“As my teacher, David Hartman, says, the miracle is not that one vessel of oil lasted for eight days but that the community was willing to light one vessel not knowing whether it would last. “And I want to celebrate beginnings,” he continued. The question should be whether your parents used the competitive religious environment to spur you to retrieve your Judaism.” Early Christians adopted customs from Judaism in the way that Judaism later adopted customs from Christianity. Understand that all cultures, at all periods in human history, have been in dialogue with others. But I’m trying to make you more appreciative of your parents. “The Christmas tree was always in the background, even if we didn’t have one ourselves. “I faced the same thing growing up in Minnesota,” he said. I mentioned my frustration that Hanukkah had become too reactive to Christmas. And I think each home has to be the center of those values, so that instead of the light coming from the outside world, which is what television is, ultimately dissolving everybody into their own rooms, the light comes from inside the family and illuminates the neighborhood.” It’s a statement that I want to preserve my values and trumpet my beliefs-not that other people have to adopt them, but that other people accept them. “For that reason,” he said, “Hanukkah is the perfect holiday for a multicultural world. With Hanukkah, the mitzvah is to publicize the miracle to the outside world.” With Passover, the mitzvah is to publicize the miracle to the next generation of your family. It’s a public statement of what you believe in. Hanukkah, he explained, is different from most home holidays, “because it’s about putting the menorah in the window.
Why can’t I do the same thing with the way I shape my home time?” “This change fits other aspects of modern living,” he said, “in which people say, ‘I’m taking back control over my life. He is one of the world’s leading experts on Jewish holidays and a passionate advocate for what he calls “homemade Judaism.” Zion believes the future of Judaism depends on rediscovering a more familial, do-it-yourself tradition of creatively celebrating holidays at home. But after a visit to Israel during the festival several years ago, I began to view Hanukkah in a new light.Īfter viewing the lighting of Israel’s equivalent of the National Christmas Tree – the menorah at the Western Wall in Jerusalem – I met with Noam Zion of the Shalom Hartman Institute. My family lit candles every night, and my mother, who believed all gifts had to be earned, hid presents and made my siblings and me find them before we could open them.
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