EGON MAYER

EGON MAYER GUEST COLUMNIST In public space, most Jews welcome the menorah beside the Christmas tree, but in the interfaith married home, the symbols clash and often ignite high anxiety. Jewish...

...High on my Chanukah shopping list is a new publication from the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs and the University of Judaism by Ron Wolfson, The Art of Jewish Living: Hanukkah (1990).* Besides songs, history and dialogue, the book deals sensitively with the complex emotions of the Christmas and Chanukah season...
...Commemorating the brief triumph of Jewish survivalists, the Maccabees, against the militant assimilationists of their time, the Hellenists, in about 160 B.C.E., Chanukah has long represented Jewish success at the defense of our cognitive and cultural boundaries...
...It is bound to shed its bright lights for all eight days of Chanukah and then some...
...Egon Mayer is professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and senior research fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies, Graduate School of City University of New York...
...To choose only one of these two seasonal symbols is, in the context of the interfaith married family, tantamount to a declaration of exclusive turf-claim over the marital and familial territory by one of the spouses...
...This was true of my daughter...
...Maybe...
...The nomenclature of the Jewish holidays has been, of course, a closed matter for the better part of 2,000 years...
...Ironic...
...Small wonder that throughout America one sees ever more frequently the public thoroughfares adorned by giant menorot proudly standing alongside the tall, decorative pine trees of Christmas...
...When it does, Chanukah may be known as the season of our dilemma, or simply as the December dilemma...
...Somewhat ironically, Chanukah is also called chag ha'urim, festival of lights—ironic because Chanukah occurs when we enjoy the least amount of sunlight...
...As menorah and Christmas tree become joined symbols of the season in public thoroughfares one cannot help but wonder whether the menorah still demarcates the spiritual boundary of Jewish turf or whether, together with its more fragrant companion, it is staking out a new frontier...
...Or, perhaps, just one of the miracles of Chanukah...
...The peace that these two symbols have made in the public domain is all the more intriguing in view of the fact that for hundreds of thousands of in-terfaith married Jews—and their numbers are growing by leaps and bounds each year—the two symbols ignite high anxiety each year...
...In short, Chanukah has become a holiday-of-stature to enable us to withstand the general spirit of Christmas...
...For example, Sukkot is called chag ha'osif, holiday of the harvest, while Pesach, occuring in the spring, is called chag cheruteinu, holiday of our freedom—presumably expressing both the freedom of the Exodus and the sensation of freedom that comes with the feelings of springtime, rebirth and new opportunity...
...Once only a minor holiday of dubious religious significance, Chanukah has emerged in the latter part of the 20th century as the holiday most widely celebrated by Jews and most widely recognized by their gentile neighbors...
...The rabbis bid us to place our menorot visibly in our windows or doorways to show the world that we dare to delineate the perimeters of our own social space...
...But, given its seasonal coincidence with Christmas, particularly in the context of the extraordinarily hospitable, pluralistic and consumerist society that is America, Chanukah has been impelled to take on attributes of its gentile calendar-mate, complete with its requisite gifts (the giving of gifts is more appropriately associated with Purim, a holiday known to few and observed by even fewer), greeting cards, parties, etc...
...But to accommodate both often feels like a symbolic act of surrender or betrayal, particularly to the Jewish spouse...
...At the same time, the Jewish enthusiasm for this holiday and the manner in which we've come to celebrate it is a parallel indicator of our embrace of America...
...Now, as in MAYER continued from page 16 days of old, we turn to books to tell the story, signify its relevance to our evolving history and guide us in practical "to-do's" with which we can teach our children...
...at age three or four, in reply to her grandmother's question about whether one of her little friends was Jewish or not, she replied, "Oh, he's Christmas and I'm Chanukah...
...If the official miracle of Chanukah is the "triumph of the holy minority over the unholy majority," as we recite in our prayers, surely it is also nearly miraculous that this minor holiday has risen far above the major ones in the collective consciousness of the Jewish people...
...The cultural onslaught of Christmas from nearly Thanksgiving to New Year's has impelled Jews to take refuge in their own seasonal holiday or be left without a reason for not joining in the festivities of the wider culture...
...But the experience of Jews with Western modernity in general and American culture in particular may yet worm its way into the seasonal-holiday dialectic...
...Yet the triumph of accomodation of these two symbols in the public domain is both a reflection and a harbinger of the mood of tolerance and of Jewish-gentile blending in America...
...The answer lies in the curious dialectic between the holiday and the season of the year when it occurs...
...Even the staunchest Jewish defenders of the separation of church and state feel a sense of pride at seeing "our" symbol boldly alongside "theirs...
...Jewish holidays have traditionally stood in a dialectic relationship with the seasons of the year in which they occur, at once stamping the season with the spirit of the holiday as well as being stamped by the features of the season...
...The sight of a menorah adjacent to a Christmas tree in their friendly neighborhood bank, in front of their town-hall or at the entrance of their shopping mall, which fills most Jews with a sense of pride, fills them with horror should the two symbols be found cohabiting in their own living room or in the living room of an interfaith married child...
...The ready acceptance of Chanukah on the American landscape is but a proxy indicator of the ready acceptance of Jews in the blend we call America...
...But why Chanukah...
...What this holiday means for us moderns and how we continue to infuse it with uniquely Jewish significance remains a challenge nearly as great as that facing the Maccabees...
...8> The Art of Jewish Living is available from the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs, 415 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10115, for $14.95, plus 10 percent skipping and handling.—Ed...
...Many Jewish children first experience awareness of their Jewish identity in contrast to their gentile friends in connection with Chanukah...
...He wrote Love and Tradition: Marriage Between Jews and Christians (Schocken, 1985...

Vol. 15 • December 1990 • No. 6


 
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