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Holly or Challah? by Paul Rudnick, The New Yorker

Just because anyone with half a brain celebrates Christmas, no one should ever use the holiday to make non-Christians feel uncomfortable. Here are some tips to help the sensitive Christian make everyone, no matter what they’re wearing on their head, feel at ease and have a Happy Interfaith Holiday Season!

1. When non-Christians are present, don’t call Jesus “Our Saviour,” “Our Lord,” or “Mister Perfect.” Refer to him more casually, as “the Son of God, or maybe not,” “the Jew that got away,” or “the bachelor.” When chatting with Jews, try to avoid the subject of the death of Jesus. If a Jew asks, “So how did Jesus die?,” simply reply, “Natural causes.”

2. Don’t refer to Christmas as a day to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Instead, try calling it “the world’s day off ” or “a big party for almost everyone.” Instead of saying “Merry Christmas!,” try calling out, “The plain wrapping paper is right over there in the corner!”

3. If you’re visiting a mixed couple during the holidays, here are a couple of gift suggestions: for the Christian wife, a bayberry-scented candle or a fresh evergreen wreath; for the Jewish husband, a lovely framed portrait of his parents, rending their clothes and sobbing.

4. Try to take a delighted interest in the Jewish holidays by asking questions like “Do you ever create a tiny Victorian village under your menorah?,” “Does your family sing ‘Silent Night’ in Hebrew?,” and “When you were little, did you ever wonder if Santa hated you?”

5. When you’re walking down the street with a Jewish friend and you pass a sidewalk Santa, say something comforting, like “Jesus barely knew him,” or “I bet you liked sitting on the big rabbi’s lap.” You might even introduce Santa to your friend by saying, “Santa, this is Richard Weiner. And it really doesn’t matter if he’s been bad or good.”

6. On Christmas Eve, why not remind Jewish children to leave out milk and cookies for Mayor Bloomberg?

7. For a jolly holiday film festival, invite your Jewish neighbors over and screen “White Christmas,” “Miracle on 34th Street,” and “Munich.”

8. When a Jewish friend compliments your Christmas tree, modestly reply, “Oh, but it’s not as nice as your couch.”

9. Change the words to popular Christmas songs, as in “Frosty the Orthodox Rebbe,” “Deck the Halls with Photos of Your Many Beautiful Grandchildren,” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Our Accountant.”

10. Never refer to Hanukkah as “their Christmas,” “Merry Wannabe,” or “the Goldberg variation.”

11. For real holiday enchantment, tell your kids the story of “Yussel, the Reindeer Who Spent the Whole Night Studying.”

12. If your town wants to put up a life-size crèche on public property, suggest that there should also be, right beside the Nativity scene, mannequins representing a Jewish family, sitting outside the manger and reading the Sunday Times. ♦

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/12/21/091221sh_shouts_rudnick#ixzz0Zvd3cHSL

from the 1987 issue of the New York Times Magazine http://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/15/magazine/reflections-on-hanukkah.html?scp=12&sq=ozick%20israel&st=cse&pagewanted=1

…Hanukkah marks the earliest battle for religious freedom in the history of our planet. But more than that: Hanukkah marks the beginning of the very concept of religious freedom. If the life of a little people had been extinguished, if a small nation had not been victorious over a savagely reductive oppressor, if Judaism had been uprooted - if the light of Torah had been snuffed - what would our allegiances look like today? There would be no legacy of monotheism. The Ten Commandments would be absent from the treasure house of world culture. There would be no Christianity. There would be no Islam. There would be no Bill of Rights. That little bit of oil has lasted and lasted - like the burning bush it reflects, it stands for the glory of God.

Or, if that phrase tends to embarrass us skeptical moderns (in whichever millennium our modernity happens to fall), let us choose words more accessible, more comprehensible - but also more arduously demanding, because they are ineluctably bound to the immediacy of human responsibility. Say, then, that the little cruse stands for mercy, conscience, freedom, dedication, thanksgiving. Call it civilization.

THE EGALITARIAN MENORAH is lighted by women and men and children. The rule is to set it in a window - liberty's annunciation - for passersby to see. (The rule does not apply when there is danger of persecution, as in ancient Babylon, when the surrounding fire worshipers prohibited the lighting of the menorah, or in Inquisitional Spain, or in certain cities of Germany and Poland in the 1930's, when a glimmering candelabrum might bring a rock through the glass.) No work may be done by the light of the menorah - its light is for celebration, not for commonplace household use - so while the candles burn, play is decreed. Hence the dreydl, that four-sided medieval teetotum carrying the initials of the words A Great Miracle Happened There - there in Jerusalem, long ago. Dreydl spinning is a kind of gambling game, with nuts for stakes; in a more puritan era it represented a dispensation for other frivolities - riddles, acrostics, even card playing. Under the menorah's light, lightness reigns.

Well, then: Hanukkah as cheerful lively domestic bustle and cozy Jewish family festival? Unquestionably. And surely here and now, in an American December. But when the latkes in their frying pan, bubbling and spurting and crackling, suddenly sparkle with little bursts of oil, know that those sparks are for the redemption and rededication of the world.

Jung’s own explanation of the concept of synchronicity is as follows:

" As its etymology shows, this term has something to do with time, or to be more accurate, with a kind of simultaneity. Instead of simultaneity we could use the concept of a meaningful coincidence of two or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved." (Synchronicity, An Acausal Connecting Principle, by C G Jung, from the article "On Synchronicity", Appendix, pg. 104)

What did Jung state about the chance occurrence of coincidences?

Jung had been studying synchronicity since the middle twenties, when he was investigating the phenomena of the collective unconscious and kept on coming across connections which he simply could not explain: "as chance groupings or ‘runs.’ What I found were ‘coincidences’ which were connected so meaningfully that their ‘chance’ concurrence would represent a degree of improbability that would have to be expressed by an astronomical figure." Synchronicity, An Acausal Connecting Principle, by C G Jung, pg. 21.

Did an insect fulfill a dream?

One of the synchronicity episodes that really intrigued Carl Jung occurred with a patient recounting her dream of a golden scarab beetle. A young woman that Jung had been treating told him of a dream in which she had been given a golden scarab. He was sitting with his back to a closed window while she told him the dream.

Suddenly he heard a gentle tapping and turned to see a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from outside. Jung opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. The insect closely resembled a golden scarab. In actuality it was a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata).

Normally, such insects would not come into a dark room, but at the same moment the patient mentioned the beetle she had been given in her dream, this beetle appeared at Jung’s window. He was quite astonished at the coincidental timing and admitted that nothing like it ever happened to me before or since. Synchronicity, An Acausal Connecting Principle, by C G Jung ,Pg. 22.

Do dreams come true?

Another fascinating synchronicity story related by Carl Jung described a dream of a student friend that came true. His friend’s father had promised him a trip to Spain if he passed his final examination. His friend was so excited about his upcoming trip that he began to dream about being in Spain. He saw himself walking through a Spanish city in a street that led to a square with a Gothic cathedral. He then turned a corner, into another street where he saw an elegant carriage drawn by two cream-coloured horses. When Jung’s friend woke up, he told a group of companions at dinner about the dream. Shortly afterwards, he successfully passed his examinations, and went to Spain. While he stood on one of the streets, he recognized the city of his dream. He was astonished to find the square, the cathedral, and the carriage with the two cream-coloured horses. Everything he saw in real life exactly corresponded to the dream images. Synchronicity, An Acausal Connecting Principle, by C G Jung, pg. 106.

http://occult-advances.org/nc-spi-Synchronicity-strange-coincidence-conspiracy.shtml

not the writer, who paased away a few years ago, but his cousin of the same name. (http://www.crownheights.info/index.php?itemid=22698)

mordecai richler is considered canada's greatest writer, and yes, he did grow up in chabad. i wrote about him before but that post was deleted.

a few tidbits,

he writes about coming to visit the previous lubavitcher rebbe by bus from montreal.

his maternal grandfather, yidel rosenberg, translated the zohar into hebrew and was also the promulgator of the golem legends in poland. in "son of a smaller hero" richler writes about his zeide's deathbed, with his zeide saying that the ba'al shemtov, the magid, and the alter rebbe are standing around his bed.

in "solomon gursky was here", about the bootlegging bronfmans, there is a main charachter, who is half-eskimo, half bronfman, who becomes a chabad ba'al teshuvoh, but then runs away to manhattan and smokes weed all day.

i was told that two years before he died a few bochurim went to visit him at his home in quebec and richler requested that they sing the beinoni, and he was crying throughout…

if you dislike reading novels, you got the movie "the apprenticeship of duddy kravitz", starring richard dreyfuss, based on richler's novel with the same title.

_______

(i see my richler posts are still up. oh well, so this post is redundant but i'm keeping it here. to see the other posts search for "richler" in the left sidebar.)

I read this in an issue of Beis Moshiach (Hebrew). I misplaced that edition so can't relay the date. (Translation, mine)

"

Before I went back to Israel my father's business partner Charlie (Yechezkel Roth) came to bid me farewell. A Jew who was one of the first students of Tomechi Temimim, which the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe had established in America; this person had descended from the path of Torah over the years, and our talk continued until I told him about my studies in Yoga. Our talk continued and suddenly I found myself opening up to him the concerns of my heart. I told him with great vivaciousness of the torah of Yoga which I learnt and on the ways of meditation. All my attempts to tell him of the exaltedness of Yoga he contradicted and in place explained that in Judaism there was the concept of meditation and that it is featured in the book, the Tanya".

I didn’t pay heed to his words and I received them in a mixed manner. I was then a young bochur, and listening to what an older person was telling you, I shed with, ""the world is for the young"…

Towards the end of our discussion, I told him that I dream of going to India, to study where yoga was founded. At this point, he lost his composure and screamed "instead of going to India, where there many diseases, it would be better for you if you went to Kfar Chabad"

The article goes on to say that Bentzion Cohen went to study at University in Israel and went, at the suggestion of charlie roth, to visit his friend, the mashpia, Zushe Posner.

When Shlomo Chaim Kesselman went into yechidus and asked for bentzion Cohen’s resolution to think chassidus before davening, the rebbe stood up and exclaimed, "bentzion cohen meditates on chassidus before davenimg?! shlomo chaim would repeat this story at many farbrengens.

Bentzion Cohen resides in Kfar Chabad with his wife and children.

For a while, i've preferred quietly bowing out to dramatic public announcements, not wanting to endlessly retire like an aging rock band. But now, a solid three years into the exciting creation and invitation of theis forum into being, i'm stepping down formally, from any inolvement with 7fatcow, unconvinced that it exists at all.

No bitterness. Dissapointment would imply expectations, and all my hopes and expectations for this blog where satisfied right away, constantly, along with all my concerns and suspicions, re: the inevitably difficult nature of True Expression and Engagement. That was understood from the beginning to be OK. Sometimes, when you talk with people, a lot of bullshit comes out as cushion for any insight and genuine heart-of-self that might be revealed, and that condition was understood from the beginning: along with the genius in our wider community of not-quite-ex/not-quite-ohs is a multitude of protective layer of ego and dogma; of noise and principle, of assumption and of flawed language, furious at the implication that it must be probed to be understood. That's OK, as much as any of the troublesome nature of our world is to be called OK, it's part of who we have been, and how we have expressed.

All that said, it's boring now, because maybe we've gone as far as any of us wanted to go. One of our founding members has moved beyond interest in the conversation here, as a funner life beckoned where the wit was expresseable and the company close enough that trying to blog in a noise filled room of cheesy links and ironically repressive vulgarity became uncompelling, especially once the Twitter and Facebook Status update was given unto us, to let the impulse sound more immediately, without need for context, or consensus. And so, the chance to say just a few things here was all he needed.

Another founding member has tried to give up so many times, and the clamor of each dramtic farewell, combined with the unelaborated links and occasional disavowels of entire identities for fear of Who May Be Listening, and Who May Be Judged along with him, often prevented the depth of his insight from being expressed. He erased all his posts, psuedonym after psudonym, and tried to convince somebody that he was somebody, and not actually somebody. And in that noise, his genius is silenced, and a certain unconfrontational decadence tried to grow around him; alas, woe unto those who think their sacrifices will provide security, money, or love.

And around that, behind that, so much genius was expressed.  Zoroastro/IslamoYid's and Atgate231's Scholarship, Class and Humor, Shitalpin's withering and ultimately humanist hot/cold sarcasm-masking-authenticity, Hashemsucksdick's marriage of post-religious concience and artistry, Mohammed's strange and shocking form of concience, Anivaho's Mercurial genius to let words permute into sublime association (even as any conceit towards divine synchronicty was despaired of) Yalhak's Majestic magnimamity and wholeness of vision/purity of impurity of perspective (along with the  lucid clarity of Yesod, Aisav, and the other maaminim he brought) and the writers we never even really identified, who bought so much class, genius, and perfect kvetchery to the conversation (who was Hiavrom anyway? he was brilliant! I hope he's OK.)

All the Neo-Nazis who stopped by to let us now what was going on, all the feminists and fetishists, all the excited Chabadskers, all the grieving relatives– so much got circulated, and maybe so little was heard, who knows? who knows. Who knows how much we ever hear from each other that we weren't ready to chap. But I feel like a lot of rare expression and relative taboo was aired here, and i'm really proud of that. As proud as one can be of something that one just let happen.

All the martyrs and all the victims; all the heroes and all the wimps. All the Faggotry and all the ugly, ugly Charedi shock-porn. All the piety and simple faith. Everything but the bullshit, and the noise, and the hiding of ourselves inside of our conceptions. It really has been a great ride, and I can only pray that some of this survivesinto the annals ofHistory, the story of how the Jewish Problem was, if only for a moment, touched upon, if not successfully adressed, from within, rather than just from without. God bless you all, to move on, and see how easy it is just to start up a crazy fucking conversation in this great, wide future of accessible interests, may we one day merit to see it to it's end.

Shana Tov, and i'll see you at the Jubilee

Yoseph Leib,

AKA Yhosephus,

AKA the guy that fucked your sister, back when she was still cute.

FEUDALISM
You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM
You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you a glass of milk.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM
Your cows are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you should need.

FASCISM
You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM
You share two cows with your neighbors. You and your neighbors bicker about who has the most "ability" and who has the most "need". Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM
You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.

PERESTROIKA
You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the "free" market.

CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM
You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

DICTATORSHIP
You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

BUREAUCRACY
You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

CAPITALISM
You don't have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don't have any cows to put up as collateral.

PURE ANARCHY
You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.

ANARCHO-CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

OLYMPICS-ISM
You have two cows, one American, one Chinese. With the help of trilling violins and state-of-the-art montage photography, John Tesh narrates the moving tale of how the American cow overcame the agony of growing up in a suburb with (gasp) divorced parents, then mentions in passing that the Chinese cow was beaten every day by a tyrannical farmer and watched its parents butchered before its eyes. The American cow wins the competition, severely spraining an udder in a gritty performance, and gets a multi-million dollar contract to endorse Wheaties. The Chinese cow is led out of the arena and shot by Chinese government officials, though no one ever hears about it. McDonald's buys the meat and serves it hot and fast at its Beijing restaurant.

Dear Friends,On Thursday from 9:30-10:15 am the JCC, 334 Amsterdam Ave. at 76th St., will be picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church, an extremist anti-Semitic, anti-gay independent church based out of Topeka Kansas. 
 
They plan to send 5-10 representatives who will stand on our sidewalk for 45 minutes displaying disturbing signs and provoking those entering our building.  They try to create enough confrontation to incite others to provocation. It is their constitutional right to picket. 

The JCC in Manhattan does not welcome this group's message or actions in any way. Our focus and mission as a community center is to build an inclusive Jewish community that celebrates the strength of diversity. It is a home for individuals and families of all backgrounds to grow and to learn and to care about and deepen their connections to one another.
 
As your community center we have few priorities during difficult moments such as these. Protecting our members and visitors, and most importantly our children, is a primary goal. Our internal security team is already in action and local police authorities have been alerted. Although you are entitled to your right to free speech,we ask that you calmly pass these protestors and walk directly into our building without incident. 

The JCC in Manhattan is an amazing community- one with big, wide open doors.  This group has picked us BECAUSE of our commitment to those who desire community and who stand arm in arm with us while we travel though this "vertical neighborhood." Though Thursday may be upsetting, it is important to remember that our precious values (targeted here by an obscene group) are truly a source of great pride.

Rabbi Joy Levitt