The Sixth Candle: I Need a Hero

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One of the festive songs of Hanukkah is ‘Mi Yimalel’ – ‘Who Will Speak Of’.  Not to take anything away from our classic ‘Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel’, Mi Yimalel is a bit more layered in describing what it is we are celebrating.

When we speak of Hanukkah and the Maccabees, we often talk about the war they waged and the victory of the few over the many.  It is the stuff of fantasies. Unfortunately, outside of discussing a war, we often only think of oil, fried foods and dreidels.  Is the sophistication of Hanukkah sitting in a celebration of warfare?

The song ‘Mi Yimalel’ asks who will speak of the mighty deeds of Israel.  It then proceeds to state that every generation needs a hero who can lead everyone.  It concludes by saying that in our day all Jews must unite and stand together.

As Jews, we don’t celebrate a war or the killing of an enemy.  We celebrate heroes, leaders and the brave people with vision who unite us when we so easily divide ourselves.

Hanukkah celebrates the understanding that brave leaders with strong Jewish grounding can bring us to a place where we can overcome insurmountable odds.

The Fifth Candle: Only I Get To Say Who I Am

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In the ancient world, it was common for empires to conquer lands and grow their religions.  Empire building is about maximization not minimization. When one people are consumed by another, their culture and gods are added to the existing dominant culture.  There would be some repackaging involved but, in essence, the conquered gods are still recognizable. It’s actually very practical. A conquered people are less likely to rebel if they feel they have not been disconnected from their faith or their gods.

The problem with the Jewish people was that you can’t add more gods to a monotheistic faith.  When Antiochus marched into the Temple in Jerusalem, he put an image of Zeus into the Temple (granted it looked like Antiochus but no one said heads of invading empires were humble).  Adding Zeus to the Temple is a typical way of growing the pagan pantheon of gods: the more the merrier.

It is baffling to foreign empires that this bothers Jews.  It seemed to work with other conquered peoples, why were we being so difficult?  This problem arises each and every time. It happens with Antiochus and it will happen with the Romans.  They truly believed they were saving us from our primitive, myopic view of the world. It is the age old story of the dominant and powerful people believing they must save the native, primitive and backward people.

In fact, some Hellenistic concepts did make their way into Judaism because we decided which concepts enhanced our perspectives.  We decided what fit our fundamental identities and then brought them in through a Jewish lens.

Hanukkah is about celebrating the right to self-define.

The Fourth Candle: Let the Man Handle It

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Hanukkah represents a time when everything Jewish was under attack.  The people, the religion, the culture, independence, autonomy, monotheism, family, Torah, everything that connected us to anything Jewish was under attack.  We often think Hanukkah was a time of warriors and battles with weapons and armies. But the books of the Maccabees also describe the civilian resistance that was waged by the women.

While the men picked up weapons, the women made sure to pass Judaism to their children.  Circumcision was punishable by death, as was teaching Torah, Hebrew, keeping Shabbat or eating Kosher.  And yet, story after story is recorded of women who never gave an inch. These stories are tremendously heartbreaking and difficult to read but it is clear that these women knew that if the war is won, but Judaism is lost, then nothing has been won.

Jewish law thanks women for their steadfastness, courage and bravery by stating that while the Hanukkah candles are burning, women are to refrain from labour.  So every night while those candles burn, the women should gather around the candlelight and share their stories. It happens around sunset – around dinner. For these 8 days, the men of the household are to handle everything while Jewish history honours our women.

Hanukkah is about recognizing the unsung heroes among us.

The Third Candle: Get the Gelt While the Getting’s Good

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Hanukkah gelt is a traditional way of celebrating Hanukkah in Judaism.  It is a time to give money, traditionally coins, deliciously chocolate coins, to our kids.  In today’s world, people are giving gifts and forgoing the ‘gelt’ (Yiddish for money) but perhaps we shouldn’t give up on the gelt so quickly.  

Hanukkah coins are used to bet on the outcome of spinning the dreidel.  Everyone would put money into the pot and bet on which letter the dreidel would land on.  There are 4 Hebrew letters on a dreidel, to spell out the sentence of a great miracle happening there.  Legend has it that because Jews weren’t allowed to study Hebrew, on penalty of death, parents created these toys with the Hebrew alphabet on it as a way to continue teaching Hebrew to their children.  In order to fool the soldiers, they told their children to make it look like they are playing a money game. Then the soldiers won’t look too closely at the dreidel because the money would distract them.

It is traditional to still play the dreidel game and still bet with chocolate coins, but the legend doesn’t always get told.  

When we give Hanukkah gelt to our kids we should tell them the legend.

Hanukkah is about being creative to maintain our Jewish identities as we secure it from one generation to another.

The Second Candle: Liberating Gender Barriers

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There are several Jewish texts that we believe describe the events or time of Hanukkah.  The first are the books of the Maccabees, which tell of the Hasmoneans and Judah the Maccabee.  There is another text that we believe intends to speak to the Hasmonean time, although it is not set in that time period, and that is the book of Judith.  None of these texts have entered the Jewish canon, and so they are not often studied, but they describe interesting gender diversities that challenge our stereotypes.  

Judah the Maccabee was a warrior and Judith was a widow living quietly in her town.  When Judah the Maccabee liberated the Temple, he and his men are described as sweeping it clean, hanging curtains and decorating the rooms.  When Judith’s town is threatened by an enemy and no one will fight them, Judith plans and executes a strategy to behead the enemy general, Holofernes, and gather an army to fight.

Judah and Judith, the same name, the same goal, each crossing gender stereotypes of their time.

Hanukkah teaches us to exceed our perceived limitations to fight evil and achieve our goals.

The First Candle: Looking Forward or Looking Backward?

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There was an argument about lighting the Hanukkah candles between two famous Sages: HIllel and Shammai.  The holiday of Hanukkah was shaped on the holiday of Sukkot. During Sukkot, we offered 70 sacrifices for all the nations of the world.  We started with 70 the first day and offered a few less every day of the holiday. Because we started with a number that symbolized the totality of holiness, Shammai argued that Hanukkah should also start by lighting 8 candles the first night and reducing each night by 1.  That way we honour our past and maintain the impact of holiness into the world. Hillel argued that we should understand our past but always look forward in time and increase holiness in the world.  

Do we use our past to inspire our future (Hillel) or do we use our past to shape our future (Shammai)?  Both present compelling arguments.  

Hillel’s argument carried the day.  We begin with 1 candle and increase candles every night.  

Hanukkah inspires us to elevate ourselves as we move forward.

Because He Dared to Dream

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Hi everyone,

Hope you had a good week.  I’ve spent a few days hearing about strange dreams.  Not the kind that come from daydreams and zoning out but actual dreams.  A young woman I know is expecting her first baby and is starting to have very strange dreams. They are shocking to her and a bit frightening and so I have been reassuring her that everything is fine and that pregnancy brings about strange dreams.  This week’s parshah, Vayeshev, is filled with Joseph’s dreams and so my mind has been circling back and forth around dreams.

The Sages in the Talmud tell us that dreams are messages you send yourself.  It is then important to try and read those messages (somewhere Freud is dancing a hora).  The Sages then repeat in several different places that the power of the dream never lies within the dream itself, it lies within the interpretation of the dream.  It is not the content of the message that will matter, it is how we hear it. Put another way, meaning does not rest within a book, it rests within the reader.

When I was teaching Tefillah in kindergarten, we were discussing the morning prayer of ‘Modeh Ani’.  The first words uttered when opening our eyes in the morning is to thank God for returning my soul to me.  Of course, the kids all ask where their souls went at night that now they’re back. The conversation pretty much centred around God showing our souls wonderful things when we sleep as a reward for the good things we do.  One kid asked if nightmares are then a punishment for bad things we do. Everyone agreed that nightmares are punishment (ah, if the world could only stay as black and white as this). But one kid objected and said that dreams can’t be punishments.  Nightmares are when God takes our souls and shows them the things that scare us the most so we can see them when we’re safe in our beds and together with God. That answer has stuck with me all these years. This is why the Sages tell us to learn Torah from children.

Interestingly, the Talmud also mentions that our souls journey at night and bring us dreams of things we have never seen or hear languages we have never learned.  In the Talmud, we journey with angels.

I can’t help but think of Joseph and his two dreams.  The Torah tells us that Joseph and his brothers don’t get along.  It’s only made worse by the ‘special’ robe Jacob gives him. It’s not a multi-coloured robe, it’s striped.  That actually makes all the difference. A richly coloured robe would designate royalty while a striped robe designates being the heir.  Jacob has designated Joseph as his heir because he is first born of Rachel, the loved wife. Of course his brothers will hate him now – it is a terrible insult to them, but most importantly, to their mother, Leah, the first wife.  Insulting someone personally is minuscule in comparison to insulting their mother. The Torah tells us they cannot ever speak a kind word to Joseph.

And so Joseph dreams his dreams.  The first one has him working with his brothers in the fields as they bind sheaves.  He says the brothers’ sheaves circled his and bow. The brothers are appalled and blame him for dreaming that they should serve him.  Things get worse between them, which leads us to the crucial question: why would he then tell them of a second dream?

Joseph returns to his brothers and describes a second dream where the sun, the moon and stars are bowing to him.  He also tells his father this dream. Everyone gets mad at him. How dare he think that the family would worship him?  Jacob seems to understand that the sun and the moon represent himself and Rachel, except some commentaries point out that Rachel has already died so Jacob’s interpretation could not be true.  In other words, maybe the problem isn’t the dream, it’s that it’s being wrongly interpreted.

What if Joseph isn’t dreaming a dream of worship but rather a dream of welcoming.  In the ancient world people bow to each other to welcome each other more commonly than to worship.  Joseph’s first dream has him working with his brothers, sharing a common activity in the field. Maybe their sheaves surrounded him in an image of inclusion and then bow with a gesture of welcome.  Maybe the brothers have entirely missed what he was trying to tell them and so he tries telling them again with a second dream. He tries to tell his father how isolated he is feeling.

When everything backfires so badly, Joseph doesn’t stop dreaming, he just stops telling them about it.  They never get past feeling insulted by the striped coat and so it is the insult that is dictating the interpretations.  The dreams trigger Joseph being kidnapped and sold into slavery. Only when Joseph masters interpreting dreams will he rise to great power in Egypt.

The key is not in the dreams, it is in how we choose to hear them.  We have two options: the first is to accept the brothers’ interpretations and conclude Joseph was self-centred, ego-driven and thoughtless.  The second option is to question their interpretation and conclude the brothers could not put aside feeling insulted in order to hear a genuine appeal coming their way.  

We learn nothing from the first option.  The second option makes us question how often we allow a perceived insult to block us from hearing an authentic plea.  

Dreams are messages we send ourselves, they are journeys of the soul. We must read them with care, and when we hear the dreams of others, we must always hear the person speaking the dream before we hear the dream.

C’est La Guerre

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Hi everyone,

Hope you had a great week.  My week was filled with classes winding down and celebrations winding up.  My weekly Torah and Mussar classes are taking a break for a few weeks and, as Chanukah is approaching, some of the schools and shuls are starting to have Chanukah inspired events.

In one of those moments, I was walking through the halls of a Jewish day school in Toronto. I had the pleasure of standing next to a line up of kindergarten kids waiting to go out for recess.  They must have just finished a class in Torah, since they were all talking about God speaking to Abraham and Sarah. They were wondering what language God was speaking. Intrigued, I stood a little closer.  One of them said God spoke Hebrew and English. They all agreed and stood quietly for a minute. Then one kid said they forgot one language that God was speaking. They forgot that God was speaking French to Abraham.  I stood quietly as they all agreed that, yes, of course, God was speaking French!

The kids ran out to recess and I was left in the hallway wondering how, on earth, they had such unanimous agreement that the Almighty Creator of the Universe was speaking French to Abraham and Sarah.  Then it hit me clearly. God was speaking Hebrew, English and French because we teach them Hebrew, English and French. For non-Canadian readers, quick reminder that Canada has two official languages: English and French. Both are taught starting in elementary school.  The beauty of the conversation in the hallway was that six year olds were reflecting what we all feel: why would we learn something if it’s not relevant to us?

So, I can’t help but think about a moment in this week’s parshah, Vayishlach.  We read the text where Jacob wrestles with an angel and is renamed Israel. It’s beautiful, it’s meaningful, it’s mystical…but when’s the last time you wrestled with an angel and got a new name?  How is it relevant to me in anything I do?

But, the Torah doesn’t say Jacob is wrestling with an angel, it says he’s wrestling with ‘a man’.  Jacob, himself, isn’t sure who he’s wrestling with and, in the end, concludes he wrestled with God.  Hosea, the prophet, says the man was an angel and we have accepted Hosea’s understanding. There are midrashim and commentaries that discuss which angel Jacob struggles with, while others explore the idea that Jacob is actually wrestling with himself – we are witness to a primal, internal struggle of identity and transformation.  And there lies the relevance.

The incident occurs the night before Jacob meets his twin brother, Esau, after years of estrangement.  Jacob tricked his brother out of his birthright and will now face Esau and be held accountable for his actions.  Everything is on the line and Jacob must now confront his past. He struggles with the entity no one is able to name.  

There are moments in all our lives when we face things we’ve done in the past. Choices we ourselves may not fully understand or be proud of.  Things that occurred in the past, yet somehow lay in wait for us in future moments. Things we continually revisit and struggle with. It doesn’t matter if the moments are embodied within an external angel, or within our internal subconscious, because the wrestlings with these moments are real.  In fact, we have all been Jacob on a dark, quiet night, struggling with an unknown being.

And then the resolution is powerful.  The ‘angel’ blesses Jacob with a new name: Israel.  The word itself is explained as struggling with God and humanity with the ability to prevail.  It is an understanding of the nature and strength of the man, and the nation, who will bear that name.  But the word ‘Israel’ is also the initials of all the ancestors: the 1st letter is for Yitzchak and Ya’akov, the 2nd for Sarah, the 3rd for Rebecca and Rachel, the 4th for Abraham and the last for Leah.  In Judaism, names are essence and so the essence of our ancestors lies within the name of our people, within our identities. It is who we all have been and where we all come from.

But the very same word speaks of the future and authenticity of how we express.  The word that tells us who we were is the same word that tells us we have the strength to be anything in the future.  We have been blessed with the strength to argue and defend the journey we choose, even if the argument is directly with God.

In that light, the text in this week’s parshah is possibly one of the most relevant.  In our dark moments, when we face ourselves and our unknown beings of struggle, we remember that we will always meet who we were, we will struggle, and then we will move forward to continuously shape ourselves into who we choose to be.  The blessing is in the struggle.

So, who am I to deny that in the midst of some ancient moment of angst and doubt, Abraham or Sarah turned to God and asked why things have to be so hard.  Maybe in the complexity of an ancient Divine explanation of the metaphysical workings of the universe…maybe somewhere in that moment… maybe God spoke French.

I’d Like A Double Water On The Rocks With A Twist Please

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Hi everyone,

Hope you had a good week.  I’ve been having interesting conversations this week about technology and the generation that’s trying to find partners through it.  My kids and their friends have learned to navigate relationships by ‘swiping left or right’. The first time someone explained the term ‘ghosting’ to me, I was shocked.  Rather than having to find words to explain to someone why you’re not interested, you simply ignore them and, in fact, they will go away.

Everything seems to happen online and I can’t find the virtual ‘watering hole’ where singles can meet each other.  I remember going to pubs on dates and when I was a student I worked at pubs and watched others on their dates. Today, people still meet on dates, but first they have googled each other, so first dates are not a discovery of the other person but rather a validation of what they found online.  Everyone is at a distinct disadvantage.

I spent time in Israel as a student and I have interesting memories of dating there.  One date involved mulled wine in a unique hovel in the old city of Jaffa. There was no indoor plumbing, the bathroom was outside in a tiny closet shared by a courtyard of studio apartments.  I loved that nothing like that existed in Toronto. There were no seats, there were benches covered with blankets from the old city.

I was enjoying the wine and trying to look mysterious (I wanted to fit the atmosphere and perhaps have a second date) when I excused myself to find the washroom.  I found the outdoor ‘closet’ and squeezed myself in. As I was using the facility, I noticed there was a knob on the wall right in front of me. I am not one to ignore things I don’t know so, of course, I turned the knob. It activated the shower head that was directly above where I was sitting. The shared bathroom I was in doubled as a shower and I couldn’t turn it off for a few seconds until the shock of the moment passed and I realized how to turn it off.  I was drenched…and I was on a date.

I couldn’t leave without explaining why, since I didn’t want to offend my date, he had done nothing wrong (except taking me to a place with a bathroom from hell – yes, I blamed him for a few seconds there).  So I grabbed my sweater from my bag, bunned my hair and went back to the table as if nothing happened. He simply asked me if everything was ok and I said ‘yes, why?’

There was no second date.

In-person encounters are indispensable.  The Torah is full of couples meeting at watering holes.  Rebecca meets Eliezer at a well when she offers to draw water for his camels, as he is on a long journey.  He arranges for her to marry Isaac, who she first meets at a well where he has gone to get away from people for a bit.  And in this week’s Parshah, Vayetzei, Jacob meets Rachel at a well when he opens the well and draws water for her sheep.  The text tells us she is a shepherd (her day job) so essentially, Jacob meets her at the watering hole at work. Eventually, Moses will also meet his wife, Tziporah, at a well and she will bring him home with her.  It becomes tried and true.

Today, in the complex world of technological advancements and societal transformations, where is the virtual well, the watering hole?  Rebecca offered to help someone on their journey and Jacob offered to help someone with their job. Isaac goes to the well to find some quiet when he meets Rebecca and Moses is fleeing from harm when he meets his wife who brings him to family.  These ancient moments show us the complexities of those first few moments – the endless possibilities when we first meet someone unknown to us.

I never explained to my date why my hair was dripping and he never asked what happened.  We were not a good match since my curiosity would do that to me often. There’s only so long he could pretend not to notice.  

So perhaps dating should involve that leap of faith in allowing that people are more complex than their online profiles could ever capture.  If it’s someone you don’t know then there are definite realities in today’s world that need to be considered. There are safety concerns and the true sense that people can more easily misrepresent themselves today. So, as someone who didn’t have to deal with this ‘in my day’, I offer these words: try and focus on the real concerns when investigating a potential date online and leave latitude for the possibility of a wonderful surprise if you accept an offer to meet. Take advice from the ancient world: meet at a public watering hole, watch how they interact with strangers, people who are tired from their day at work or looking for a quiet moment.  

The internet allows us to accept or reject someone based only on what we see.  Whether it’s to meet a partner, a new friend or someone we’re considering for a job, the parshah reminds us that often what attracts us to each other is the chemistry in the air – but we have to sit together to feel it.

But If I Know That You Know That I Know…

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Hi everyone,

Hope you had a great week.  This week I had an interesting conversation with some of my kids about their friends who are expecting babies.  I realized childbirth stories that have passed down through the generations for countless millennia are somehow irrelevant to the childbearing families of today.  

Gone are the days when a woman would suspect she’s pregnant but have to wait for weeks before she could take a test to be certain.  The big innovation was that we no longer killed rabbits to diagnose a pregnancy. I learned the phrase ‘the rabbit died’ is now a gruesome and twisted image to an expectant couple. 

Today, pregnancies are announced on Facebook hours after conception.  The entire pregnancy is catalogued online, complete with regular baby bump selfies, diets, questions and suggestions.  It no longer takes a village to raise a child, apparently it takes a village to gestate one as well.

When I was pregnant with my first child I had an ultrasound (a new-fangled test in my day).  I was shown a black and white image of shapes and shadows that everyone called ‘the baby’. Technology developed quickly and by my fifth child I was given an ultrasound picture to take home with me.  It was a picture of shapes and shadows with a circle drawn on it and handwriting outside the circle that said ‘the baby’. I showed everyone the picture with joy and when a few people asked me if I could show them exactly where the baby was I would always point to the circle drawn around a blob.  In truth, I could have been holding an ultrasound of my left kidney.

These days I see ultrasound pictures of babies that are 3D with everything visible, including facial expression, hair and gender.  I’ve seen families gush over the pictures and comment on things like ‘he has the hands of a musician’ or ‘the legs of an athlete’.   There is an expectation that we rise to the challenge of having the most up to date, the latest and the greatest.  

My husband and I bought a swing for our first baby.  It was the ‘first generation’ of swings and needed to be wound up.  Everyone was discussing the latest information about how swings sooth the baby and will teach the baby to calm itself.  The swing’s mechanical casing sat just above the baby’s head. We somehow always managed to bean the baby in the head with it when carefully lifting her out of the swing.  Swing casing hits baby, baby wakes and screams, parent searches for head injury, baby goes back into swing, rinse and repeat…

We never stop to consider that the latest and greatest might not be the best.  So much information comes our way, we don’t have a chance to ask ourselves what kind of information is it?  Information that educates us is different than information that informs us which is different than information we should consider and, finally, information we should implement.  At first glance, we think it’s obvious, but information filters change everything.

As parents, we feel vulnerable and we default to thinking that the more information the better.  We feel most secure when we think we can choose our children’s destinies. Woody Allen used to say his birth announcement read: Mr. & Mrs. Allen are proud to announce the birth of their son, Dr. Woodrow Allen.

But we must never know our children’s destinies or we will raise them toward it.  In Judaism, our destinies are areas of negotiation – that is the meaning of Yom Kippur.  Locking into a vision of destiny creates a narrow view with no free will.

In this week’s parshah, Toldot, Rebecca is pregnant with twins and they are waging a war within her.  She seeks God to find out what is happening. God tells her that she is not carrying two babies but two nations who will live apart.  God tells her one will be mightier than the other and the elder will serve the younger. God tells her their destinies.

For the rest of her life Rebecca is left to wonder if God was describing the future or prescribing it.  Was she supposed to sit and watch it happen or was she supposed to actively make it happen?  In desperation, as time ticks away, she decides she must fulfill God’s words and enacts a plan to make it happen.  Rebecca doesn’t realize her sons had already traded their birthrights, it had already happened. Not knowing how to read the information she was given, Rebecca instructs Jacob to trick his father and a family will be torn apart.  The consequence of the wrong information filter causes Isaac to bestow ancient blessings, with national and land ownership implications of the region, that can still be felt in today’s world. When Isaac has full knowledge of what happened, he affirms his blessings but the family rift is complete.

The Torah commands us to behave a certain way and we take that information as authoritative and instructional.  But what do we do with the information that is more descriptive? When we are told we will be ‘a light onto the nations’, or ‘a holy people’, are we to understand that as our inevitable destiny (descriptive) or as a goal to actively journey toward (prescriptive)?  Do we consider it a birthright or a vision of possibility?

Rebecca prayed for information and God answered her prayer.  But the information alone resulted in divisiveness and enmity.  Not that long ago, fathers weren’t allowed in birthing rooms, it was considered information for women only.  Today, technology invites the world into every moment. The age of information triggers the need to understand that we know very little about how to use the information we access.  

So even when I know something in today’s world, I have to think back to our most ancient of texts and question if I actually know anything about what I know.