I'm not sure which. But a Christian friend recently asked me if I put so much effort and joy into Chanukah to fill a void left by Christmas. Nothing could be truth. Still, there are an awful lot of Christians who believe Chanukah is the "Jewish Christmas" no matter how many times you say no no no and explain why it is the polar opposite. I have different thoughts about Chanukah.
Last year, it was all about publicizing the miracle (which I did and will do again this year and every year), but in 2011 my mind goes back to a novel I read in high school--Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. I've only read two of the classics in high school--1984 and Fahrenheit 451--no Catcher in the Rye.
In college the only memorable thing I read (aside from all of the many science and nursing books) was the play The Glass Menagerie. I love my college English professor Mr. Bishop (ironic name considering where this post is leading). One time the English class was broken up into groups and we had to discuss and debate the play. I am an introvert by nature and had a fear of public speaking, even in a small classroom at a small private college.
So my group gathered in front of the room. I don't remember much of what I said, other than how Tom was the most dysfunctional person in the play. The mother deluded herself, but at least she kept the family running. Laura...her limp wasn't disabling at all. Her shyness was. Tom? Tear down his facade and he was the most dysfunctional of all. For some reason the image of Tom sitting in the stockroom at work writing poems on the back of a shoebox stayed in my mind. I did find something very sad in that and horribly dysfunctional that he could not function at work, secluded himself at work.
Mr. Bishop gave us our critiques on small slips of paper (not verbally). I can still see my slip of paper, "You were consistently on a higher level of discourse than your fellows." Really? I had to look up the word discourse just to figure out if it was a good critique or a bad one. So how was I on a level of discourse higher than anyone else? They seemed much more articulate, less shy, more extroverted.
But back to the memorable books I read in high school--Fehrenheit 451 (the temperature at which paper burns) stayed with me and I am thinking about it in the days before Chanukah 2011. Fehrenhiet 451 was about book burning and censorship. But Ray Bradbury actually meant it as an indictment against mindless television. People cram their heads with facts but not knowledge and create artificial "intelligence."
What does anything about this have to do with Chanukah? Probably little to most, but in my case a lot. From the age of seven I began questioning the trinity that the Catholic Church tried to teach me as a child in Catechism class. I just couldn't buy it. It was a mystery, the nun told me. She called me a "question mark" when it came to Catholicism.
Again, something I will never forget. She made the comments on the altar of Coronation Church BVM. But she was right, I was a question mark when it came to being a Catholic. Later, I questioned the Apostle's Creed: How can we recite the first paragraph about believing in one G-d and in the next about a trinity? It made no sense to me at all. No wonder the Shema tells Jews to teach the Shema to children. A child's mind could grapse one=one. Echad=Echad.
That's kind of like 1984: two+two=five!
G-d would never confuse children on something this important. It was clear, simple for a child to understand.
I recall the night in the early 1980s. It was during the winter. One of the coldest nights, starlit. I was having problems financially and sought some solice from the bible. I never cracked open a bible. As Catholics we were spoon fed bits and pieces of the bible at Sunday Mass. You really couldn't get a grasp of the whole story that way.
So I went into the living room. The huge family bible was in a gold covered cardboard box under the class end table. I took the cover off and read. It was terribly confusing so I started not at the beginning but in the middle, in Psalms. Long story short, the Catholic bible betrayed itself. The Christian New Testament contradicted the majority of things taught in the Tanach.
Then there were the maps! All of the maps of Israel were labeled "Palestine" though Palestine was nowhere mentioned in the bible. Nowhere at all! The Vatican insisted there was a Palestine and pictures of girls in Israeli pictures in the bible were described as "Palestinian."
Another odd thing--in this Catholic and in most Christian bibles, there is a very long psalm with separate paragrams, each headed with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. English verses with subtitles in Hebrew. Not just Hebrew, but single letters in Hebrew. Here again...like the Shema, echad, and teaching the basics to children...
The Catholic bible included two books of Maccabees, which I also read. But getting back to the point, the Catholic bible did indeed betray itself. Looking back, I can now remember a lot of the quotes, but one in particular stands out, so relevant to my spiritual search for truth and G-d:
"Do you know, I had a dream an hour ago. I lay down for a cat-nap and in this dream you and I, Montag, got into a furious debate on books. You towered with rage, yelled quotes at me. I calmly parried every thrust.
"Oh, you were scared silly," said Beatty, "for I was doing a terrible thing in using the very books you clung to, to rebut you on every hand, on every point! What traitors books can be! You think they're backing you up, and they turn on you. "
Yep. The Catholic bible is a traitor to the Vatican. But how is it that a relative few really see it as such? They follow along like sheep reciting the same litanies.
I've written this before--my mother regarded books as sacred, all books. They were sacred and yet...even textbooks needed to be covered with covers made from brown paper bags. How strange. The sacredness had to be hidden.
It's not like we were enslaved Africans in the southern US circa 1800s, a time when reading for enslaved people was a crime punishable by death.
Then again, my mother grew up in the church pre-Vatican II, when Catholics were forbidden to read the bible for themselves, lest they misinterpret it.To my mother, who aspired to be a writer, and who wrote an untitled book about the old Italian neighborhood she grew up in--Virginia Street:My Home Town. None of my relatives know who "the rabbi" she refers to was. But there was someone she refers to in quotations as "the rabbi." Who was he?
I always wanted to be a writer, too. My college degree wasn't journalism at all, and yet this is now my job. I report on crimes, the community values this small column (and other crime/police related articles). They want to know what is going on. Not as gossip. They want to fight to protect themselves, know where the crimes are happening, who is committing them.
Two writers of the Buffalo News wrote that they liked my particular police blotter because "it quotes criminals." Sure, much of what criminals say before and after arrest is funny. Other times it is downright scary, so why not quote criminals and expose their idiocy and danger?
Last year the police station was housed, temporarily in a church, while the stationhouse was being renovated. The temporary police station was much like the old police stations, no glass barriers or anything.
I became friends with one cop in particular, an African American cop, Shawn. He read everything as it sat for hours at his post, thought a lot. I was shocked to see him reading Mein Kampf one day. He's a Nazi, was my first reaction, but we talked, discussed things. Not a Nazi in the least!!!!! How can you read such a thing, I thought!
I guess he read the book for the same reason people read my police blotter. They really want to know what is going on in our community and the world. As the guy who told me a couple of weeks ago, "Don't ever get sick anymore."
To wrap things up--Chanukah does fill a void. It fills a void with light and knowledge. The Torah, Jewish tradition, all sacred. Worth fighting for as the Maccabees did.
I'll end this with a memorable quote from Fehrenheit 451:
"Guard your health Montag, because if anything happens to Harris, you are the Book of Ecclessiates."
And from the Book of Eccessiates:
"The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep His commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone" (12:13).
"there are always voids, but darkness calls itself to be filled with light
thank you for sharing your stories and your light"