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There was a moment this week, when I was biking in the bitter cold trying not to wipe out on the ice, my ears stinging from the wind, when I realized I was singing to myself. The little hum in my heart had become audible. “This joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me. The world didn’t give it, the world can’t take it away.”
Thanks to Rabbi Mó, the beautiful song This Joy written by the resistance revival chorus and produced by Righteous Babe Records, has become a KT Hanukkah anthem of sorts. This week, the actual darkest week of the year, punctured by numerous acts of heinous violence, the song emerged like a warm light from my frozen, frightened, grieving subconscious. Given the explicit spiritual instruction to light the menorah in public, to take pride and radiate the joy and light, the attack at Bondi Beach was violating and destabilizing. I am grateful to Jewish Currents for translating my heartfelt experience into words: “It was devastating to wake up Sunday morning to the news of a mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. News like this is doubly distressing: First and foremost there is the reckoning with the loss of human life—among the dead were a girl of 10 and a Holocaust survivor—a reckoning that is particularly difficult amid nonstop news of massacres and gun violence. Then there is also the exhaustion of knowing that there will be no time to grieve or to collect our thoughts before we on the Jewish left go on defense, as we try to parry brazen attempts by the Israeli government, Jewish communal organizations, and pro-Israel actors to claim victims of antisemitic violence in the diaspora as proxy Israelis, and to link their deaths to the movement for Palestinian liberation.” The coincidence of the 8th night of Hanukkah with the Winter solstice has deep significance. I don’t know how often it happens, but I can tell you that the sages imagine it was like this in Gan Eden, when the world was first created. The Sages taught that when Adam HaRishon, the very first person, experienced the very first winter and saw that the daylight was progressively diminishing, they feared the days would just grow shorter and shorter until the light was gone and everything returned to tohu va’vohu, chaos and disorder. They said, “Woe is me; perhaps because of my own transgressions the world is becoming dark around me.” This must be my doing. In response, that very first human offered songs of praise and lit candles and observed a festival for 8 days. And thus was the very first Hanukkah! until they saw that the daylight was progressively lengthening. They realized the days become shorter and then longer, and this is the order of the world (B.T. Avodah Zarah 8a). This year, despite it being five thousand seven hundred and eighty six years since the creation of the world, there is something primordial happening. We are back in a state of chaos, kindling lights to reclaim order and hope. I know there are days when I feel the violence and disorder will not recede. I know terrorism and fascism are not akin to the solstice, nor should they be part of the natural order of the world. And yet, they are the doom and gloom of our time and we must use every spiritual resource we have to confront them. To quote the best fundraising email I have received this season from Bread and Roses Community Fund, “Despite everything we’ve lived through this year, there is another story unfolding—one where communities organize, resist, and rise up with unflinching resolve.” This joy, the world didn’t give it to us. But we can give it to each other! And we can remind ourselves that the world can’t take it away. Which is what Hanukkah is all about. I invite you to play this song on repeat til it wells up in you. Come sing it with us on Shabbat morning and again at our Hanukkah party on Sunday evening. Joy metabolizes stress and fear and anxiety. It is medicine for these times! Every holiday has its unique preparations. Today I found myself buying an abundance of oil, seven bottles to be exact (I should have added an 8th). It took me three trips to shlep all the bottles of grease from my car to the kitchen. I got a gallon of grapeseed oil for frying latkes, one kind of olive oil for roasting, another for dressing. A few varieties from Palestine, Lebanon, and Turkey for tasting. While I was at it I resupplied on toasted sesame oil. This is afterall a celebration of oil. Though unlike the Maccabbes, I will be starting out with an enormous amount. If it doesn’t last all week I will be concerned.
Often I am drawn to Hanukkah as the festival of lights. But this year, I am thinking more about the oil, and what it means to have a holiday that encourages the consumption of greasy foods. When I was growing up fat was the enemy. Diet culture deemed anything fat-free to be healthy. I can still recall the plastic flavor of a Snackwell cookie. Rabbi Minna Bromberg’s new book Every Body Beloved: A Jewish Embrace of Fatness is encouraging me to reflect on Chanukah as an opportunity to reclaim our relationship to our bodies and to food, and to fatty foods in particular. It reminds us that fat is not something to be feared. It is fuel; it is silky, viscous, life-giving, luscious and delicious. In the very first pages of the book she recounts this story being with her daughter at a preschool Chanukkah party while 39 weeks pregnant: “The preschool had hired a young man to play guitar and lead the singing and dancing…After a few lively renditions of familiar Chanukah tunes, we took a break to eat sufganiyot… Kids and parents alike were served the fried, jelly-filled Chanukah pastries. An absorbed hush fell over the munching crowd. Soon the young man picked up his guitar again, and once again I was impressed…And that’s when he check, check, checked his mic and said, “Okay! Let’s all get back to dancing, unless you’ve gotten too fat from those sufganiyot!” (5). Reading this story, I could hear the spiritual screech in the room, and feel the weight of his words in my own body. Rabbi Bromberg captures her internal reaction brilliantly: “Doesn’t this guy know that Chanukah celebrates the miracle of fat?!?... The miracle of Chanukkah is that that oil, that fat, lasted for eight days. We eat fried foods on Chanukah in remembrance of the luminous fat that allowed our traditions, and by extension our people, to survive. We celebrate fat as that which sustains and renews us in the face of hardship. We also eat fried foods because fat is yummy. And we do not need to be afraid of or uncomfortable with our own fat hunger – neither the hunger of fat people nor the hunger for fat” (12-13). Holy, holy, holy is the human body in all its forms. Rabbi Bromberg’s book beckons us to create a world where “we can trust our own hungers,” where “every body is beloved.” And her wisdom seems especially needed on this side of Chanukkah and the Holidays, so that we can enjoy ourselves and model for the young people in our lives a Jewish of embrace of delight, pleasure and desire. One of the most incredible parts of the book is that in between the chapters she interspersed letters she has written but never sent. A letter to her seven-year-old self. And a letter to the people at Yom Kippur services who would not move to let her through. And a letter to her college boyfriend who broke up with her because she was fat and Jewish. You get the idea. They are in essence teshuvah letters. Before Shabbat comes in, who might you write to knowing you never have to send it? I am grateful to Rabbi Bromberg for the idea of Chanukah being the yearly reminder to embrace our bodies and “broadcast the miracle of fat.” I encourage you to get on her mailing list to enjoy A Year of Fat Torah! I am not exactly conflict averse, but I don’t particularly enjoy conflict. I am prone to seeing it as the result of mistakes I, and the other people involved, have made, rather than a healthy opportunity for change.
The honest truth is that I am in conflict with several people in my life right now. The work of Teshuvah may be the focus of Elul but is not contained to those prescient days. Some conflicts have been resolved and others have worsened. I am working to remember that conflict is part of the spiritual path. And that Torah can guide me in navigating conflict with more grace. In a tribute written by Rebecca Solnit, the words of Buddhist teacher and environmental activist Joanna Macy, of blessed memory, captured my attention, a welcome refresh. Macy once wrote, “It is good to realize that falling apart is not such a bad thing. Indeed, it is as essential to transformation as the cracking of outgrown shells. Anxieties and doubts can be healthy and creative, not only for the person but for the society, because they permit new and original approaches to reality.” There is deep wisdom here that I have learned before but remains hard to internalize. It is hard to internalize because falling apart is painful. It involves loss and grief, disorientation and uncertainty. This week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach, contains the anticipated reunion of Jacob and Esau, brothers separated by betrayal, preparing to reencounter one another. Jacob is afraid, and he spends the night alone on the banks of the river Yabbok, where he famously wrestles with a being, somehow both human and divine. The tussle lasts until dawn, at which point the angel begs for release and Jacob relents on the condition that the angel bless him. Genesis 32 reads, וַיֹּ֣אמֶר שַׁלְּחֵ֔נִי כִּ֥י עָלָ֖ה הַשָּׁ֑חַר וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ לֹ֣א אֲשַֽׁלֵּחֲךָ֔ כִּ֖י אִם־בֵּרַכְתָּֽנִי׃ “Then he said: Let me go, for dawn has come up! But he said: I will not let you go unless you bless me. וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֵלָ֖יו מַה־שְּׁמֶ֑ךָ וַיֹּ֖אמֶר יַעֲקֹֽב׃ He said to him: What is your name? And he said: Yaakov.” At this point the angel blesses Jacob with the name Yisrael - the one who struggles. Commentators ask if this struggle is internal or external. I am unsure it matters. Either way it is archetypal. It invites us to consider what we do with our fears, what we are struggling with, what we refuse to let go of, what we long to be blessed with. I offer you the wisdom of Joanna Macy, who invites us into a love greater than our fear: “Each one of us has been called into being at this time. I am convinced of that. We are not here by accident. Is it my imagination to think that we have chosen this? Is it not a privilege to be incarnating at a time when the stakes are really high, at a time when everything we’ve ever learned about interconnectedness, about trust, about courage, can be put to the test? Each one of us, I believe, is a gift the earth is giving to itself now, a unique gift. Every anguish, betrayal, disappointment can even help prepare us for the work of healing.” |
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General Questions: (267) 702-6187 or [email protected]
Shabbat Services: 5300 Whitby Ave, Commercial #1, Philadelphia, PA 19143