Oh right! Hanukkah!

I forgot!

Well, no, I didn’t really forget forget. For heavens’ sakes, I just bought 40 pounds of potatoes — for $8! That’s alotta latkes, my friends! I just forgot to post something, is all.

So, as the afternoon draws down and it is almost Shabbat as well, I will leave it at this: If you celebrate the Festival of Lights, I wish you a hag sameach, and a shabbat shalom! And if you don’t — well, I wish you those things, just the same (a happy holiday and a peaceful sabbath). After all, what I posted alllll the way back on Monday still applies….

And, because I really do kind of love him, and short of “Banu Hosech Legaresh” (“We’ve Come to Dispel the Darkness”), this is my favorite Hanukkah song, bar none, AND because he gives a shout-out to Chicago (AND because “Banu Hosech Legaresh” isn’t much of a YouTube hit), I give you this, the single most obvious YouTube clip you might imagine for the first night of Hanukkah — ladies and gentlemen: Adam Sandler! (Who I hear is very nice!)

The season.

Hanukkah fast approaches, much like a runaway horse in the middle of a very cold day. I started earlier to write something in which I was both irritated and annoyed — but you know what? I just don’t feel like it. I’m sure I’ll get my curmudgeon back on tomorrow, but for today, I’m going to offer this, instead: a column I ran in the Chicago Tribune a few years back, at just about this time of year.

Happy season!

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Blessings of the season

Emily L. Hauser

It’s about bringing light into dark places, isn’t it?

As I understand the winter holidays, our Holy Days, this is what they mean: Hope, life, tomorrow. Light, where there was none.

That’s what we mean at my house when we light our menorah, and that’s what we talk about with the kids. For eight nights, after saying the blessings, we sing a sweet, rousing song in Hebrew that announces to the darkness that it shall have no quarter: “Each of us is a small candle,” we sing. “Together, we are a great light.”

And though I am not a Christian, it seems to me that that is what Jesus’s birth means, too. Light in dark places, a small baby who brought hope to millions. “The weary world rejoices,” goes Oh Holy Night, one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, “for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”

And Kwanza? I’m white, but it seems to me that lighting candles to remember the struggles of the Black people, to reflect on unity, and to anticipate the future triumph over oppression is a statement of hope most deep.

There is so much darkness in the world, there always has been. But God – or Nature, or our own collective Best Self – has given us the tools to drive it back. The Jewish tradition speaks of tikkun olam, repairing the world in conjunction with the Almighty. This is our job, our highest calling. To quote another song, “We’re one, but we’re not the same. We get to carry each other.”

And indeed, we are not the same. Our holidays are not the same, and even within our communities, our understanding of those holidays is not always the same. But in our own ways, we all seek a brighter tomorrow, a world without war, without hunger, without despair. And these holidays, even the ones that are not in my own heritage, can serve to remind me of that – as well as reminding me that there are many ways of battling evil and wrong, and that we need all of them.

We were created in a mighty multitude, and I believe God knew what He was doing when He made us different. Different brings creativity, it brings unknown joys, it brings solutions. I don’t need you to light candles at my house to believe that you are doing what you can to make the world a better place.

Every year at about this time, we hear over and over again, as we rush about our business,  that we don’t focus enough on “what really matters.” We hear from Jews who are sick of being wished a Merry Christmas, Christians who believe that one could, actually, take the Christ out of Christmas, and worshippers of the Simple who decry the cultural trappings of the whole thing. Our national anxiety about being made a victim comes to the top, and it isn’t pretty.

We need to stop. Take a nap, maybe have a cookie, and then look at each other. We’re trying our best, almost all of us, I’m certain. Sure we need to focus on “what really matters,” but bottom line, that’s what we’re trying to do.

We’re human, so sometimes we don’t do it very well. But I am certain that when my Christian neighbors tell me “Merry Christmas,” they’re just wishing me well. And when parents buy a lot of plastic for their kids, they’re just hoping for that up-from-the-gut smile that only a kid can give. Neither of these things are bad; neither of them can reduce in any way the power of the Divine to guide and comfort us.

And after all of this is behind us, it will be a new year. Let’s agree to fill it with hope, and with as much light as we can muster, for the victims of Katrina who are still without homes; for the people living with AIDS in African shanty-towns; for Israeli and Palestinian children who are growing up afraid; for the women of Darfur who cannot get water for their families for fear they will be raped. The world is a dark place; we are the ones who can bring the light in.

Emily L. Hauser is a freelance writer living in Oak Park.

(C) Chicago Tribune, 2005

The new need – part deux.

Thanksgiving behind us, we are now officially in Buy This For Your Loved Ones season. The catalogs and newspaper circulars are fat and frequent, as all of American capitalism throws its weight behind convincing us that THISTHISTHIS! is  just the thing we need to purchase in order to effectively demonstrate our affection.

I love gifts — both giving and receiving them. I don’t even mind capitalism as much as a good liberal probably should. But this year, I am particularly struck by the disconnect between the incessant drum beat to buy more stuff — and the fact that so many of us can no longer afford what we actually need.

If ever there were a time to direct our funds to supporting not corporations but people, I believe this holiday season might be it. Climate change is progressing even faster than expected; thousands of military families grieve the loss of their dead (or struggle to adjust to the injuries with which their soldiers have returned home); one in four American children lives on food stamps. And honestly, though it certainly feels like this year is particularly bad, the human experience is always one of struggle and need — and, as the song says, we get to carry each other.

So, following you’ll find a short list of organizations that I personally like, to which you might consider directing some cash if you have it to spare, or think that maybe Aunt Bertha would appreciate the gift of charity as much as she might a new scarf. Needless to say, this is but a tiny handful of the worthy organizations and community efforts out there — just find something that’s meaningful to you, and give what you can. That warm glow really is the universe giving back to you….

But first of all! If you want to vet a charity, you can go to the Combined Federal Campaign at the US Office of Personnel Management, the Better Business Bureau, Charity Navigator, and/or Guidestar to get trustworthy information about how the charity in question functions.

And now, my personal list:

1. Heifer International: “Heifer International is a non-profit organization whose goal is to help end world hunger and poverty through self-reliance & sustainability” — on the theory that if you give a family a fish, they eat for a day, but if you provide them with a clutch of chicks….
2. Mercy Corps: “Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities”– and they are often among the very first responders to any tragedy around the world. We sent them money during Israel’s assault on Gaza this past winter.
3. The Heartland Alliance: “Heartland Alliance helps people living in poverty or danger improve their lives and realize their human rights.  Through our diverse programs, we serve people in the toughest of circumstances and that are the hardest to reach, including survivors of violence, torture, and war and people living in extreme hardship or poverty.”
4. To show support for American troops and their families, Iraq and Afghanistan Vets of America (the founder and executive director of which, Paul Rieckhoff, is often a guest on Rachel Maddow’s show) would be happy to hear from you. The Department of Defense also has links to several organizations.
5. Sierra Club: “Since 1892, the Sierra Club has been working to protect communities, wild places, and the planet itself. We are the oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States” (and my girl just gave herself a homework assignment to help the polar bears, and collected $30 to send them!).
6. Israel/Palestine peace advocacy: This list is a good place to start…
7. … or if you want to combine your love for Mother Earth with your love for peace in the Middle East, go check out Friends of the Earth – Middle East.
8. Hunger assistance: Feeding America — or, of course, your local food bank. (Don’t forget that $5 is a lot more useful to them than a few cans of food — they can always buy far more with your money than you can!)

Ok, it’s a start! Also, I always like the idea of giving presents that also serve to support communities in need — shopping at Ten Thousand Villages, for instance.

If you have any ideas you’d like to share, please feel free to do so in the comments.

We get to carry each other. Happy December!

Thanks and the giving thereof.

Thanksgiving is pretty much my favorite holiday. I know that people just to my left like to use it as an opportunity to talk about all the many things that the arriving Europeans did very, very wrong on this continent and to its inhabitants — and those things were absolutely done, and deserve mention and study and honest, heartbreaking appraisal.

But I would submit — humbly, as is my wont — that the original, nearly-mythological template for the American Thanksgiving ritual is not what the holiday is about. The holiday is about (wait for it) giving thanks.

And I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, who you believe or don’t believe in — giving thanks is a good, warm, and ultimately humbling thing. As with anything human, the holiday is what we make of it, but its bedrock is simple gratitude, and that is a marvelous thing. No gifts other than food and company, no expectations other than that the food be good and the company better.

Now, it’s true: We don’t always live up to those expectations (ask me about the time that my mom’s turkey didn’t actually cook). As with anything human, interpersonal drama sometimes plays too great a role. But that is us — that’s on us, not the holiday. If memory serves, weddings, graduations, birthdays, and trips to the grocery store are routinely marred by drama, too…! Ah, humans!

And so, in the spirit of gratitude, I offer: a list.

But first! I feel safe in assuming that you know that I’m thankful for my husband (who is, and I mean this most sincerely, one of the best men I have ever met) and my children (who are funny and smart and beautiful and healthy) (tphoo tphoo tphoo!), and my lovely home and my own good health. Not to mention friends and loved ones too numerous to mention but without whom my life would likely be rather grim (husband, children, home, and health notwithstanding!). These things go (almost) without saying on Thanksgiving.

But what else am I thankful for? Hmmm….

1. Barack Obama – Still, and despite real disappointment and a great deal of frustration. His candidacy brought out so much of what is right and good in this country, his victory showed that we truly can access it, and his Presidency, while far from perfect and still rather in its infant stages, has brought us to a place so much better than the one in which we wallowed for eight years that, yes: I am thankful — nay, deep-in-my-bones-grateful — for the fact of President Barack Obama.
2. The Constitution – Always.
3. The Declaration – Ditto.
4. Trader Joe’s – How is it that every.single.thing. that I buy there — fresh, frozen, or freeze-dried — tastes better than almost anything I ever buy at Whole Foods? Have they done a deal with the Devil? ‘Cause I’m all in.
5. Tide To Go Instant Stain Remover – Ok, best example: The Tide stain stick got fruit punch out of my kid’s dress shirt on the way to his aunt’s wedding rehersal. And when I say “out,” I mean: Disappeared it, entirely. I know not what alchemy this is — again, deals with the Devil come to mind — but until the study comes out saying its toxic, I’mma have one in every drawer.
6. My kids’ school – I wrote a love note to their teachers in the Chicago Tribune at the start of the school year, something based on a draft I first wrote here, but that love extends to the whole school really. It’s a place dedicated to recognizing and respecting the humanity of the kids taught within its walls at all ages and stages, and outfitting them to meet the world with knowledge, humanity, and a strong sense of self.  I lovelovelovelovelove our school!
7. xkcd – One of the best things in the history of ever! I truly understand Randall Munroe’s humor about, say, 65% of the time, and get close enough another 20%, and then there are those 15% in which I really, but really, have no idea what he’s talking about. And of those times, it’s still funny, about 90% of the time. I LOVE YOU RANDALL MUNROE! (Don’t forget to check out the mouse-over text, people — it’s often the best bit!)
8. The internet – No hyperlink necessary — ’cause you’re there! I’m just old enough that I can very clearly remember life as a kid, student, and working adult in pre-internet days, and young enough to have felt immediately comfortable with the technology when it came along, and people, I’m here to say: The internet rocks. What other tool known to humanity allows one to read the founding documents of our democracy, laugh at stick-figures, and learn how best to get stains out of our children’s clothing? All in one place, and without leaving home? I am just old enough to remain both floored and gobsmacked by the miracle of such massive interconnectivity, and I am very, very grateful that it happened in my time.
9. My family, my friends, my home, my health, and all of the many, many blessings with which I greet my every living day (you didn’t really think I wouldn’t mention them, did you?) – I am lucky, blessed, fortunate, prosperous, positively golden, and my gratitude is positively oceanic.

Thank you.

And happy Thanksgiving!

Shana tova.

This evening marks the beginning of Rosh HaShana, a holiday known as the “Jewish New Year” but which is really the Jewish celebration of the anniversary of Creation, and is, thus, the World’s New Year — a two day celebration of Creation and God’s malchut, sovereignty, over the Earth.

It’s a time when we are meant to consider our role in the world, our deeds and plans, and reflect on what we can do to make the next year better than the last. It’s also the start of a ten-day cycle that ends on Yom Kippur, our Day of Atonement, on which we ask forgiveness (of God and each other, and, to my mind, ourselves) for sins known and unknown, for the cleansing of our spirits as we move out of our prayers and back into the world, renewed and ready to continue our work of tikkum olam, repairing the world.

Because the world is not yet finished, we’re taught. We are partners in God’s creation — “His work,” as our prayers have it, “that God created in order to do.” That which He created was created in order to do, to make, to build, to heal, to repair — to work with the Holy One Blessed Be He, and make the world with Him, every day.

Given my years of peace advocacy, when we come together to celebrate our holidays, I tend to go straight to thinking about issues of peace and justice, about Israel and Palestine, about people living in bombed out homes (whether in Sderot or Gaza), about children growing up in fear, and my anger — my rage — that we have yet to find a just solution, one that acknowledges the humanity and dignity of all of those created in God’s image — “He has told you, oh man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness and to walk modestly with your God.” (Micha 6:8)

I want, however, to find a place within me in which my Judaism is not About Israel.

Because it’s not. It’s can’t be. Faith cannot be about one’s relationship with a place — no matter how important — or a people — no matter how beloved. It must, first and foremost, be about the relationship between the Creator and the created, between the Divine and the human. My Judaism must be about how I worship God with my acts and move through the world, conspiring with Him in the act of creation, every day, in every place. It cannot — it must not — be so narrowly defined as to refer only to one place, and one political struggle.

Else, it will be too easy to turn away. It will be too easy to give in to the rage, to the fear, to the pain and the hurt, and announce “a pox on both your houses! On all your houses! On anything to do with any of you!” And walk away.

I do not know much about myself, on any given day, but I do know this: I’m a Jew. That has got to mean more than moments of rage and pain, arguments and advocacy. As the world renews itself and begins its New Year, I will pray that the Holy One will aid me as I work to renew myself, and my faith, and my part in creation.

יהיו לרצון אמרי פי והגיון לבי לפניך, יהוה צורי וגאלי

“May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart find favor before you oh God, my rock and my redeemer. ” (Psalms 19:15)

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UPDATE: I just read this, “In This New Year, Be Careful with Words,” by my friend Ori Nir, spokesman for Americans for Peace Now. Please go read it — it’s lovely, and it’s just so apt. Go, shoo, go read it.

Things I love about America.

Ok, Fourth of July weekend, etc. It’s an obvious topic, but you know what? I love this country deeply, and am so proud to be American. Just ask my nine year old about that time I had to read him the Declaration of Independence (it involves tears).

But I lived abroad for nearly 14 years, and after more than a decade back, certain things still retain a bright-shininess that makes me smile. And so, today, I produce a list of love:

1. All the obvious stuff – Let’s get this out of the way first: I love the Declaration, I love the Constitution (especially that Bill of Rights! Whoot!), I love that we produced Lincoln, I love that we produced Obama. I love that we have a functioning two-party democracy (earlier posts not-withstanding), I love that ours is a history of more rights for more people, I love that we constantly strive for a more perfect union. The grand Idea that informs and undergirds this nation — “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”; that these truths in turn require “government of the people, by the people, for the people”; that, in short, this is a nation predicated on the effort to achieve “liberty and justice for all” — that Idea moves me in a way that is beyond words.
2. Sitcoms - The situational comedy! Not up there on the genius scale with, say, the Declaration of Independence, it’s true, but come on — it’s still genius! If someone could find a way to put The Mary Tyler Moore Show, M*A*S*H*, Friends (the good first years, not the years in which the characters appeared to be in a Who Can Be More Annoying contest), Scrubs, 30 Rock and Better Off Ted on an endless loop in my head, I would be a much happier woman, I’m sure. (Very late edit [7/11/09]: How could I have forgotten the Dick Van Dyke Show? Thank God the internet allows me to travel back in time and alter reality. Phew!)
   
3. Enthusiasm - We Americans are an enthusiastic bunch. We don’t hold back emotionally, we give our all to our hopes and visions, we believe sincerely that we can make the world a better place, and our more sophisticated friends across the globe laugh at us for it, all the time. But you know what? Suck it, friends! For every case of misplaced fervor (Classic Coke, anyone?), we can point to a moment of real import in which the world did, in fact, become a better place. At this point in world history, there is nothing more punk than sincerity, and Americans have that in spades.
4. Women’s Rights – I know we’re not alone in this fight, and that there are many ways in which to achieve equality. But Americans are certainly on the frontlines (see #3, above), and every time I read of a girl maimed for going to school, or raped as a cure for AIDS, I hold my daughter a little closer and re-affirm my own dedication to work for a better world for all girls and women.
   Corollary: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
5. Poop scooping – I challenge you to find another country on earth in which bending down to pick up dog feces is such a regular, unquestioned feature of everyday civility. One! Name one! (And a hearty thank-you to David Sedaris for leading me to the light of this Great Truth).
6. Rock n’ roll – Though, ironically, my two Favorite Rock Bands Ever in the History of Ever are, in composition,  British and Irish, I think it’s safe to say that John, Paul, George, Ringo, Bono, Edge, Larry and Adam would all agree that they attached themselves to a genuinely American artform and never let go.  Ben Harper, Audioslave, The Architects, Melissa Etheridge, Bruce Springsteen, Los Lobos, The Police, Santana, Arctic Monkeys, Robert Plant, Joan Osborne, Beastie Boys, Bonnie Raitt, Billy Bragg, Elvis, Prince, Radiohead, Allison Krause, White Stripes, Kanye West, CCR, Joe Strummer, Crowded House, Blur, Matthew Sweet, John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, Jesus Jones and roughly a gajillion more all make me proud to be American, even if they themselves are not, or their music is not, strictly speaking, rock n’ roll. ‘Cause you know what? It’s all rock n’ roll.
7. Our founding documents – I know, I said I was getting the Declaration of Independence and Constitution out of the way up top, but honestly, aren’t they worth at least two shout-outs? Our union might not yet be perfect, but for more than 200 years we’ve been giving it our best shot, and for that, I am grateful, and very, very proud (and, let’s be honest, a little choked up).

Happy Fourth!