, the promised land which would provide them religious freedom, and from which, by virtue of toil, they would forge a new nation of free men (back then women were not of equal concern, or so I am often told). There was no surety that they would survive that first winter. In fact, many of the few who did survive The Crossing did not outlast this first of many hardships. Although I could ramble on about the Pilgrims and their massive undertaking, I will merely mention Carl Sandburg's gander at that period in the gorgeous work entitled Remembrance Rock.
The Pilgrims passed through many emotional phases. First, the fear of failure and death. Then, surprise and joy at their survival. Finally followed by simultaneous elation and trepidation, a fear that the first waking hope might be unfounded. When the worst was over and the community's survival was assured, a feeling of awe at the miracle of their success confirmed to them that their faith had not been misplaced. Their faith in themselves and in their God was equally distributed; it is this miracle, the community's survival, which is the focus of the celebration. They viewed their success as a sign of Pilgrim purity-of-spirit and the power of God. They offered up Thanksgiving to Providence, but they were simultaneously celebrating the community's resilience. God's love and approval was reflected by their success, but they understood that they flourished as a result of hard work. This active human hand in fulfilling God's will is likewise found in the concept of the Elect and is the basis of the Protestant work ethic, both of which tie godliness to material success. Therefore, the Pilgrims were essentially celebrating what they had accomplished and how they had lived. The People, The Community, were at the center and God was in some respects more peripheral precisely because he/she was seen everywhere and in everything.
Still stuck in front of the Road Enraged, I remembered that Hanukkah is the story of the Jewish people's attempt to obtain religious freedom. The Assyrians were trying to force the Jews to accept their gods, in a way very similar to King James' attempt to force his view of God onto his subjects. Both acts were brutal and political. The Puritans fled England, eventually settling in the New World in order to have the freedom to choose their own way to pray. The Jews did not have any decent seafarers (and, besides, the world was still flat) so they dug in and fought for their rights where they were. Both the Jews and the Puritans, who saw themselves as New Israelites and were fond of quoting Isaiah, won the right to practice their religions as they saw fit. The survival of the Pilgrims that first year is no less dramatic nor miraculous than the success of Judah and his people when they forced the Assyrians to retreat. Judah and his people no doubt underwent the same process of transforming fear into elation as did the Pilgrims. I am willing to bet they saw themselves as being mity in the face of Assyrian might. They were small rebels, little Davids against yet another Goliath. I am sure they were as surprised by their success as the Assryians were embarrassed by their failure. In a way, the trepidation, hope, and elation revolving around the question of the oil symbolizes the same emotive spectrum crossed by the Maccabees during their conflict with the Assyrians. Like the Pilgrims, the Maccabees survived by virtue of great toil and sacrifice, and attributed their victory to some great power beyond themselves. (I think it is difficult for people to accept the surprise of great success and that is why there is still today the need to look for some higher power -- call it Luck, Fetish, or God -- to blame for our achievements. But that is a whole other can of refried beans.)
The menorah remaining lit needs to be viewed in terms of a miracle in order to perpetuate the idea of God's part in their success. It can not be viewed in terms of a mistaken calculation. Making the menorah central also reminds the people the reason for fighting in the first place; religious freedom. When we light those candles of the menorah today we link ourselves to the past, just like carving up that turkey, and we should be grateful to all those who have come before us and whose sacrifice makes these joyous days possible. That is what makes traditions so wonderful. They connect the past, present, and future together with one deft act. I am not saying that God does not and should not have his place. Nor do I believe that there is too little discussion regarding the Maccabees and too much religiosity. This is not a complaint. It is simply a comment about the holiday and about the possibility of looking at it in a slightly different light and how this small addition might somehow stimulate discussion and thought. Hanukkah reminds me of Purim in that the traditions focus on the success of the main characters and the survival of the people as being a function of individual talents and independent of Red Sea partings.
I believe that it will be useful, if the holiday is going to continue to have significance for us as Jewish-Americans, to consider the way we perceive the holiday. It is my belief that the religious, mystical aspects of the holiday, although an essential part of the tradition, should not be at the center of discussion. Instead, the concepts of social justice and nation (as in tribal) should be more squarely in the center.
I do not have any specific vision of how that should be accomplished and I am unsure it is necessary to do much. I am not suggesting that the Hanukkah turkey replace the Hanukkah bush, either. This is not an attempt to further Americanize/secularize Judaism, to make it more palatable, nor is it a call to snuff out the festival's lights. Light menorahs, praise the gods, but pay close attention to the men and women who chose to first reenter the Temple when the dust began to settle, and who searched out that oil before sitting down to rest. This is a small thought, but it has brought me closer to having a Hanukkah which will be more than just a way for me, as an American, to still participate in all the winter fun.
Happy dreidling.
See you at the ballpark!
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