Credit: Creative Commons/ Ian Wilson
I spent last Christmas at a Jewish meditation retreat. Stepping into the lobby of the Jewish summer camp where it was held was crossing over from one world into another. There were no poinsettias, no mistletoe, none of the amped-up holiday cheer. This was Jewish space: mezuzahs on every doorpost, Hebrew letters on the bulletin board, kosher everything, faces of people I’d never met but somehow already knew—their gait, the furrows on their brows, the occasional clothing item we Israelis recognize immediately as coming from over there.
Much of the retreat was spent in silence. One of the things that silence can do is wake us up to the noise inside our own mind. On this particular retreat, the silence made me realize that it took two days for the Christmas carols to stop playing in my head.
During Shabbat and as part of the morning blessings, we broke the silence and sang other songs, songs that for fleeting intervals made me understand what people mean when they talk about raising the roof.
Ozi vezimrat ya, vayehi li lishua.
God is my strength and my song, and will be my salvation.
It was as if the room—like my body after a good session of yoga—had discovered more space between its vertebrae.
For the remainder of the retreat it was these melodies that reverberated through me. On my drive back, instead of turning on the radio or plugging in my iPod, I stayed in silence and I sang. When I arrived at my house I parked, dropped off my bags, and walked to the river, where I sang some more. Then I went home.
Within the hour, Christmas carols started playing in my head again. In my own house. What triggered that? I have a mezuzah on the door and a circle of meditation cushions in my living room. My Menorah was still up from Hanukkah.
Something about the way I had inhabited my own house before the retreat left a residue of Christmas for me to come home to. This shocked me. I was aware that as a child of secular Israel, creating a Jewish life in America has been a challenge for me, and I was aware that in theory not being Jewish in America means becoming Christian—culturally Christian. It doesn’t happen immediately, it’s not a deliberate choice; it’s a slow, incremental process, like osmosis. This was the first time I felt it so starkly, and it felt creepy.
My Christian friends will balk at that word. I’m sorry, but it’s true. I know Jesus preached love, and there are streams of Christianity I am in awe of. Still, I can’t seem to disentangle Christmas from danger, from my grandmother preparing cakes for a lavish Christening party while the ghetto where she had left her father was burning. It’s a visceral thing.
So what’s the answer? For a time, I thought it was Israel.
When I visit Jerusalem, something inside of me shifts. Jerusalem might be the only place in the world where I am not different. It’s a city filled with people like me—American-Israelis, grandchildren of survivors, brainy, spiritual, conflicted. And then there’s the air. Sometimes the body trumps everything else, sometime just smelling Mediterranean pines is all I need to feel whole.
That’s true at the same time as the opposite is true. The lift I feel in Israel is always tempered by a weight, the weight of the two catastrophes—theirs and ours. Many Israelis don’t share my experience, but when I am there the ricochets of these twin traumas are everywhere—in the fight for a place on the bus, in the business-card-shaped prostitution ads that litter the streets of Tel Aviv, in the khaki uniforms so ubiquitous it’s hard to imagine what Israel would be without them. By the end of each visit I discover again that for me Israel is like an ex-boyfriend I have no business spending the night with. The love is still there, but somehow we just can’t make it work.
So I am here in suburban America, where the carols are starting to play. This is my reality, a reality I don’t want to brace against. My reality includes Christmas—can I soften to it without becoming it?
The delusion – Christmas is about Jesus!!! – There is a GOD involved – But it’s the capitalist GOD – SANTA – Sales of JUNK from slave labor – tortur factories… For if it was about Jesus – The guns would have been beaten into plows long ago – So when your trying to get – IT – Out of your head – Just recall PUAL made a peacefull man – into a maniac killer – for the capitalist GOD SANTA!!!
As a Christian I deeply sympathize with you. And you have wonderfully described what it means to be Jewish for you. I think we are mostly on the same page. Christmas is about buying gifts that nobody needs. Truly a perversion of Christ’s message and he probably wasn’t even born on Christmas. But I must confess that it’s not Christmas for me unless I hear Bing Crosby sing White Christmas, which was written by a Jew. I will consider your post to be a most wonderful Christmas gift. Thank you.
As a 72 and atheist humanist who rejected Christianity beginning when I got to my mother Methodist Sunday school class in Lacey, Iowa 1949 and she was shocked to find out I could not believe that anyone could raise people from the dead, drive demons out of people as Jesus was claiming to have done- there are no demons Mom! Well she wasn”t so sure, there might be demons. Nor could I believe that anyone could ever walked on water. I added many other claims in the Bible to my list of impossible and superstitious list of claims. as I got older. But as an nonbeliever at Christmas time I am not unindated with Christmas music except when I am out shopping and yes it is everywhere. At our nonbelieving events such as Kansas City Oasis, we have our own irreverent music where we make fun of such nonsense in its many forms way beyond the Christmas season. My life is filled with studying things from the real world such as racism, inequality, lack of living wage for many, fighting against the death penalty, and many other causes trying over time to make this life better for all. We have made many gains in my short lifetime too against racism, women rights, gays rights, and the atheist movement is taking off.
” I can’t seem to disentangle Christmas from danger, from my grandmother preparing cakes for a lavish Christening party while the ghetto where she had left her father was burning. It’s a visceral thing.”
I was following along as you took us on a very interesting, and in some ways, enlightening excursion into the Jewish retreat.
I am a Christian and while the family did spend many summers in the Catskill “borscht belt’ we obviously were never “on the inside” of the goings and comings of the Jewish guests.
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However, I am more than disappointed in your views on Christianity,.To hear that our Christmas Season reminds you of the horrible story of the Nazi holocaust is disheartening. The Jews suffered horribly and were “special” in the NAZI view in that they were ALL to be exterminated. Not so other nationality and believers. Millions died at the hands of the NAZi, surprisingly more Ukrainians than Jews. Fifty million died in WW2….a horrible period for so many around the world and in homes across America.
In America, a Christian country, Jews have thrived and today represent an important segment of the richest, most influential group in the country. When in history have the Jews been able to “pursue their happiness?”
Ukrainians 5.5 – 7 million
Jews (of all countries) 6 million +
Russian POWs 3.3 million +
Russian Civilians 2 million +
Poles 3 million +
Yugoslavians 1.5 million +
Gypsies 200,000 – 500,000
Mentally/Physically Disabled 70,000- 250,000
Homosexuals Tens of thousands
Spanish Republicans Tens of thousands
Jehovah’s Witnesses 2,500 – 5,000
Boy and Girl Scouts, Clergy, Communists, Czechs, Deportees, Greeks, Political Prisoners, Other POWs, Resistance Fighters, Serbs, Socialists, Trade Unionists, Others Unknown
Table assembled from figures quoted by Milton; Lukas 38-39, 232; Gilbert 824; Berenbaum 123; and Holocaust Internet information sites.
You might find this essay interesting..
http://holocaust.hklaw.com/essays/2012/Leanna_OBrien.pdf