This is the third in a series of three posts by Rabbi Lerner on the significance of Chanukah and Christmas. Please read the first one, The Miracle of Chanukah, and the second, Chanukah and Christmas: The Expression of Radical Hope.
As I wrote in my earlier post, Jews and Christians have much in common in celebrating at this time of year.
And yet, there are reasons to not mush together these separate holidays. The tremendous pressure of the capitalist marketplace has been to take these holidays, eliminate their actual revolutionary messages, and instead turn them into a secular focus whose only command is "Be Happy and Buy."
The huge pressure to be happy and the media’s ability to portray others as beaming with joy makes a huge number of people despondent because they actually don’t feel that kind of joy, and imagine that they are the only ones who don’t, and hence feel terrible about themselves, something they seek to repair by buying, drugging or drinking themselves into happiness.
And when that too doesn’t work for very long, they become all the more unhappy with themselves or with others. The pressure to buy as a way of showing that you really care about others puts many people into the position of spending more than they have, putting themselves into further debt, and then feeling depressed about that.
Still others have no way to buy "enough" on credit, and then their children, saturated by a media specially attuned to the best ways to market to toddlers and everyone older through their teen years, make their parents or others feel inadequate because they have not bought what the media portrays as the standard for what a "normal family" buys for the holidays.
Jews, seeking to fit into American society, grabbed onto this path of the holidays "not really being religious but only a time to celebrate," and thus many embraced Christmas in the one way they could—buying presents for their non-Jewish friends and neighbors and celebrating Christmas as a "non-sectarian, American holiday."
But this well-intentioned move to fit into American society only helped the capitalist secularists, and unintentionally further undermined the ability of Christians to hold onto the religious and spiritual intent of their holiday. This is why spiritual progressives of the Christian faith have urged Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives to NOT celebrate the holiday as one undifferentiated "holiday season" but to celebrate the holidays as religious and spiritual holidays and to affirm the specific religious message of each one depending on which fits your particular faith.
For those who will be in the Bay Area, my synagogue Beyt Tikkun invites you to come to a Chanukah party that honors the themes of this message. It will take place at 6 p.m. Saturday night, December 27th at the Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez Street in San Francisco. Children are especially welcome (that’s why it’s at 6 p.m.). The event includes candle lighting, telling the Chanukah story (by me), singing and dancing (music by Achi Ben Shalom) and shmoozing. We’ll supply the latkes (potato pancakes). Cost is $15 per person (free to members of Beyt Tikkun and to currently paid up members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, but they must bring food for a pot-luck). Or, if you happen to be on the Big Island of Hawaii, on Sunday night Dec. 28th, Rabbi Lerner will be there to do a Chanukah candle lighting ceremony at a place to be announced only to those who respond and RSVP to kay@tikkun.org.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine, chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue which holds services and Torah study in both Berkeley and San Francisco, is the author of 11 books, most recently the national best seller called The Left Hand of God. He urges you to copy and circulate this message to all your friends, and to JOIN (as a dues paying member) the interfaith organization that he chairs along with co-chairs Sister Joan Chittister and Princeton Professor Cornel West—it’s called the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and you can join at www.spiritualprogressives. Along with membership, you get a free subscription to Tikkun magazine, the preeminent interfaith magazine of progressive politcs, social theory, spirituality, philosophy, cultural critique and psychology.
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