Hear Our Voice

“Y’all ready for Christmas?” the repair man asked me the other day.  “Thanks for asking, we’re Jewish, so we celebrate Chanukah,” I replied.  A minute later, having ostensibly had to get up the nerve, the repair man asked me, “So, what is Chanukah?  I mean, is it like Christmas?  How is it different?”  “Well,” I began, “it’s really not like Christmas at all except if you think about it from a meta-religious perspective, in that ancient societies have always celebrated “festivals of lights” at this time of year when the days get shorter and the nights longer.”  (Yes, I actually did say something like this, but perhaps a bit clumsier.)  I went on…“I mean, Chanukah is the Jewish holiday when we celebrate an ancient victory over the Syrian Greeks in the second century BCE (which for you is “BC” because, well, you believe differently than we believe)…anyway…who made Jewish practice illegal and then set out to desecrate the ancient temple of Jerusalem and then there’s this myth that we teach our kids (and most adults tend to hold to as well) that when the Maccabees (the Jewish rebels who beat out the Syrian Greeks employing guerilla warfare) wished to clean up and rededicate the temple, even though they found only enough oil to light the 7-branch menorah for one night, it miraculously lasted for 8 nights!  Which is why we celebrate Chanukah for eight nights using a 9-branch menorah which is actually called a Chanukiah (because a menorah is that 7-branch lamp referred to before) so when we sing the “Oh Chanukah, Oh Chanukah” song, we really shouldn’t be singing, “O Chanukah, O Chanukah, come light the menorah”….but instead we should be singing, “O Chanukah, O Chanukah, come light the Chanukiah,” with the emphasis on the first syllable, so the song still works.  And yes, we give gifts and we spin tops and we light lights and usually Chanukah doesn’t fall exactly on or during Christmas…it’s just that the Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar balanced for the seasons, so that Chanukah does fall in the Winter time and Passover in the Spring time which is why you might have heard Jewish people say that Rosh Hashanah is falling early or late this year, when in fact it always arrives on time (the 1^st of the month of Tishrei).  I could go on but it occurred to me as I recounted in my mind all the things I did say and could have said even more of, that Judaism can indeed be quite confusing and even a bit off-putting for a newbie so be kind to the newbies in yours and your family’s life, because they are there because they love you, and nonetheless Judaism can be confusing and even bewildering at times.  However, probably not as confusing as it was for my repair man, which I realized only later in the day when I caught myself in the mirror and was reminded that I was wearing an “Islamic Relief USA” t-shirt, a short video from which, by the way, this article was meant to be an introduction (I guess I got off on a tangent…).  Click on this link and enjoy a brief video overview of my One America Houston Puerto Rico mission trip which was 100% sponsored by Islamic Relief USA!