Murray Haar On Religion: A Jew Talks about Christmas

Friday, December 9, 2016

A Jew Talks about Christmas

That time is coming again. Where I live, when it is Christmas, it is Christmas! Everything becomes part of Christmas. The movies, the TV shows, the commercials, the malls, the stores, the decorations, the sales, and especially all the lights. Everything, for good and for bad, gets sucked into the massive vortex that has become Christmas.

From a Jewish perspective, we have come to expect this electrical lighting cosmic celebration every December. The hoopla around Christmas though has made our holiday of Chanukah more important than it used to be. The word Chanukah means dedication. In the year 165 b.c.e. the temple in Jerusalem was rescued from Greek desecration and rededicated by the lighting of candles in the temple. There was only enough oil for one day. But, by some miracle, the candles stayed lit for eight days. So, the Rabbis took that event and made it into a holiday of celebration that occurs every December. The lighting of candles for eight nights demonstrates the power of Judaism over assimilation and God over evil.

Is it possible to connect Chanukah to Christmas? Why should we even want to connect them? Isn’t it easier for you celebrate yours and we will celebrate ours? Some would say, let’s not mix what should not be mixed.

I disagree. In my life I have come to understand Christmas as a holiday of hope, that the light will and can overcome the darkness. Near as I can tell, Jesus was a Rabbi who tried to teach Jews and non-Jews that the light was greater than the darkness. Chanukah candles proclaim that the darkness shall not prevail over the light. I am not sure Jesus ever celebrated Chanukah but I think he would have celebrated the lighting of candles on the Sabbath and other holidays to symbolize God’s light over the darkness.

But we have to say that all the talk about how the light overcomes the darkness can sound hollow in the midst of terrorism, cancers, drug addictions and the many other calamities of life. Better and more honest to say, the light is always struggling to overcome the darkness. Sometimes it succeeds. Sometimes it does not. And that tenacious struggle not to allow the darkness to prevail is the true meaning and connection between Chanukah and Christmas. So, light the candles, Jewish or Christian and let us, each day, do what we can do to hold back the darkness. A restful holiday season to you all!

1 comment:

UnknownDecember 9, 2016 at 7:25 PM
Shepherds and flocks were only in the fields March to October (Luke 2). A near winter solstice celebration is advocated by Romans - Saturnalia and Vikings, banging swords on shields to scare away the Sun-devouring Dragon. Pesach, Succoth, would be more appropriate Holy Days to compare to the non- Dec. Nativity than Canukah.

So Christmas should be correlated with the Jewish holidays of Pesach, Succoth, Rosh Hashanah, or Yom Kippur, not Chanukah.

I have enjoyed your lectures very much.

Pr. Rolland Mark Swanson, rostered in SW MN Synod, ELCA
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Notes from The Door

Whenever you care for the neighbor in pain, at that very moment, God is real. At that very moment, the Messiah has returned. In every situation where there is pain and injustice do what you can do to stop the pain. Murray Haar
Religion was not created by God but by people. What God thinks of our religions only God can say. If your religion teaches you to love God and to stand with your neighbor in pain, it is a good religion. If it teaches you to hate and to be indifferent, it is a bad religion. Murray Haar
Get Busy livin or get busy dyin (Shawshank Redemption)
The Holocaust teaches us that it is possible to be alive but no longer human. Murray Haar
I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know. Socrates
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good. W. H. Auden
For the most part, Christian pastors and priests are not taught to think but to transmit. They go to a vocational school called a seminary where they are taught how to transmit and proclaim the gospel but not how to teach their people to think critically about what they believe. They do not know how to teach their parishioners that Christianity could be wrong. Pastors and Priests are not prophets; they are religious functionaries who care about people and love Jesus. They themselves are usually nice people, will visit you in the hospital and give you bread and wine but they are not, for the most part, great thinkers. So, to expect them to reform the Church is just not realistic. Occasionally though, pastors show up who can think and believe at the same time and it is in them that there is hope for a reformation. I have met them. They are real and I have hope in them. Murray Haar
We do not believe in the Bible. We believe in God. The Bible is a vector toward God and the neighbor. When the Bible points us toward God and the neighbor, it is true. Whenever it does not, it is not true. We have to learn not only to read the Bible but to argue with it. Then the text will become real. Murray Haar
“In religion, the question is more important than the answer to the question.” A Midrash
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas
“He who saves a single life, saves the world entire.” The Talmud
“We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, or the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live: courageously or in cowardice, honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or adrift. We decide what is important and what is trivial in life. We decide that what makes us significant is either what we do or what we refuse to do. But no matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, these choices and decisions are ours to make. We decide. We choose. And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed.” Joseph Epstein

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Friday, December 9, 2016

A Jew Talks about Christmas

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