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Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw in 2006

Wikipedia

In my January 24, 2010 article I reported on severalevents marking International Holocaust Commemoration Day. That day is the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by the Soviet army and is the day the international community remembers the Shoah. Most Jews, however, commemorate the Holocaust on Yom Hashoah whichIsrael's parliament set in 1951 as 27 Nissan (in between the end of Passover and Israel's Independence Day) which this year falls on Sunday April 11th. Most Jews but not all Jews. On the secular end of the spectrum Yiddish speaking secularists who associate with theInternational Jewish Labor Bund insist on marking the day on April 19th each year irrespective of the Jewishcalendar to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprisingof 1943. On the opposite religious end of the spectrum many (but not all) Ultra-Orthodox Jews have never accepted the 27 Nissan date because they believe that the entire month of Nissan should be imbued with the joy of Passover (15-22 Nissan). These religious opponents of the official Yom Hashoah tend to fold the commemoration of the Shoah intoTisha B'Av, the summer day of fasting which commemorates the destruction of the two Temples and numerous other Jewish catastrophes, though some argue for a separate day (10 Tevet) in the winter to commemorate the Shoah. These ultra-Orthodox objectors note that to commemorate the Shoah on a day associated with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, whose participants were largely secular, ignores the many Orthodox victims of the Shoah. I recommend to my readers Rabbi Yitz Greenberg's article on how the 27 Nissan date was agreed to and why he thinks it was the correct decision.

In Jerusalem ultra-Orthodox Jewish men prepare matza, an unleavened bread eaten during Pesach.
(AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

Pesach (or Passover) is one of three Jewish holidays that began as harvest festivals, evolved into pilgrimage holidays during the Second Temple period, and are now celebrated in the home as well as in synagogue. In a commentary he is writing for congregations that use the triennial cycle for Torah reading Brooklyn resident Larry Magarik writes:

Passover was originally a fellowship meal of a spring lamb, and a parallel festival of unleavened bread. These were combined and linked to the narrative of the exodus from Egypt. The Torah reflects this earlier version of Passover when it sets forth a ritual calendar beginning with the 1st, selection of a lamb on the 10th, slaughter on the 14th, eating on the 15th, and use of matzah through the 21st, days of the month of Nisan. The Passover ritual was originally home-based. During the Babylonian Exile (500s BCE), the prophet Ezekiel advocated a centralized celebration of Passover, focused on the Prince and Priests in a restored Temple. In fact, during Second Temple times, Passover did change from a family rite to a centralized national celebration in Jerusalem. After the Temple's destruction in 70 CE, the rabbis transformed Passover back into a home-based educational seminar about theholiday. The Haggadah passage Yachol mey-Rosh Chodesh thus explains that the telling of the exodus story does not follow the Biblical sacrificial schedule (1st-10th-14th of the month), but is (now) appropriately conducted at the Seder on the 15th of Nisan, when Matzah and Maror (but no longer the Paschal lamb) are present.

The Passover seder as we know it today evolved in the rabbinic period after the destruction of the Second Temple modeled on Greco-Roman drinking parties. It is for many Jews their earliest exposure to rabbinic commentary. The exodus narrative in the Haggadah does not quote the relevant chapters at the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus at length but rather the synopsis of these chapters in Deuteronomy 26:5-8 and its rabbinic commentary. Because such commentary is above the heads of little children a game of finding a hidden piece of matzah known as the afikomen is included as is singing holiday songs. In contemporary seders the festival of freedom may include supplementary readingsreminding us that in the recent past and in the world today there are people who still do not enjoy freedom, human rights, and basic dignity.

Wherever and however you celebrate I wish you a sweet Pesach as kosher as you want it to be.

Our Peterbald cat Sasson watching our oil hanukkiah last year.

Hanukkah (also transliterated as Chanukah), a joyous but minor holiday begins this evening at sundown and continues for eight days. Also known as the Festival of Lights, Hanukkah is marked by reciting prayers and lighting a hanukkiah, a nine branched candelabrum on which one additional light is lit each night for eight nights. Since tonight is also Erev Shabbat we light the hanukkiah first and Shabbat candles second. Oily foods are traditional holiday dishes. In the middle ages gambling was a popular Hanukkah pastime (to the chagrin of rabbis) a remnant of which is the dreidle, a spinning top with different Hebrew letters on its sides each of which result in either winning or losing money or in the case of one of the letters a neutral result. In western countries Hanukkah is also a gift giving holiday in imitation of Christmas, but in Israel the traditional gift giving holidays are Rosh Hashana and Pesach.

Hanukkah marks a ritual miracle that occured in the context of a war. After the death of Alexander the Great his empire was divided into three parts, Greece/Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt, each ruled by one of his generals and their descendants. Judah was first ruled by theGreek rulers of Egypt and then by Greek Syria. In the middle of the second century BCE one of the Greek Syrian rulers tried to outlaw all religious practices other than worship of the Greek gods. This resulted in a 20 year Jewish guerilla war that militarily was fought to a draw but politically resulted in 80 years of Jewish independence. Early in that war the Temple in Jerusalem was recaptured and rededicated. The miracle of the single day sized container of oil that lasted eight days (when additional oil could be obtained) was emphasized by rabbis in the Roman period who wanted to downplay the celebration of a military victory after the defeat of two catastrophic Jewish revolts in the first and second centuries CE which were inspired in part by the success of that earlier war. Since the rebirth of Jewish independence in Israel six decades ago the military aspect of the holiday has returned to prominence.

Hanukkah is not the Jewish Christmas. For a holiday that celebrates the refusal of our ancestors to assimilate into classical antiquity's majority Hellenic culture to be turned into an immitation of the majority culture's central religious holiday is perversely ironic. I refer my readers to Penelope Trunk's blog post Five things people say about Christmas that drive me nuts in which Trunk quotes Jacob Sullum's article Oy, Tannenbaum which concludes "Let's put Christ back in Christmas and keep Christmas out of Chanukah."

Sukkah Willow
Three weeks ago I wrote that on Rosh Hashanah we affirm God's authority to judge us and on Yom Kippur we implore God to use that authority leniently. Figuratively speaking, God inscribes our names in the Books of either Life or Death on Rosh Hashanah, seals the inscription with Heavenly sealing wax on Yom Kippur, and closes the books on Hoshana Raba. Happy Hoshana Raba! That means we have until sunset this evening to repent for any sins we might have overlooked on Yom Kippur. We symbolically rid ourselves of those sins by beating the leaves off of willow branches.

Hoshana Raba is also the seventh and penultimate day of Sukkot, one of our oldest holidays and originally an agricultural holidayas were our other two harvest festivals Pesach and Shavuot. In Israel and the Palestinian Territories Pesach coincides with the winter wheat harvest, Shavuot with the barley harvest, and Sukkot with the autumn harvest of (in good years) a cornucopia of crops which include pomegranates, grapes, figs, and dates . To this day Sukkot is associated with abundance, joy, culinary hedonism in particular, a celebration of the senses in general, and seems to be the opposite of the sensory restraint of the Yom Kippur fast that precedes it by four days. So strong is the imperative to celebrate and rejoice that the bereaved are not allowed to mourn during Sukkot. In ancient Israel farmers would set up temporary structures in the fields so they could harvest more crops without having to waste waning daylight hours traveling between their homes and their fields. But Larry Magarik (in a commentary on the weekly Torah and Haftorah portions that is not available to the general public) cites the Bible critic Richard Elliot Friedman who concludes that the passage in Leviticus that establishes the religious requirement to dwell in a sukkah was introduced when the Torah was redacted in the time of Ezra the Scribe well after the return to Judah from the Babylonian exile.

We have already noted the contrast between the self-denial of Yom Kippur and the rejoicing of Sukkot. In another commentary with a rather different tone Rabbi Sam Weintraub quotes Israel's first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Ha Kohen Kook's observation that Sukkot is a corrective to Yom Kippur. Kook sees the self-abnegation and purging of sinful deeds on Yom Kippur as weakening our life force and will to live. Some Jews wear shrouds over their clothing on Yom Kippur to demonstrate their willingness to accept whatever fate God decrees. But Sukkot's rejoicing and celebration restores our strength and will for living thus completing the process of repentance. In Kabbalah Yom Kippur and Sukkot are associated with the Sephirot Gevura (restraint, law, severity, and judgement) and Chesed (love, compassion, abundance, and generosity) respectively. In contrast to the self-denial of Yom Kippur, on Sukkot we open our homes and sukkot to guests and share the abundance of our kitchens and shopping expeditions. People whose personalities are out of balance in the direction of Chesed are generous to a fault, have a poor sense of boundaries and are overly emotional. People whose personalities are overly weighted towards Gevurah on the other hand are emotionally constipated stingy bean counters who insist on adhering to the letter rather than the spirit of the law. The proximity of Yom Kippur and Sukkot balances their associated Sephirot, Gevurah and Chesed: the purging of sins we seek through ascetic austerity on Yom Kippur is fulfilled through sensory and material pleasure on Sukkot, which is why the period of atonement is extended until Hoshana Raba, the next to last day of Sukkot (and in an earlier era the last day: some scholars infer that the last day of Sukkot, Shmeini HaAtzeret, was added by the Temple priests so that they could extort additional sacrifices which was their main source of livelihood).

The joy of Sukkot flows into another holiday, Simchat Torah, which will be celebrated Saturday night in synagogues by taking out all the Torah scrolls and dancing with them. Sunday morning we read the last portion of Deuteronomy, rewind the entire Torah scroll, and read the first portion of Genesis. Like Purim in late winter/early spring Simchat Torah celebrations often include drinking alcoholic beverages, usually hard spirits, which some synagogues serve in the sanctuary (though drinking to excess is frowned upon).

Shabbat shalom v’chag sameach!

This Friday night and Saturday is Tu B'Av. It is the full moon in this month of Av. The holiday of Tu B'Av is most hidden holiday but it is the highest and most joyous day of the year if you know how to receive the energy available on this most awesome of days. It is known as the day of love, it is the day to meet and be with the soul mate, to be with one's own soul in a new and deeper way.

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