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Hanukkah Lights
December 1, 2002
"What had originally symbolized mere physical regeneration of the sun, or of nature, from year to year, was thus transmuted into a symbol of revival on the spiritual plane, becoming indeed, as our fathers told us, a brave light in a naughty world."Growing up in a small town in coastal Maine in the 1950's and 60's, I didn't have a lot of exposure to other cultures. There were no Jews in Castine that I knew of (or at least, who were spoken of), and not even very many Roman Catholics. Of course, there were no Blacks or Asians, either, only a few Italians, and certainly no Moslems. All in all, we were a pretty homogenous, Protestant and Northern European bunch, and other than what I learned about other religions in Sunday School, I was pretty much oblivious about the multi-culturalism and religious diversity which existed even then in the United States. When I started school, we still recited the Lord's Prayer along with the Pledge of Allegiance.--Theodor H. Gaster
The Jews that I did know about in Downeast Maine were mostly merchants, whose clothing, jewelry, and shoe stores we traded with on shopping trips to Bucksport, Bangor, or Ellsworth. I think I may have been aware that there was a small synagogue in Bangor, but about Jewish people in general, and their religious practices in particular, I knew practically nothing, beyond the low-level anti-Semitism which I suspect was common to many small, rural places in the 1950's. The fact is, hardly anyone that I knew probably knew anything at all about Jewish people or culture. Even at a very young age, I took their ignorant slurs with a grain of salt, as I did their comments about Blacks and Asians, whom they also knew nothing about.
So, needless to say, I didn't notice any menorahs burning away in the nights during the holiday season when I was growing up, and I don't know that I even heard of Hanukkah until many years later. The dominant Christian culture prevailed everywhere in music, decoration, and public display, and no one seemed to question it, least of all a little kid with Christmas stars in his eyes. Later, I did attend a boarding school where I met a few Jewish guys--one, I remember, was a nephew of comedian Alan Sherman--but, probably with good reason, he never shared anything about his religion. Besides, he was from Boston, and that was about as exotic a personal distinction as I could handle at that time.
It was only when I entered Boston University as a freshman in 1969 that I began to have many Jewish friends, and to learn more about Jewish culture and religion. Almost all of my close friends from BU, where over half of the student body was Jewish, were Jewish, though many were secular, non-practicing Jews who took strictures like Kosher with a grain of salt. For the first time I visited in Jewish homes, ate Jewish foods, and learned about Jewish holidays. Simultaneously, I was learning about history.
This experience had the effect of making me appreciate even more than before my Unitarian Universalist upbringing. Blessedly, I had no preconceived notions about Judaism and Jews. My heroes in 1969 were Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy: a Black Baptist and two Roman Catholics (and all dead by 1969). I was prepared to be open-minded toward my Jewish friends, and never had any cause to regret it. But it was a learning experience. For the first time in my life, I felt, in the my friends' homes, what it was like to be a cultural “outsider.” The parents of my Jewish girlfriends, in particular, were not sure they approved of me.
As I grew older and learned more about the world, read more literature by and about Jews, and eventually entered Divinity School to study about religion, I became more and more aware of the difficult and often tragic journey of world Jewry. Today, of course, we are trying to assimilate the reality of a United States which is not only Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish, but a United States which has more Moslems than Episcopalians, where there are millions of Buddhists, Hindus, and Jams, and where it is not even unusual to see turbaned Sikhs riding the subways of Puritan Boston. Not to mention literally hundreds of so-called “New Religious Movements” and folk religions and spiritual practices which have been brought to these shores in the last twenty-five years.
This is not the world that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he penned the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which became the basis for the Constitutional Separation of Church and State, and which read in part that “. . .no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be forced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
Sometimes, however, truth is stronger than fiction. The fact is, the principle of the separation of church and state has never been more important in this country than it is today. Despite perennial attempts to tear down the wall of separation which the Constitution erected, we must realize now more than ever before how fortuitous that wall has been for the continuing development of the American experiment. Ignoramuses will still try to circumvent that wall by, for example, installing the Ten Commandments in a public space, but thankfully there are still those who will see this as the sectarian subterfuge and bald-faced breach which it is.
Perhaps it was correct at one time to call ours a “Christian” nation, but those days are (long) past. We can still accept the defining role of Christianity in the development of our country, but we must never make claims for the precedence or dominance of any particular religious tradition or sect, body or practice. That is the glory of our Constitution, whether intentional on the founders part or not. And our greatness is at least in part a result of our diversity: in my opinion, a large part.
My friend and mentor Charles Stephen, retired minister of the Unitarian Church of Lincoln, Nebraska, once wrote that
The question is not: should religion and politics mix. They do mix; there is no question about it. How could it be otherwise? The difficult issue is how much mixture——it is how to keep the religious zealots at bay--it is how to maintain a pluralistic, tolerant, and secular society when political leaders tend to blur the line between religion and government, when some political leaders wrap themselves in religious garments.Some still maintain that a crèche on public property is no big deal, that it doesn't “mean” anything, but is only a “holiday display” which should therefore not offend anyone.
Bigots in Charlestown also maintained that the new bridge over the Charles River should not be named after the Jewish Leonard Zakim because “there are no Jews in Charlestown.” Gratefully, I hear more and more references to the “Zakim Bridge” without the politically and religiously (and anti-Semitically) motivated addition “Bunker Hill.” That is a small victory over the powers of darkness, I suppose.
I believe it is extremely important that we recognize our cultural and religious diversity. The time for Christian hegemony is past. When I see the Hanukkah Lights, I am reminded of this, reminded of the roots of this holiday in what Theodor Gaster calls “the first serious attempt in history to proclaim and champion the principle of religio-cultural diversity.... Hanukkah affirms,” he continues, “the universal truth that the only effective answer to oppression is the intensified positive assertion of the principles and values which that oppression threatens.”
Hanukkah, we are reminded, is not about the freedom to be like everyone else; it is about the freedom to be different, different in a world which prefers the familiarity of sameness. The Hanukkah lights remind me to remember this, uncomfortable though it may sometimes be, unsettling as a new and different image or perspective on the world may make us feel. The Hanukkah lights can be for all of us, in all our myriad ways of being, as Gaster wonderfully says, “a brave light in a naughty world,” calling us to a spiritual revival and appreciation of whatever it is that makes our own religious practice unique and precious.
May we all experience something of that renewal in this holiday season, and throughout the whole year, and may it lead us to a new and deeper appreciation of all that makes our country the diverse and wonderful place that it is, or at least has the potential to be. Happy Hanukkah! Amen.
The Rev. Harold E. Babcock
