We are Not Diminished by the Other

As the light of the menorah continues to burn, and the smell of latkes wafts slowly into the night, there is a sound that is first heard as a long distance hum, but then edges ever closer, a jingle bell that suddenly merges with the click of the cash register and the dulcet tones of Bing and Nat King Cole, or Mariah and Ariana, in more recent releases.To be a Jew in the diaspora is to become aware by early November, that the Mother of all holidays is coming. The shadow of Christmas looms long and large, whether it is the movies or the songs, not to mention--certainly pre-Covid--the shopping mall Santas; the holiday greetings and the parties; the store windows; Christmas lights everywhere and, of course, the gifts, the desperate surge to buy just the right thing.What happens to Chanukah in an atmosphere where Christmas can be so all consuming? Is the legacy of gift giving on Chanuka largely a Christmas import, of not wanting Jewish kids to feel left out? And what about the merging of both holidays, popularized by Seth Cohen, the son of intermarried parents on the tv show the OC, who coins the term Chrismukkah, with the optics of a menorah overlooking the Christmas tree in the living room? What are the realities of this kind of modern religious hybrid and can it really work to combine both holidays and maintain a sense of religious and cultural stability? What do we do with these December dilemmas?Whether it is Christmas or Chanuka or Divali or Kwanza or Pongal (the harvest festival celebrated by the people of Tamil Nadu), holidays are not just food fests or days off of work, but markers of personal and cultural rootedness. They help ethnic and religious groups to stay connected and reiterate their values. And they help the rest of us to recognize the other and see them at their very best moments, to respect and be moved by their deepest expressions of spiritual and cultural beauty.But won’t that harm the cause of Jewish identity? Confuse the kids? Make a muddy soup out of religion?If you know who you are and what you believe, what you stand for and what you love, then you are not intimidated by other people’s passions and their excitement. You can appreciate your neighbor’s life without inhabiting it, or having your principles coopted by the mistletoe and the reindeer. If Christmas seems to swamp our Jewish intuitions, then I would think that the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.A common staple of psychotherapy is the idea that a healthy sense of self can create the possibility for good relationships with others. The clinical psychologist Harriet Lerner once noted, wisely, that “the strongest relationships are between two people who can live without each other but don’t want to.” A nourishing and respectful bond between people should therefore allow for particular and defined identities on both sides. A blur like merger of selves is not ideal; indeed the irony is that only by establishing and honing our particular sense of self can we truly be in relation with the other.And what pertains to individuals is also true for religious groups and cultural entities. For Jews in medieval Europe, Christmas Eve could be a fearful night, with the possibility of alcohol induced violence or sheer anti-Semitic hatred lurking at the ghetto gates. But for modern Western Jews, it is the temptations of contemporary culture, freely chosen and not imposed from without, that constitute the true test of maintaining a robust Jewish self. Yet we should neither feel threatened nor seduced by other faiths and their celebrations. When Jews truly appreciate and are comfortable with their Judaism, then neither the worship nor culture of others should uproot our natural and organic feelings about feeling and living a Jewish life. But insecurity about who one is causes a similar uncertainty in relating to the other, either a groundless fear on the one hand or a too easy loss of identity on the other.The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who was deeply immersed in Jewish life, thought and practice, felt empowered enough as a Jew to be able to say, with ease, “The test of faith is whether I can make space for difference. Can I recognize God's image in someone who is not in my image, whose language, faith, ideal, are different from mine?” He added that “nothing has proved harder in the history of civilization than to see God, or good, or human dignity in those whose language is not mine, whose skin is a different colour, whose faith is not my faith and whose truth is not my truth. We will make peace only when we learn that God loves difference and so, at last, must we. God has created many cultures, civilizations and faiths but only one world in which to live together – and it is getting smaller all the time.”Rabbi Sacks called this the dignity of difference. Difference is the opposite of mindless fusion; it is the ability to maintain a distinct identity and still love the other and cherish what is important to them.In this holiday season, my we be doubly blessed – to both be enriched by the faith of others, and be nurtured and sustained by our own particular way of life. Chanuka promotes a religion of light, and like every candle, this light is not diminished by lighting another. Indeed, the flame remains.